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George Bush can keep us safe? In 2000 the United States elected a Republican President, a Republican Senate, and a Republican House. At that time the United States had a huge budget surplus. Our Social Security and Medicare problems were solvable.
Today, all but forgotten because of the war in Iraq, we have a massive budget deficit. Both Social Security and Medicare are well on their way to going broke. Does that make you feel safe?
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Domestic entitlements are a bit different from security issues, but I'll bite.
The surplus never existed. It was based on projections that couldn't account for events that would affect the economy. The projections were made in the late 90s and ignored the natural business cycle. The economy goes up and down no matter who we vote for, at some point around the mid term of the next president, no matter who it is, the economy will take a down turn, and that's if we don't have any more cataclysmic events, which is unlikely. The surplus projections assumed that the econmy would just keep going up and up and up forever. It was a political document designed to help Gore in the 2000 election. If you remember, which you probably don't, during the 2000 campaign Bush was predicting a recession and the newsmedia was howling about it.
I remember it because the economy was going south before the election. I lost a job over it. Then we had the Enron debacle, which spilled over into the rest of the economy, then 9/11. It's a goddamn miracle we weren't all standing in soup lines after all those hits. That tells you how resilient the US economy really is.
In spite of Bush having the pure huge balls to make Social Security reform part of his campaign through two elections, congress stopped it because they are still stuck in the mindset that if you touch SS in any way, you will be voted out. The only medicare reform that has happened was to add a huge new drug program. That's why SS and Medicare were unsolvable. The political will to do so doesn't exist yet, and it won't until all you young'uns get pissed off about your payroll taxes going up and up and up after the baby-boomers retire, which WILL happen.
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After 9-11, the country supported going after the terrorists hiding in Afghanistan. But then the Bush administration decided to leave the fight in Afghanistan unfinished and go after Iraq.
Going to war in Iraq meant leaving the war on terrorism on hold. The war on terrorism was in Afghanistan, NOT Iraq. Did starting a new war make us safe?
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The war on terrorism was always against Iran. Re-read all the post 9/11 speeches, and you'll see the clues. The geopolitical situation being what it is, he couldn't just come right out and say it. Look at which nation is on the border of both Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not a coincidence. The writer of this piece of shit has a small mind that is incapable of long term strategic thought.
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The Bush Administration claimed there were ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. There weren’t. It claimed Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program. He didn’t. It claimed that there was a massive program to produce weapons of mass destruction. There wasn’t. It asked Congress for a carte blanche to go to war with Iraq, promising that war would be the very last resort. But it wasn’t.
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Saddam was running a huge scam. The intelligence agencies of nations all over the world agreed that all the Bush administration's conclusions were true, even France and Russia, who did everything they could do in the UN to stop our invasion. Saddam didn't have the WMD because he was scared of what the world might do about it, but he let all his neighbors think that he did because his head would have ended up on a plate if they knew he was bluffing. He was walking a tightrope all through the 90s. The shortsighted writer of this is betting on all of you being too ignorant to know that. Statistically, it's a safe bet.
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By waging an unnecessary, badly executed war in Iraq, the Bush Administration succeeded in convincing even moderate Muslims that the United States is fighting a holy war against them. Has that made us safe?
The Iraqi war has created a recruiting and training ground for terrorists (all of our intelligence agencies agree this is true). Did that make us safe?
The war has also removed the only natural counterbalance to radical Iran. Saddam and Iran were mortal enemies. Now Iran has no counter-force to it power. Did that make us safe?
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I agree that the war is badly executed. We're too nice to win a war like this. The only way these people will stop their little revolution is if we go Roman on them. Everytime an IED goes off, an airstrike should be called in to flatten the entire area, and I don't give a fuck if there's a school full of kids there. It's how THEY fight a war, and it's the only thing they respect.
There's no such thing as a "moderate" muslim, but nobody will admit it. They made it a holy war, not us, and we had better start fighting it in that context, or we will lose.
Recruiting ground for terrorists?
WELL NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK!!!!
What a surprise, they're fighting back! Who'd've thunk that?
The biggest mistake in the plan was assuming that such a thing as a peace and freedom loving muslim exists. Freedom and democracy are incompatible with Islam, but if you say that, you'll be called a racist or some such thing.
I addressed the counter-balance earlier. Saddam had to be neutralized before the real move on Iran could happen.
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By pouring billions of dollars into Iraq, by squandering more than 2500 precious American lives and many thousands of American wounded, the United States is ill equipped to protect itself. It’s not just Katrina. Our ports are under protected. Our chemical plants are under protected. Much of the U.S. remains vulnerable because, “there just isn’t enough money,” while our armed forces are stretched to the limit. Has that made us safe?
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How many ranks of bodies do we need to surround everything with? Defense is impractical. We simply can't defend every potential target against terrorists. Just try to think about it for a minute and you'll see how ridiculous the idea is. You defend against terror by going to where the terrorists live, and killing them.
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By pulling out of Afghanistan prematurely in order to invade Iraq, we have left Afghanistan in peril. Now the Taliban is back – both threatening the government and exporting massive amounts of drugs – largely because we didn’t finish the job we started. Osama bin Laden remains at large. Has that made us safe?
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We didn't finish the job because it can't be finished. Does anyone remember that guy in Afghanistan a few months ago who was charged with the heinous crime of converting to a religion other than Islam? He was saved with backroom intervention, but we didn't demand that they change their constitution to prevent it in the future, and we won't, because we still have a happy sunshine and lolipops view of the potential of "peaceful muslims". Afghanistan is going to fall apart as soon as we leave, but it doesn't matter if Iran is neutralized before that happens.
The reason we don't have Bin Laden is because he's not living in a cave. He's living in a palace in a nation that we can't touch right now for some reason.
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The resounding answer to these questions is NO! The actions of the President and Congress have put our seniors at risk, put our troops at risk and created a breeding ground for new terrorists which virtually assures that we will indeed be attacked again. The President is right that we can’t simply leave Iraq. But should the same people whose mistruths, half-truths, and total ineptness have turned a war that never should have been fought into a disaster, be trusted to have the honesty and competency to solve the problem they created. Does that make sense?
The Bush Administration is good at spin. It is GREAT at spin. But will sin make us safe?
Criticize the Democrats all you want, and there’s plenty to criticize. But this much is clear. Six years of the emperor Bush and a Republican Congress have left the United States massively weakened and very unsafe indeed.
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This really is pathetic. It's the obligatory "I'm not biased against any political party, this is just my honest asessment." and it's a fucking lie.