CONFESSIONS OF A BUSH HATER
I'm not sure I'm actually a real "Bush Hater". First, the terminology is suspect at best. It's a Republican Party partisan epithet that has been in use since the inception of the Bush Administration. Tagging an individual or group as "Bush Haters" is/was meant to marginalize them as inherently irrational. It doesn't matter what irrational people think. They might as well be crazy. However, for the purpose of this editorial, I will allow myself to temporarily don the label in order to explain my revulsion of the Bush Administration.
While I never put it this bluntly, I wanted George W. Bush to fail. More specifically, I wanted his administration to fail with regards to certain policies. However, I also realized that if he really "failed" on the big things, the country would be in big trouble. George Bush was elected by the American people (slightly less than half of all voters). This is the system of government under which we live. If "we" choose someone to represent all of us, then on a very basic level, we must wish that he be successful, even if we'd prefer that specific policies don't get enacted.
My initial feelings about George W. Bush could have been characterized as somewhere between indifferent and cautiously optimistic. I didn't feel good about him, but I was open-minded. Following the slash and burn South Carolina primary, the campaign, and then the post campaign debacle of Florida, my opinion of Bush changed a great deal. I didn't like the way he spoke. I found his lack of knowledge on basic issues to be distressing. What I perceived as arrogance was all the more frustrating given his lack of knowledge.
Nonetheless, I wanted to believe his characterization of himself as a "compassionate conservative", which before it became a joke appeared to be repudiation of the more radical Conservative ideology of the previous two decades. Further, I felt a sense of reassurance that Bush might be a decent president because of his father's foreign policy realism. I imagined the new Bush leaning heavily on people like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell. I also thought he'd try to "heal" the divided nation by governing, at least initially, as more or less a moderate.
It's hard to separate my feelings about Bush from 9/11. Prior to 9/11, I thought he was likely to be an accidental president. Bush's response to 9/11 terrified me. I didn't think he had any idea what he was doing. It then followed that I didn't think he would have meaningful input to what his advisers were suggesting. My fears were confirmed when he announced that we were in a "war on terror". That was ridiculous to me. A war on jealousy would have better chances of success. A war on "terror" can't be won. There will always be terror. Further, that's the nature of "terrorism". Declaring a war seemed designed to keep people scared all the time and into perpetuity, which is exactly what the tactic of "terrorism" seeks to achieve. The Bush administration's response to the attacks struck me as naive. We were in a war with Al-Qaeda, and we were in that war prior to 9/11.
Regarding Iraq, reasonable people questioned the existence of WMD. I tended to think it was unlikely that Iraq had WMD, but I didn't know of course. I think the selling of the war was a low point in American politics. The "smoking gun that comes in the form of a mushroom cloud" was hyperbole of such an order that it was hard to know how to respond. Once the war was underway, the issue of whether there was WMD in Iraq became academic. Perhaps the administration lied, or misled, or overstated the case, but regardless, we had launched a war against another country. In that context, I certainly didn't want failure. Failure in Iraq was, and still is, an unacceptable outcome. No, we shouldn't have been there in the first place, but it was too late for that. I firmly believed that my anger over how we got in had to be separated from my opinion of what to do in the present.
I was conflicted regarding Iraq. I didn't want Bush to be successful, yet I wanted Iraq to turn out alright. I wasn't in favor of any sort of pull out until that place had been brought under control. I believe that we destroyed Iraq. I have to include myself in that "we" because I live in America and continue to freely choose to do stay. I think the human toll exacted on the Iraqis was devastating and I believe there is a moral obligation to make Iraq as right as possible. Failure means more suffering, more harm to Americans, and a further destabilized Middle East. In the end, I concluded that I wanted the best possible outcome for Iraq, but I didn't want the Bush Administration to be able to claim any credit for it. I wasn't on the line for a decision, and I wasn't accountable, so I could live with this equivocal stance.
Regarding the financial crisis, I was in pretty much the same position. I considered the Bush Administration, or to be more specific, the administration's oversight of the financial system, to be largely responsible for the crisis. Yet, how could I wish for failure once the crisis had happened. Bush responded about as well as I think he could. I give him credit for not being an ideologue in a time of crisis.
I have no idea how many people ended up in this place. I found the anti-war movement to be ignorant. And they were the loudest. Certainly, anger was driving the response to everything Bush did, regardless of the outcome. There were more considered opinions out there, but they weren't loud. Plus, nuance always whispers, while simplicity shouts.
Oddly enough, Bush actually failed. From the response to 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, and the financial crisis, the administration failed. This isn't a cause for celebration. Bush's failures have caused untold harm. Sure, now I have a guy that I like in the White House, but was it worth the cost? Certainly not to me. Worldwide havoc is what happens when a presidential administration fails. It happened on Bush's watch, and it will happen to President Obama if he fails.
Labels: politics
1 Comments:
You are too kind to Bush.
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