The forgettable regime
Eight years of regrets in the Bush Administration
January 23, 2008
Graeme Esau
As the campaigns for the United States presidency are heating up, we are reminded that George W. Bush’s reign as president is nearing an end. While in power, Bush’s failures occurred in regulation. I will highlight a few, doing little justice to his numerous accounts of incompetence.
2000 Election: The 2000 election is not so much a measure of Bush’s incompetence as it is an interesting start to one of the worst regimes in American history. Faulty voting cards and the rejection of thousands of African-American voters only added to the bizarre election in Florida that was marred by recount after recount. Finally, Bush was declared president by a margin of 537 votes. The vote was certified by Katherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State who had been the Florida co-chair of George W. Bush’s own campaign. In addition, Harris’ boss was Jeb Bush, George’s younger brother and governor of Florida. But that is all just an interesting coincidence.
9/11: The tragic events of September 11 are made even more depressing when presented with the fact that Bush received intelligence five weeks before September 11 stating that al-Qaeda had plans to attack New York City with commercial airplanes. In addition, almost half an hour after New York was under attack Bush was taking photos with a second-grade class, providing no leadership in the dire situation and giving shoot-down orders after it was much too late. However, where Bush failed the most in respect to 9/11 is how he used that awful day to shamelessly legitimize and promote much of his foreign policy.
The Economy: When Bush gained presidency, America’s economy was booming, and the country enjoyed a comfortable surplus. However, single handedly, ‘Dubya has more than doubled the national debt to over $9 trillion. And that’s not to mention the immense number of jobs that have been lost under Bush, the huge deficit and the sinking American dollar.
Katrina: The incredible failure of Bush during the costliest storm in American history hardly needs any description. The government was unbelievably ill-prepared before the storm hit the mainland and, worse yet, after the storm did its damage. The Bush Administration’s complete lack of response resulted in hundreds of needless deaths in the southern United States. The government did, however, respond much more quickly when the rich white class was threatened during the fires in southern California.
Iraq: For now let’s just ignore the fact that Iraq posed absolutely no threat to the United States or any other country in the world, no weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq, and the US put Saddam Hussein in power and knowingly gave him weapons that were used against his people. Let’s ignore those inconvenient facts for the moment. Instead, let’s remind ourselves that the U.S. has now fought in Iraq longer than they fought in World War II. The war that was supposedly “accomplished” four years ago, quite simply, is not and likely never will be. Iraq was supposed to cost the US $65 billion but has instead cost the country approximately $450 billion. Iraq has been a colossal economic, political and ethical failure.
Bush also tried to draw a link between 9/11 and Iraq in an attempted, yet failed, justification for the war. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia; none of them had any link to Iraq. Why then were Iraq and Afghanistan attacked but not Saudi Arabia? It probably has nothing to do with the extensive and expensive relationship the Bush family has with the Saudi royal family.
Human Rights: Guantanamo Bay – so much for the Geneva Convention.
The Environment: The United States is the world’s foremost polluter, as well as denier of global warming. In short, Bush has only made the situation worse. Far worse.
Social Programs: Almost 50 million Americans can not afford medical care, and yet the Bush administration has proposed a budget that will cut $40 billion from social programs, including health care for the working poor.
Christianity: During a conversation about Bush in my first year at TWU, somebody told me, “I support Bush; he’s a Christian y’know.” We would be hard-pressed to find any president in U.S. history that has consistently displayed such un-Christian works besides policies that benefit the rich, abandon the poor and kill the Muslims.
I truly believe that some day in the far distant future, Americans will ask themselves why they put George W. Bush in power. His continuous mistakes as president should astound even the most politically inept person. Bush’s shameless use of 9/11 to promote his own agenda, as well as his unethical and incompetent means of running a country, make for a very forgettable past eight years in office. It is not surprising, therefore, that 338 of 415 of historians surveyed by George Mason University agree that Bush is failing at presidency, while 50 of those historians named Bush as the worst president in U.S. history.
Now you go...
3 Responses to “The forgettable regime”
Got something to say?
