Bush Sucks
Chris Edwards of Cato has the numbers:
I always laughed at Democrats that tried to woo me to their party. Now I laugh at Republicans too. MoveOn may get mileage out of attacking Bush, but he has done more for the left/liberal cause than Clinton. Clinton had NAFTA, welfare reform, and (moderated by an aggresive Republican Congress) fiscal sanity. While he too had an Iraq-like war in Kosovo, he never got sucked into the sweeping nation-building Bush has taken on.
Bush II is also leading this poll for the modern inductee to the free market hall of shame.
somebody:
Well, Bush has accomplished something else as well. But, to be fair, the whole Republican Party has for just sitting on their hands. Many libertarian-minded Republicans have given up on the GOP and fled to more freedom-oriented parties like the LP. Like me. And I voted for Bush in 2004. The disconnect I have with my beliefs three years ago is pretty astounding. One can argue that Bush has helped cripple freedom, but I think he has also lit a fire under many people who are now afraid of the direction the US is heading. Of course, the numbers are hard to pin down exactly and the fact that most young Americans favor nationalized health care, for example, doesn't help this hypothesis.
September 27, 2007, 10:00 pmDale:
Kosovo is different than Iraq. Iraq is and always has been about the OIL and the oil in the region in general. In hindsight (a great luxury to be sure), Bush would have been better off secretly negotiating with Saddam to feed his greed via oil deals, keep Saddam in power, and scare the bejeezus out of him to quit rattling Saddam's sword. In other words, a stable Iraq (even under Saddam) is better for the world's economic interests than what we have right now.
Now, I'm not sure that Iraq and Iran wouldn't be at war right now anyway given the above scenario and perhaps the region would be in just as much upheaval.
Clinton was "lucky". I think he governed at a time that was inherently more peaceful and prosperous in the post-Berlin Wall Fall, post-Soviet Fall days. I agree NAFTA and Welfare reform were good centrist, even Libertarian, moves and I applaud him for that. In some ways, Clinton was a better President than Bush II has been (Did I REALLY just type that!!!), but the times make the man (partially).
September 28, 2007, 5:56 amFrank Ch. EIgler:
Isn't the headline a bit of a stretch, considering that budgets are set by legislature, not the executive?
September 28, 2007, 7:35 amMark:
"Bush would have been better off "
Really? Maybe Bush would have been "better off" to substitute political expediency for global courage.
Maybe he could have continued the Clinton policy of benign neglect, relying upon the "judidical process" to combat terrorism. We saw how effective that approach was in the steadily more deadly direct attacks on American interests that culminated (notice the word) in the 9/11 attacks on our own soil.
He could have left the barbarian Saddam Hussein in power, continuing to defy the resolutions that he signed as part of a cease fire agreement. Hussein could have continued his violent suppression and slaughter of the Kurds and Shia in Iraq. The "sectarian violence" that so many libertarians and leftists blame on Bush has been going on for decades in Iraq, just that in the past it was the "other" side doing the suppression and the US news media did not care.
For all of you people who talk about "war for oil" how come the war does not look like a war for oil? If the war was about oil the operational objectives would have been very different. Control of Iraqi oil does not require control of any Iraqi city, and quite frankly, would have been a piece of cake that would have resulted in very few US casualties even after 4 years of occupation.
Here is the unarguable truth. We have been in continuous combat operations in Iraq for 16 years, spanning the administration of three US presidents. The US went to war in Iraq because in a post 9/11 world our security could no longer tolerate a world leader that had spent 12 years in violation of the ceasefire requirements.
The actual physical presence of WMDs in Iraq is meaningless. The fact is that Iraq had stockpiles of unconventional weapons. The fact is that as part of the ceasefire agreement Hussein was to verifiable (EMPHASIS!!!!) destroy these stockpiles. Hussein may or may not have destroyed these weapons, but even if he did he never did it in a manner that was verifiable. Hence, for all matters of policy these weapons still existed when we invaded Iraq.
When we think of how "terrible" it is in Iraq today, how quickly we forget that crimes upon crimes that Saddam Hussein committed. The tens of thousands of people he executed. The millions of people he essentially slaughtered in fighting ill conceived wars that puts the "destabilization" of the Middle East of today to shame.
For all of you deep thinkers out there, if Saddam Hussein was in power today what would be the destabilization of a Hussein led, nuclear seeking and biological/chemical weapons capable Iraq next to a nuclear armed Iran?
Saddam Hussein paid for his crimes; the scent of fresh hemp and the chants of his policital/religious opponents were the last thing he smelt and heard on his way to "eternity".
This, in the end and of itself, was a significant achievement and any objective analysis would agree.
September 28, 2007, 9:11 amRich:
These are 'real' dollars, but not adjusted for GDP. I don't know the numbers, but any increase in spending needs to be looked at against the increase in GDP to have a clearer picture.
September 28, 2007, 9:56 amMax Lybbert:
Wow. I honestly didn't know Ford had spent so much. I have no idea how he did it in three years.
Bush's numbers aren't great. I'm glad to see a decrease in interest (even if it's not the largest decrease on the board), but I'm upset to see that Bush did worse than all other Presidents, aside Johnson and Ford, on the sum total at the bottom there. At least much of that has gone into Defense spending; compared to, say, Carter.
September 28, 2007, 12:40 pmGreg:
Bush Sucks? Hardly. But the R's do need to be laughed at. Maybe the shock will do them some good.
Bush's problem with the spending is that he keeps losing his veto pen. He's issued what, less than 10 vetoes over two terms? It seems to me that he thinks that if it's good enough for Congress then it's good enough for him. Of course Bush had a few of his own: dumping hundreds of billions in 9/11 and Katrina recovery efforts, a whole new entitlement program with his senior drug thing, etc.
Those of us who voted republican in '00 and '04 were pretty disappointed in our R's, as they went into their mad spending spree.
As for Iraq, I think Mark has it right. Well said.
September 28, 2007, 4:54 pmMark:
As far as spending, real defense spending needed to be increased. The other spending was required to make sure that adequate defense spending was obtained. It is the nature of politics.
September 28, 2007, 5:11 pmbiggunsar:
frank...you are so deluded your crazy.
FIRST OFF, the US gave saddam those weapons dink.
Second, he wasn't trying to get nuclear weapons.
3rd it is about oil and destabalizing the region to continue getting cheap oil.
If you seriously beleive everything you just typed, your a RETARD.
PS, let iran and iraq blow themselves up. oh ya....you realize iran was not seeking nukes until bush invaded iraq...right??!! because before that time, every country in the world believe nato and the fact that the US would not attack a country without nato approval. BUSH went around nato and made every rogue nation fearful. Hence, you think somethings going to attack you, you get armed. When you know nothing can attack you, you do nothing.
Frank...youre an idiot.
April 4, 2008, 3:00 pmSortingHat:
The censorship has gotten so bad if you look for anything about the establishment all blogs are from 2007 only showing up. The rest are just mainstream news articles.
At least under Bush you were getting updates results and people's websites unless people are not making websites anymore.
June 29, 2016, 2:33 amSortingHat:
Well if you called 4 bucks a gallon cheap then I own the London Bridge in Arizona in my lake.
June 29, 2016, 2:34 am