Tag: Iraq

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 5 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 5 of 5

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For the last 4 posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  I am tired of this conversation now.  I may add more topics to grade George W. Bush but I think this is a good list for now.  So, how did he do?  Lets give the short report card.  See the earlier posts if you want to understand the reason behind each grade.

9/11 – A – 4.0
Anthrax – A – 4.0
Afghanistan invasion – A – 4.0
Afghanistan occupation – D – 1.0
Al Qaida – C – 2.0
Preventing terrorism – C  – 2.0
We are wimps – A – 4.0
Libya – A – 4.0
Africa – B – 3.0
Economy –  C – 2.0
Corporate governance –  B – 3.0
Iraq solution – C – 2.0
Iraq invasion – A – 4.0
Iraq occupation – D – 1.0
Israel – B – 3.0
Palestine – D – 1.0
Iran – not sure – no GPA
North Korea – C – 2.0
World opinion – no grade matters – no GPA

One could argue that not all of these factors should be weighted evenly but that would be a huge argument.  Depending on your political bent you would rank Wimps differently than the next guy compared to Africa or Libya or Palestine.  I don’t want to engage in that argument (at least today) so I will factor each category evenly since every one of these is the MOST important to someone.

Average GPA is a 2.71 – a solid C+.  This hardly seems like the grade of the worst President ever.  So based on this, we must assume that he isn’t the worst President and future historians will appropriately place him somewhere in the middle compared to his peers.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 4 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 4 of 5

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For the last three posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  Some say that he is the worst, some say he is in the middle of the pack but just about everyone agrees he is not the best ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

Iraq occupation – D – same as Afghanistan.  A lot of good but the job is not done so W can’t get better grade until the job is done.  He can’t get better than a C ever since he messed up so bad by putting Bremer in place – Bremer’s decisions really messed up the nation for several years.  I think that history will eventually say that the US did better in Iraq than just about any other takeover of a foreign nation (Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Georgia, Poland, etc) although that is a terrible standard to compare us to.

Israel – B – he deserves better than a C because somehow he prevented Israel from pounding Lebanon and Syria to a pulp.  He made them take a huge loss in their skirmish with Lebanon when they could have simply finished the problem.  There was a lot of desire on the part of Israel to do that after the suicide bombings and missile attacks.  Unfortunately, that may have been a mistake because it is only going to get worse when Iran gets the bomb and the lessons that Israel learned they are now taking out on Gaza (as I write this).

Palestine – D – what a blown opportunity.  The fanatic, Arafat, dies, which was a great chance to make progress.  Instead the militants get stronger but then they blow it which was another fantastic opportunity to fix the problem.  W should have forced a multi-prong diplomacy at the time of the Lebanon skirmishes to make Israel make peace with Palestine but Iran was screwing it up at the same time.  The Palestinians are probably slightly better than they were 8 years ago but that is another reason to give a D since they need to get a lot better in order to prevent it from getting a lot worse.  Typically, status quo would be a C but the lack of progress and the ramifications of that lack of progress forces the D.  This problem has been around my entire life and I think it will still be making headlines when they bury me.

Iran – not sure – I really don’t know how to grade this one.  The problem is so fluid and so complex that I don’t know what should have been done.  No question that we scared the bejeesus out of Iran when we took over Iraq in about a month or two.  If I was them, I would have stepped up nuclear efforts also.  The Europeans aren’t helping much either and they are more at threat than the US.  The only thing we (meaning everyone) have done right is to restrain Israel from taking them out proactively.  If this time bomb doesn’t go off in the next 8 years, I will be amazed (and I will probably give Obama credit for at least not screwing it up).

North Korea – C – Putting NK on the evil axis list was stupid.  There was no “axis”.  Are they an evil nation, yes.  But they are not aligned with the others on the list except opportunistically.  If Iran and Korea were neighbors, they would likely be at war (Iran would probably win).  This is a status quo situation – it got a little better than under W but not a great deal and in some ways got worse (especially for the poor Koreans who have had to live and die there for another 8 years).  Bush just took them off the axis list but he should have gone farther and declared an end to the cease fire that has been in place for 50+ years and an end to the hostilities with that nation.