No one denies your right to your opinion, but it would be nice if it were informed by relevant facts. You are either uninformed or sadly misinformed.
The 2000 election was won legally and properly by George W. Bush. What Gore’s people attempted to do was recount votes only in a few districts that wereoverwhelmingly Democrat. The SCOTUS decided that this violated the equal protection provision. If it will make you feel better, a subsequent recount of the entire state of Florida by a consortium of newspapers showed that Bush would have won the recount.
As to the economy, there has not been a surplus since the Eisenhower administration. If you simply check the total national debt figure, you will see it has increased each and every year. Your debt would decrease in any year you produced a surplus.
The one verifiable fact you provide, 6.4% unemployment in June 2003, is misleading. The Bush tax cuts of 2003 stimulated the economy to 52 consecutive months of job growth, over 8 million jobs and lowered unemployment to 5%. GDP has also increased each and every quarter since then. Should you take an economics course, I hope you will learn that a “recession” is two consecutive quarters of decreasing GDP. This astounding record was accomplished despite energy prices doubling, and the Fed raising interest rates. That record is unprecedented in US history.
If you check the record, you will find that FEMA has never been particularly effective in any major disaster. It is after all a government agency. However, the record will show more workers and more money were applied to Hurricane Katrina, and applied faster than any previous major hurricane anywhere. It is very easy to complain about the response to Katrina, but if you actually find an article showingcomparative facts and numbers indicating an inferior federal response compared to other hurricanes, please let me know. I have never seen one.
The war was “accomplished” four years ago. The Iraqi army was defeated, and Saddam and his evil spawn were removed from power. Regime change in Iraq as US policy was passed by the US Congress in 1998 under Clinton.
I don’t regard an attempt to establish democracy and fighting against terrorists as political or ethical failure, but perhaps your morality differs from mine.
Human rights, GTMO, Geneva Conventions: Under the Geneva Conventions, terrorists, saboteurs, spies, and insurgents out of uniform and using civilians as cover are all subject to summary execution. They do not qualify for treatment as a POW. The fact is they are largely being treated better than POW’s, and they are certainly treated better than anyone captured by the enemy.
Lastly, there has been no cut in “social programs”. That portion of the federal budget has increased every single year. You may have been misled by recent media reports that characterized a 5% increase in spending as a “cut” because Democrats had proposed a 7% increase. Hopefully, you will learn some research and critical thinking skills while at TWU.
I think you’ve watched too much Fox News.
So a consortium of newspapers showed that Bush would have won the recount? Oh good, that makes me feel better. I’m sure newspapers have access to all the voting cards and made an accurate decision. I’m also sure they took into account the thousands of black voters who were mysteriously not allowed to vote. Yeah, this was much better than an actual recount.
However, all I said was that everything that occurred in the election was an interesting coincidence. Wouldn’t you agree? Just a crazy, crazy coincidence…
Indeed I have noticed that your debt gets worse every year. What I also noticed (and what you seemed to fail to notice) is that Bush DOUBLED the national debt. Now, your debt was pretty ridiculous to begin with…but to double it? I don’t know about you, but that’s a bad thing. It’s not just a normal economic pattern.
You may not want to believe your economy is failing, but the sad fact of the matter is that it is. In fact, 74% of your fellow countrymen believe the US is in a recession: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/17/poll.national/index.html
It seems that maybe you’re in the delusional minority, no?
The National Bureau of Economic Research’s president said that the US is in a recession, although the Bureau has yet to officially declare it. In any case, not many are going to deny that your economy is slumping. Big time.
CNN says, “U.S. companies cut their payrolls by 63,000 jobs in February, the biggest decline since March 2003″. As you so politely pointed out, I’m no economist. But something known as logic tells me that that’s a bad thing.
The housing market is also a great way to measure a country’s economy. And even you be so naive to deny that your housing market is going down, down, down.
Even if your GDP did increase, that doesn’t mean it’s not a recession. If your GDP only grows by 1% or something small like that, it doesn’t mean the country’s economic activity is growing. You need to look at real GDP, not just GDP, as well as a host of other factors.
