He Kept us Safe...

We're electing a new president next year, and I am concerned that our standards are slipping...

Yeah, Bush kept us safe...

... After 3,000 people were murdered on 9/11... and after he constructed a hideous monstrosity of Big Brother domestic surveillance manned by brigades of union-protected rubber-gloved gropers who have yet to uncover one plot against a commercial airliner.  Homeland Security is looking to branch out to every corner of society, while government SWAT teams and high tech snoopers aim their fearsome power at We The People

AOW questioned my excoriation of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in a recent blog thread, and I promised I would give her an answer. (I also promise that I think this is my last post gratuitously beating up on George W. Bush.  It doesn't give me pleasure to do so.)

Here is her comment:

SF,
No way did GWB expect such a thing to happen while on his watch.

Condoleeza Rice was certainly no expert on the Middle East. I can't imagine that she was prepared for what suddenly faced her. Who back then understood the Sunni-Shia balance in the Middle East -- and the part that Saddam Hussein played in that balance?

Hindsight is 20/20. But at the time? It seems to me that most were on board with what the Bush administration did -- especially during his first term in office.

My answer:

Hindsight is indeed often 20/20, but that's not good enough for the president and national security advisors.  They need 20/20 foresight, or something close to it.

All kinds of educated people and Middle East experts were ringing all kinds of alarm bells as Bush marched us to war.  To give Bush credit, unlike Obama, he did everything right.  He spent over a year laying out his case, and he got congressional and UN approval.

I don't know what Bush's motives were, but there was no historical basis for the optimistic sunshine they blew up our asses, that people would welcome us by throwing rose petals in our path, Iraq would become Germany on the Euphrates...

Either Bush's gravitas-filled wise old men were tragically ignorant, or they scammed us.  And the Sunni-Shia balance was well-understood by State Department and DoD types.

I come down hard on Bush for the same reasons I now rake Hillary over the coals:  They committed tragic and horrible deeds in our name.  The Muslim world and our own nation are worse off because of their actions.  Ironically, already-besieged Christians and other religious minorities have paid the highest price for our foreign policy sins, in rapes, church burnings, mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and murder.

We need to demand more of our leaders, and we need to rip off our partisan blinders.  You pull what Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Obama, Hillary and the rest of the gang did, and you should be a pariah in your own nation for the rest of your born days.

The price of tolerating such government actions is that we (and the world) will suffer through even more of them.  If we can't call out the fraudsters, bumblers, crooks, idiots, serial-abusers, loose cannons and wrecking-balls on our own side, we are through as a nation.