News OK, what did George W. Bush do right?

[Loren Booda]

I hear he increased support to those suffering in Africa during his terms as president.

 

[Cyrus]

My energy professor said he was good in funding alternative energy research (hydrogen, I think).

 

[rootX]

- Reduced the total number of dictators in this world by 1.

 

[Supercritical]

Signing off on the Do Not Call Registry.

 

[humanino]

- Reduced the total number of dictators in this world by 1.

That's when he retired ?

 

[math_04]

The way he led the country post 9-11 was certainly commendable. Yes, he did support quite a few programs in Africa. Every time he spoke, he undoubtedly made millions of people laugh out! Afghanistan was a just war and as commander in chief, he managed to conquer large swathes of the country pretty quickly although he did mess it up later on.

Unfortunately, he made lots of glaring mistakes which have caused lots of problems, both domestic and foreign for America.

 

[Gokul43201]

The way he led the country post 9-11 was certainly commendable. Yes, he did support quite a few programs in Africa. Every time he spoke, he undoubtedly made millions of people laugh out! Afghanistan was a just war and as commander in chief, he managed to conquer large swathes of the country pretty quickly although he did mess it up later on.

"[C]onquer large swathes of the country"?

Please tell me this is sarcasm.

 

[turbo]

"[C]onquer large swathes of the country"?

Please tell me this is sarcasm.

Control a city or two (in which US surrogates are still not truly safe) and cede control of the rest of the country to local warlords, Taliban, and other groups that support opium production, oppress women, burn schools dedicated to the education of girls, and generally enforce their own religious dictates? (The recent attack on musicians playing at a wedding, shaving and humiliating the musicians, etc, shows how open-minded these despotic groups are.) Does that equate to military/administrative "control" of a country in anybody's world (outside of la-la land)? Neighboring Pakistan cannot adequately exert control over areas of their country just 10s of miles from the country's capitol. How was the war in Afghanistan any more successful?

 

[LowlyPion]

He left office without the country resorting to physical force to remove him.

Btw, I don't get what he is supposed to have gotten right in Africa.

I think the man was a Harvard Business School case study in mismanagement and poor strategic thinking. But mercifully, what he got wrong is not the topic.

This should be a short topic.

 

[math_04]

I was talking about the first month or so after the invasion. The Taliban retreated from most of their positions into the mountains. After that, yes, the Allies have pretty much messed up the situation and only control Kabul and a couple of other small villages. Having local warlords in charge, while not right, is based on practical realities. Better to have a warlord who is allied with the central government and NATO troops rather than the Taliban who are looking to kill just about everyone who disagrees with them.

 

[turbo]

I hear he increased support to those suffering in Africa during his terms as president.

He didn't issue blanket pardons to all the people in his administration that justified wars of aggression, suspension of human rights, extraordinary rendition in foreign secret CIA prisons, torture, or warrantless wiretapping and other violations of privacy against US citizens. I fully expected that he would issue blanket pardons for at least some of these offenses. Maybe he got something right, in the end.

 

[rootX]

@George W. Bush didn't do a single thing right:

RIDICULOUS!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Eliminating a dictator is only the right thing to do IF it was worth sacrificing over US 4000 lives, disrupting or permanently changing or ruining the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and family members, at a cost of over a trillion dollars, and virtually destroying US credibility abroad, in order to do it. It was an unnecessary war based on false pretenses so it was not the right thing to do.

 

[glueball8]

I hear he increased support to those suffering in Africa during his terms as president.

Now a lot of people think increasing support to Africa is a bad idea.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think Bush did a few things right near the end of his term.

1). Quit listening to Cheney et. al. and instead listened to his dad's old buddies.

2). Dumped Rummy and brought in Bob Gates as Sec of Defense

3). Changed the war plan as per 1) and 2).

4). Signed the bailout plan

5). Has FINALLY learned to keep his mouth shut [refuses to comment on Obama's plans]

 

[humanino]

Eliminating a dictator is only the right thing to do IF...

one forgets how much power it gave to the remaining one in the middle... but that's pure speculation.
Even though, of course, everybody knew that speculation long ago...