From the National Bureau of Economic Research,
“A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.”
According to that, the US is in a recession.
While FEMA may have not been great in any other disaster, Bush shouldn’t didn’t help. He personally appointed Joe Allbaugh has the head of FEMA who had ZERO experience dealing with disasters. He leaves to go do business in Iraq, and Michael Brown succeeds him. Again, he has ZERO experience.
Oh, and then Bush downgraded FEMA and cut their funding.
Then the budget for levee construction in New Orleans is drastically taken away. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri said: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay.”
Then Bush thought it necessary to cut even more funding. He cut funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by $71.2 million!
Oh, and did I mention that before it hit, FEMA said that a hurricane in New Orleans was considered one of the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country. But that was ignored.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627394/
That should be pretty depressing to the few Bush supporters out there.
Quote from the Washington Monthly,
“While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.”
He installed someone with no experience at the head of FEMA, he cut millions and millions of dollars of funding that would of saved so many lives, he was warned that the hurricane was likely, and he stood idly by as the disaster unfolded. That is why Bush failed. Maybe you should have been the one doing a little research on the subject.
Another story…probably worth a read.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2005-09-07/news/bush-blows-katrina.php
I thought his failures in Katrina were well known. But I guess some need to hear them.
Remember Bush’s speech on the navy ship with the giant “Mission Accomplished” banner? Well if you find that video on the US government’s own website, you’ll find that it has been cropped so as to not have that banner in the background. Funny, no? It seems even the government is embarrassed to claim the war as a victory.
Look, the US didn’t go into Iraq for the reason or reasons they said. If you haven’t figured that out by now, I feel sorry for you. In any case, the war can not be justified for its ethical basis simply because there were worse criminals and leaders in the world than Saddam Hussein, plain and simple. If the US actually wanted to rid the world of bad leaders and foster democracy and human rights, yadda yadda yadda, they would have gone to Sudan or North Korea, for example. Iraq was not the worst regime. And that’s a fact.
Fighting terrorists??? Terrorists? Oh, man. You actually believe that the US war in Iraq had something to do with terrorism? For God’s sake, even Bush admitted that there wasn’t a link! Again, 15 of the 19 terrorists in 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. How many were from Iraq? ZERO. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and it is not a hotbed of terrorism. If you actually want to fight terrorism, go to Saudi Arabia.
Do not believe for a second that the war in Iraq is stopping terrorism. I can’t even begin to express how ridiculous that is. Not only is there no connection to terrorism, it’s creating so much more US hatred in the Middle East. You think spreading your ideals and forcing them upon Muslim countries is a way of stopping terrorism? My goodness…
An inmate stripped of his turban during a prayer, unprovoked beatings, and torture techniques. Yes, what an enlightened age we live in.
A journalist held for five years without trial? Yeah, the rights of these people are certainly being held.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/14/guantanamo
But you’re right…the health care is better than in the mainland US. Something to really be proud of…
Speaking of research…this took all of 5 seconds:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/02/07/deep_cuts_sought_for_social_programs/
I guess you didn’t happen to stumble upon this.
“The budget would shave $35.9 billion over five years from Medicare, the politically sensitive healthcare program for the elderly. The Medicare cuts, along with a $4.5 billion reduction in the Medicaid budget, are part of $65.2 billion in savings culled from entitlement programs, the fastest-growing part of the federal budget.”
“Bush also has proposed saving $14.7 billion by eliminating or significantly scaling back 141 government programs, including antidrug efforts in schools, food stamps, vocational education, and housing benefits for the elderly and the disabled.”
It seems to me Bush likes cutting social programs. Or is the Boston Globe not sufficient enough research?
I don’t know if my morality differs from yours, Michael, but I wouldn’t be so hasty to regard the attempt to impose new orders as a political success without defining whom the success is for. What the Bush administration has done is to speak of the success of their invasion as coincidental with the best thing for the people.
