Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Bush Legacy: A 'Spectacular Disaster' in the Islamic World

George Bush is gone, of course, but the damage that he and his administration inflicted on the United States remains with us.

There's the economy, of course, but there's also the international political situation. Here's a succinct summary of the problem from historian William Dalrymple, writing in The New York Review of Books:
Eight years of neocon foreign policies have been a spectacular disaster for American interests in the Islamic world, leading to the rise of Iran as a major regional power, the advance of Hamas and Hezbollah, the wreckage Iraq, with over two million external refugees and the ethnic cleansing of its Christian population, and now the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan, probably the most dangerous development of all.
To George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, David Addington and so many others: Thanks for nothing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this what you mean by “Spectacular Disaster”?

Here is an excerpt from

The World; How Many People Has Hussein Killed?
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: January 26, 2003 NyTimes.com

“…
Since then, Mr. Hussein's has been a tale of terror that scholars have compared to that of Stalin, whom the Iraqi leader is said to revere, even if his own brutalities have played out on a small scale. Stalin killed 20 million of his own people, historians have concluded. Even on a proportional basis, his crimes far surpass Mr. Hussein's, but figures of a million dead Iraqis, in war and through terror, may not be far from the mark, in a country of 22 million people.
…”

You don’t have to believe the WMD arguments for the Iraq war. You don’t have to believe that Saddam Hussein wanted to find a way to attack the U.S. in any way possible. You don’t have to believe that even if he didn’t directly fund the Al Qaeda that committed 9-11 he was willing to afterwards.

Yet, wouldn’t it be a reasonable thing to say that such a regime is not a “good” thing for its people and that the removal of it does the country and by extension the world a service?

How much hatred of Bush and conservatives in general would it take to justify letting Saddam kill another million of his own citizens while saber rattling nuclear threats at the U.N. and U.S. respectively?

I can’t say Bush did everything right. I can say there are at least a million people still alive today because he tried.

Peregrin
theperegrin.com

Anonymous said...

No one is going to mourn Saddam and his sons. Good riddance. That, at least, is a positive thing.

But Bush and company deliberately put false words into Colin Powell's mouth to launch the Iraq war under false pretenses.

If you are going to start a war based on a lie, you had better know what you are doing and how to do it. The Bush team proved incompetent as well as dishonest, preferring to believe that Iraqis would throw flowers at our soldiers' feet, that the oil would pay for the war, and that we would "bring democracy" to Iraq.

The reality today: a statue was erected in Iraq of the shoe thrown at Bush by an Iraqi journalist.

By Bush logic, why not launch an attack on North Korea, too? But first you might ask yourself and your advisors a few questions:

Have you used diplomatic channels effectively?
How much military do you have available?
How much will you need?
How much public support is there? Enough to draft soldiers?
What do you realistically expect to accomplish?
How long do you plan to be there? How do you plan to get out?
How many trillions are you and the country willing to spend?
How many lives are you and the country willing to spend?

Bush's "strategery" as he puts it, is more like "stoogery."

Good riddance to Bush and the horse he rode in on.

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