World opinion – no grade matters – this is BS. First, there is no consensus on this that is at all objective.  If you read foreign papers, then you know that most of those foreign countries have far bigger problems that the US in most areas.  Also, the scale is different and they judge us with only the bad things in mind not the good.  In addition, it is the opinion of people and not the countries and the people are not usually fully informed.  A few thoughts:

  • we are the only superpower so we will never get an amazing grade.  When things go bad, it is easy to blame us but we don’t get credit for the good things.  The Germans get mad at us all the time for stirring things up but if we would remove our military bases from their soil, their economy would plummet and unemployment would likely hit 20%.
  • France gets upset with us but they are more upset that American tourism has dropped since they started offending us.  They want our money but they don’t want us to be upset when they do things that upset our sensibilities.
  • There are two other semi-superpowers (China and Russia) and if we get graded on their scale are we that much worse?  Russia threatens Ukraine, Russia does military action in Georgia, Russia withholds gas from Germany, Russia nationalizes its largest energy company and imprisons its CEO, Russia poisons one of their citizens with nuclear radiation, China allows a neighbor to develop nukes, China allows a neighbor to have mass killings of monks, China imprisons political dissidents, China doesn’t really help a neighbor after one of the worst natural disasters of all time, China builds more coal plants than every nation combined, it is not healthy to drink the water in the majority of Chinese cities.
  • The US leads in assistance to Africa. We almost double number 2 (UK).  The other 2 pseudo-super powers?  Not worth mentioning and they don’t make the ODA (Official Developmental Assistance) chart.
  • The US gives over twice as much per GDP as any other nation!  The closest 2nd and 3rd are Great Britain and Canada but they don’t even add to our PERCENTAGE OF GDP!  China and Russia don’t even make the list. 
  • And it isn’t like we are military hawks either – even though we easily have the strongest military.  While this data is a bit old and may be influenced by military expenditures in Iraq, we spend less of our GDP on the military budget than the other two pseudo powers – approximately 3.3% for US and 4.1% for China and 4.8% for Russia.  That’s okay though because we have a military treaty with all members of NATO that says that if they are attacked, we will defend them to the same extent as if we are attacked.  Our umbrella of protection is why we have a budget of 500+B and the combined budget of the rest of NATO is only about 300B.  It is also why when something has to be done with Iraq 8 years ago, it was the US that foot the bill.  If it has to be done, the world expects us to do it but they are more than willing to criticize us as well.  If we would stop defending NATO, Japan and S. Korea, we would be able to easily cut our military budget in half as we have 90,000 troops in Europe, 26,000 in SK, and almost 50,000 in Japan.  While I don’t condone isolationism, we don’t get any credit for the huge number of dollars that these bases put into those local economies.

So I really don’t buy the “world opinion” argument.  We are in a class by ourselves in what we deliver to the rest of the world and we are far better than the other two semi-super powers on the planet.  If the world hates us so much and is fair and objective than why does it not hate Russia and China more?  It is because everyone hates the top dog that is pre-eminently the top dog.  People will cheer for the winner of a close contest but they don’t like a contest where the winner is always the same and is never up for dispute.  They are more than willing to accept our aid, accept our military defense, accept our financial support for their economy, accept our cultural leadership but then whine about us for the same.  There is no moral opinion of the US that makes sense and it is not possible nor preferable for the POTUS to worry about it.

More on this topic later!

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 3 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 3 of 5

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For the last two posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

We are wimps – A – Osama Bin Laden and Sadam Hussein counted on the fact that the US doesn’t like to stay in the fight when the going gets tough (Vietnam and Somalia are great examples).  He stood his ground and got destroyed politically to prove this wrong.  Much of the animosity most Americans feel about W stems from his unwillingness to allow the cut and run mentality to take over. But now our enemies don’t just assume that we will run home to mommy when the bullets start flying.

Libya – A – no question about it.  He got them to give up their nuclear program.

Africa – B – compared to other Presidents he actually should get an A since no other President has done as much for this continent as W.  AIDS help, malaria help, better trade, etc.  Unfortunately there was a lot more to do and the amount of suffering on this continent belittles the suffering on all other continents.  He has done the best here.

Economy – tough to grade as he did great for awhile and then it fell apart – in general he gets a C only because it could have gotten a lot worse a lot earlier.  The fact that the economy didn’t tube after 9/11 and Katrina is a testament to his skill.  Unfortunately, the things that he needed to do to fix the problems of the Clinton era were not possible (politically or pragmatically) due to 9/11 and Katrina.  I am not giving him a walk on this, I am just trying to be realistic about the outcomes of other actions.  If he would have tightened credit earlier on during the thralls of pain from 9/11 and Katrina then the economy would have gone south for sure.  I am not convinced that anyone could have prevented this current banking crisis without causing the crisis to occur several years ago.  I would have given him a higher grade if he would have been making speeches warning of the problem though so that some small changes could have been been in place before it went over the cliff.  He could have provided more intellectual leadership in talking about the problem without actually proposing a solution that would have caused the economy to tank – thin line to walk though.

