George W. Bush, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina—How Did We Go So Wrong?
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
I commend to your attention a new article on Vanity Fair's website that tries to explain how so much could go wrong in so few years. In less than 8 years, the Bush White House managed to accomplish the following:
The threat of 9/11 ignored. The threat of Iraq hyped and manipulated. Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Hurricane Katrina. The shredding of civil liberties. The rise of Iran. Global warming. Economic disaster. How did one two-term presidency go so wrong?
To this long list I would add a monstrously useless expenditure of human life and taxpayers' limited resources (to wit, the war in Iraq, implied in the Vanity Fair headline but not spelled out) and the decimation of America's financial watchdog system designed to prevent the kind of economic mess we're now experiencing.
One wonders, in retrospect, how the American public could have so misjudged this man to have elected him not once but twice. How is it that voters, seeing the mismanaged war launched and excessive spending well on its way by the end of Mr. Bush's first term, could have voted him back into office for another four years of waste and abuse of office? Blame could be placed, in part, on the Democratic Party for nominating Sen. John Kerry to run against Mr. Bush in 2004. Kerry was a terrible candidate, but good judgment and political acumen were hardly required to discern that Kerry would have made a far better president than the one who won reelection. In fact if he had won in '04, chances are we would have been out of Iraq by now, and much of the mortgage and housing crisis that rocked Wall Street and the global economy would not have taken place.
If America was so spellbound by what I always viewed as the GOP's gross manipulation of the terror issue, I would go so far as to say we need to revisit how we elect our presidents. Something in our system is going seriously wrong. 9/11 was a horrible event. Still, Americans should have been able to see through Republicans' fear-driven '04 campaign to recognize the danger was more imagined than real.
- Read more by Bonnie Erbe.
- Read more from the Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
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Tags: 9/11 | George W. Bush
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Reader Comments
Bush failed in his response to Hurricane Katrina
Bush waited way too long to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
Huh?
Bush is responsible for a hurricane? He caused global warming? Get real woman!
Hurricanes are caused by mother nature. The failed response was perpetuated from the local level, through the state level way before the federal response was even asked for! It's the state's responsibility FIRST! Mayor "what buses" Negan should be in jail! Leave it to LA to reelect him! Maybe it happened because no one was left!
Global warming? There IS NO GLOBAL WARMING! Latest report released this week shows arctic sea ice at 1978 levels! There are 5x as many polar bears now than back then too! Like the ozone hole scare, this is just conjured up to allow governments to tax us! That's all Keyoto was about! Taxes! Countries paying carbon taxes! Unless you are China that is! They are the worlds worst polluters by the way!
"The threat of 9/11 ignored"? HUH? What has happened since then that I missed? Have we been attacked? Didn't we liberate Afghanistan from those thugs? Yeh we will be mopping up for a while but the few that are left are NO THREAT! The rise of Iran? What have they done to "rise" beside talk a lot of BS? The UN is doing the same job keeping them from building nukes as they did with Saddam. And speaking of Saddam....
Iraq wasn't hyped, the UN BLEW IT by letting Saddam off the hook with 17 toothless resolutions! Bush did the right thing by not waiting any longer for the UN and ousting him! History will bare that out! Don't forget all the people cheering in the streets after we drove Saddam quite literally, into a hole in the ground! Shredded civil rights? Oh! You mean the international wire tapping? That's a far cry from what the military sensors did in WWII! You have the historical perspective of a flea! Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib? I could care less! Funny how no country wants to take these bastards huh? I know the families of the 3000 people killed on 911 would love a few minutes alone with these guys! I know I would and I never lost a loved one!
Lest you think Obama will be a change, he's already lining up all the old Clinton zombies and those were the people that pissed off the Muslims enough to attack us in the first place! Bush was only in office for less that 8 months when we were attacked FOR THE SECOND TIME! The first time was in 1993 when they tried to blow up the trade center from the basement! Why didn't Clinton get Osama then? He had 3 chances where he was practically handed to him! Or have you forgotten?
During the Civil War, there were plenty of people that blamed Lincoln for the whole mess, just as people today blame bush for the problems of today. Look how history holds Lincoln to such high regard. Come back in 20 or 50 years and tell me how you see Bush! If you are around then, I'll look you up!
GEORGE BUSH IS RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING
I warned everyone to not vote for George W. Bush. Unfortunately there appears to have been some voting irregularities: a lot of people voted for Bush twice! Well, we told you so.
God I hate that sanctimonious Republican CRAP! Someone please tell me, do they all listen to the same lousy broken record?
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