On what counts is this success evaluated? Proportional death toll? Level of global stability? Effectiveness of foreign occupation? Some other impossible criteria? Has anyone considered the full implications of evaluating what’s really best for a people in dire straits? More money is spent every day on the American military efforts than the combined assistance given by all donors for the reconstruction effort. Isn’t that more deconstruction that reconstruction? If well-being is so important, why are soldiers eradicating poppy crops in Iraq instead of setting up a system in which medicinal benefits can be legally extracted and the farmers can actually earn a living wage? I’d hate to accuse the American regime of being indirectly responsible for more death and poverty that is fair.
No-one knows the exact number of deaths that occurred at the hand of Saddam Hussein, but it’s pretty hard to ignore that according to a team of U.S. and Iraqi epidemiologists, 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. It’s also pretty hard to ignore that strategic holds are continually reclaimed by insurgent fighters in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Taliban mock the foreign soldiers, telling the press that “taken away from their planes and tanks, they are nothing, they are scared”. And is it such an improvement that the country continues to live in fear? Is it an improvement that farmers have their poppy crops destroyed by foreign soldiers forbidding them to harvest what is right now the only viable source of income? Victory for who? Success for who? Dictating to them what is acceptable under someone else’s law? Democracy? Fascism? It’s getting harder to tell the difference these days!
Even in its most spotless form, Western democracy is a giant leap away from Iraqi (and Afghan for that matter) traditional governance and law.
Democracy in the West has come about as a result of countless years of social progress, if you want to call it that. I’m no expert but the transition to democracy, in all its French and American revolutionary glory has been, more or less, a grassroots, people-driven effort. It hasn’t been a top-down, ideology-driven, deadline-conscious operation running at the leisure of a foreign occupant.
We have arrived at the conclusion that democracy is the best and only system of governance acceptable for modern, rights-conscious citizens, and the only logical move is to systematically ‘convince’ all other cultures to ‘adopt’ this utopia as soon as possible. The showdown between Jihad and McWorld is underway and it’s anything but pretty.
Yes, the accusations of Saddam as a corrupt, violent, and threatening opponent to countless worldwide have validity. I would not contest that. What I do purport to say is that the transition from a long, historic, and deeply cultural system of governance to American modern democracy is anything but organic, anything but natural. I have a bad feeling about the social outcomes. This knot in my stomach tightens with the increasing rate of attacks on foreign troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope Bush sees the silliness of his “victory” proclamation, because the war’s not over, Dubya. One may have made a statement by killing off the worst of the worst, but I was under the impression that “victory” generally coincides with when the shooting stops.
And it seems to me that forcing a new system of governance on a people just seems a little patronizing of their ability to stand up for themselves. Yes, thousands were killed by Saddam. It doesn’t help that the U.S. assisted the regime all those years ago. But In European monarchy, a structure at times frighteningly close to dictatorship, bad leaders were repeatedly, not always, but often, removed by revolution spurred on by the will of the people - and with no outside help from a team masquerading as humanitarian heroes, guiding, serving, and protecting their inalienable rights. Would this have happened had the U.S. not gone in? Maybe, maybe not. But at some point, enough would have been enough and the problem would have been taken care of internally.
Further, what’s to ensure that the American system produces great, peaceful leaders anyway? There are numerous historical examples of America propping up terrible regimes, or standing idly by in other situations. People are being exterminated in Burma right now by a military dictatorship. That sounds like Iraq! What’s with the inaction? Why Iraq? Why Afghanistan? Was it simple utilitarian calculus - “net threat?” Or was it because this regime was unique in that it threatened American power, or their agenda?
Speaking in social terms, perhaps the mission has gone a step too far. The threat has been removed, but now the mission intends to completely restructure the socio-political order. The attempts of the West to force democracy on the Middle East may be noble when evaluated in our ethnocentrism, but, like presenting an improperly contextualised gospel, slightly misguided. And I’m not fond of the government for lying to the public so much either.
There’s my contention. I hope I haven’t been remiss about the truth and accuracy of facts and figures.