Enron crisis – corporate governance –  B – this was not just about Enron but the several issues that surrounded Enron.  This was really a mess by Clinton that reared its ugly head during Bush’s term.  Clinton would get an F in corporate governance!  I originally gave W an A here except he did two things that were less than great

  1. he tried to hide that he knew Lay which was stupid. 
  2. He also allowed Sarbanes-Oxley to go too far and is driving companies to go private and offshore.  SOX is a perfect example of overshooting the mark to get on track, we can’t govern like a pendulum but need to drive to the right answer and not cause more problems as we overshoot the mark. 

Iraq solution – C – something had to be done here.  We had about 4 options (with variations on the themes) and all of them really sucked.  All options that Bush took were going to give a C or D (the only option that would give an A was that SH would have taken exile and W at least tried that option although it is questionable that he tried hard enough or with enough convincing).  He gets a C because he took one of the options that resulted in less global calamity and fewer casualties than any of the others. 

Iraq invasion – A – faster and more successful and with less casualties on our side or among civilians than anyone thought realistic.  Was at the easy end of the scale compared to what we were worried about.  One of the things that the talking heads of the Democratic party lied about during the campaign was that we weren’t welcomed as liberators when we were.  The people of Iraq did welcome us at first – do you remember the Saddam Hussein statue party?  The big concern at the time was that we were going to cut and run (which we didn’t).  If W was President during Vietnam and Korea the world would be a decidedly different place today (not necessarily better since Vietnam and Korea were actually hot proxies for the cold war).

More on this topic later!

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 2 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 2 of 5

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It is probably too early to truly grade W and rank him among his peers.  Time will tell if his policies were somewhat effective or total garbage.  If you are going to grade a President, you need to take a more inclusive look and not just talk about his various failings.  Also the “what if” discussion in that grading is incredibly important such as, “What if President Bush had not gone after Saddam Hussein – what would the world be like?”

It is also difficult to grade individual events because they are so intertwined (Libya, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Al Qaida, Palestine, Syria are all different variations of the same problem).  That said – here are my thoughts on the 19 things that GW did (or didn’t do):

9/11 – Bush got an A for this. Massive aid to NYC (that the Dem Senators asked for but he said yes immediately), spoke to nation well and told them not to overreact.  Was calm and reassuring in a time of near panic.  Reorganized airport security quite quickly.  Reorganized CIA/FBI, et. al. to get them to work together (probably give him a B/C on that since he could have done more).  Told Americans to do EXACTLY what was needed – go shop and get on with your lives.  By the way, Mr. Clinton gets an F for this since it was under his watch that these guys were recruited, the plan was established, the people were brought in, individuals were trained to operate planes.  The intelligence network was messed up and Clinton took steps to make it WORSE.  Check out how bad things were that GW inherited before condemning him on this issue. .  Many of our current problems with terrorism are because Clinton did such a lousy job!  According to that article, Clinton passed on going after Osama Bin Laden (OBL) 16 times and yet some cite that Bush hasn’t been able to find OBL as him doing a bad job.  We were handed OBL by the Sudanese and we turned them down and were happy they sent him to Afghanistan!

Anthrax – W gets an A for the reaction to the various attacks.  The fact that they didn’t catch the guy and execute him before he died was more of an issue of our legal system and burden of proof (something we don’t apply to foreign terrorists thankfully).

Afghanistan invasion – A – decisive and complete.  Called on the leaders to hand over OBL and when they didn’t he overran the country in a matter of days.  Tremendous statement to the world on our ability to extend our power.

Afghanistan occupation – D – some would say he gets an F here but that isn’t fair.  A lot of good things have happened along with a lot of bad.  In general women have more rights and religious persecution isn’t quite so bad.  The President that we selected is still in power (and alive) but the insurgents are stronger now (I have seen rumors that this is because Russia doing to us what we did to them in the 80s) and political calm is not in place.  There is no reason to believe that the current President could step down and there would be a smooth and orderly transition to a new President.  W can’t get better than a D here because it hasn’t gone better but giving him less is not a fair assessment of what has gone well.

Al Qaida – C – he got most of the leaders save for 2.  The problem is that in order to prevent the regrowing of terrorist organizations it takes more than capturing people but re-educating people and giving them a reason not to hate.  He pretty much has these guys neutralized as a world player in about 6 months until the Iraqi resistance aligned with them. Which leads to the next one.

Preventing terrorism – C – no attacks at home which he gets an A for but the reason there are no attacks at home is that the terrorists are much more likely to have little skirmishes in Iraq and Israel so he really just transfered the problem over there and he probably has created more reasons to be a terrorist in his term than even Clinton did.  So he effectively protected America but the world at large is worse off by his actions.  Also, he gave terrorist sponsors a real wake up call in his actions with Afghanistan – don’t mess with the US.

More on this topic later!

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RANT! Left Right and Center is named incorrectly

RANT! Left Right and Center is named incorrectly

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I regularly listen to KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” on my iPod. While I enjoy the intelligent discussion I think they should rename the program to “Left, Very Left, Ultra Left, and Pretty Far Right”. The show now has a blog so I think it is fair to chastise them a little and condemn them for not being as open as they claim that they are – if they disagree they can say so on their blog.

Tony Blankley does an excellent job of holding down the right. His opinions are typically well thought out and his intellect does a decent job in offsetting the radical left. My biggest complaint is that he always seems to have predicted everything and wrote about it months ago and it is amazing that us mortals have only just now got to where he has been for a long time. It appears that, in his opinion, if we were just smart enough to read his column every week we wouldn’t have any problems in the world.

Arianna Huffington is on so infrequently it is a joke. She used to be on the right when Bill Clinton was the President but now that we have George W. Bush, she has decided to be on the left. She does fine representing the left when she bothers to participate but she is out promoting her books or getting interviewed by the rich and famous so much that she is rarely there. When she is there it seems like she is sending emails on her Blackberry when someone else is talking.  She supposedly represents the “progressive blogosphere” (whatever that means) but this doesn’t make sense since Bob heads up TruthDig.com so they really don’t need both Arianna and Bob.

Robert Scheer is so ultra left that he is embarrassing and just saying he is on the left is insulting most of his true positions – they are farther left than just left. I assume the only reason he is on the show is that he is old, can’t find someone else to employ him and he needs the money. To him all of the ills of the world were caused by the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. He will go to great lengths to find some obscure way to link every bad thing to one, both or all three of them. He is so out of touch with mainstream America that he even supported Dennis Kucinich for President!  Bob lives up to his left title though in insisting that all taxes are good and all money should be taken from everybody and given back to those that the government thinks should deserve it.

Matt Miller is supposed to be the center and he is the moderator.  Occasionally, he is out doing something else and then we get to hear a real center as the fill in is almost almost always a true centrist.  How does someone that worked for President Clinton and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress call himself a centrist?  He is not as far left as Bob and Arianna so I guess that gives the producers the freedom to call him center.  He must be right of the producers!

All of them do a very good job of promoting their books.  I don’t have a big problem with that but it is obvious that they see this show as a way to sell more titles.

As much as I deride their non-balanced viewpoints, the show is actually quite good.  The three of them (when Arianna shows up) try desperately to outwit Tony and, for the most part, fail miserably.  They bring up weak ideas and Tony points out that they don’t have all of the facts.  Tony usually does the show from Washington DC and I have this feeling that he is laughing at them when he is off microphone.

KCRW MANAGEMENT – FIRE 2 OF THE LEFTISTS ON THIS SHOW AND GET SOMEONE TO BE A TRUE CENTER!  FAILING THAT, CHANGE THE NAME OF THE SHOW!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Why don’t Americans vote?

RANT! Why don’t Americans vote?

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America is the birthplace of the modern voting experience. Yes, I know ancient Greece voted for their Senators but their was a pretty big gap between then and when the entire government was elected by the people.

But for all of this heritage we seem to have lost the appetite for voting. Our voter turnout for the last couple of elections is pretty abysmal and is shamed by the latest Iraqi election where about 70% exercised their right to vote. The Afghanistan people also had an 80+% turnout when they elected their first President in 2004.

For the US, our elected officials cannot say that they were elected by the majority of their constituents but rather were elected by the majority (or plurality in some cases) of those who bothered to show up.

So why is this? Why don’t we give a s–t?

I had a teacher many decades ago that said that if you don’t vote then you don’t have the right to complain about anything the government does. Made sense back then and it still does.

AMERICANS: EITHER VOTE OR SHUTUP!

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