 

[rootX]

Eliminating a dictator is only the right thing to do IF it was worth sacrificing over US 4000 lives, disrupting or permanently changing or ruining the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and family members, at a cost of over a trillion dollars, in order to do it. It was an unnecessary war so it was not the right thing to do.

1. "Eliminating a dictator " is right
2. "sacrificing over US 4000 lives" is wrong
3. "disrupting or permanently changing or ruining the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and family members" is wrong
4. "at a cost of over a trillion dollars" is wrong

I don't think 1 is dependent on 2, 3, or 4. It is right by itself.

And 2, 3, or 4 losses are short term unlike the benefits (from #1) which are long term and so it is hard to tell right now if it was right to do 2,3,4 for achieving 1. I would wait for 50-100 more years to see if it was in Iraq/US interest to invade Iraq.

 

[turbo]

one forgets how much power it gave to the remaining one in the middle... but that's pure speculation.
Even though, of course, everybody knew that speculation long ago...

And it's pretty much a factor of propaganda and perceptions as to which groups are considered terrorists, and which leaders are considered dictators. I can get BBC feeds from time to time, but US commercial and public TV is quite reluctant to express any progressive views. The fantasy of the "liberal media" died a long time ago.

 

[russ_watters]

- Reduced the total number of dictators in this world by 1.

And the number of dictatorial regimes by two.

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

 

[russ_watters]

Google is your friend, by the way. Here are ten examples of separate things he did right in one category, civil liberties:http://civilliberty.about.com/od/profiles/tp/What-Bush-Has-Done-Right.htm

Newsweek also did a feature/cover article on this very topic: http://www.newsweek.com/id/151731

 

[LowlyPion]

1. "Eliminating a dictator " is right

I take exception to that. It was meddlesome of the US to have intervened in the first place. Removing dictatorships is not our business. The US interfered in the sovereign affairs of another nation ... and acted without any other cause than that Bush-Cheney wanted to, and trumped up reasons to do so.

It is not for us to judge and then act in this way to enforce some no dictator policy. Otherwise, there is much work that is left undone that we are not doing. We would be at war with the world. And the World is not ours alone.

In general I think it is extraordinary hubris to suppose that it would ever be something that would be right for us to do, unless that dictator was specifically on our own shores, occupying our government, suppressing our Constitutional Rights.

 

[math_04]

Well, he did make a huge blunder in invading Iraq. He also saw much of the world in black and white, good vs evil which lead to a disastrous foreign policy and anti-americanism world wide. His policies on torture, spending etc also led to more trouble. But he made some hard but important decisions, the wiretapping was wrong but at that time, with the fear of attacks running high, who could blame him? He could have done more worse things like rounding up Muslims, sending the military into major cities etc which fortunately did not happen. As the president and commander in chief, he was responsible for protecting the civilian population and he did try his utmost best.

 

[LowlyPion]

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

That looks highly speculative. Supposing that anything was specifically prevented, looks to be an invention of the Bush-Cheney supporters. Manufactured I'd say about as certainly as the reports of yellow-cake and bio-weapons that were supposedly under development in Iraq prior to the US invasion.

 

[Gokul43201]

I was talking about the first month or so after the invasion. The Taliban retreated from most of their positions into the mountains.

Yes, but to describe that as conquering large swathes of land...? This isn't exactly Rome in 52BC. You don't get brownie points in the 21st century for "conquering large swathes of land".

Besides, should Bush really get kudos when the United States Armed Forces gets the Taliban to retreat temporarily?

 

[Gokul43201]

Getting back to the question posed in the OP, the big marine protection order in the final days of his term was applauded by environmental groups. It was an unexpected move, and has people suspicious of the motives behind it (marine bases in the South Pacific), but environmental groups are virtually unanimous that this is a good thing for marine life, so I believe there are a lot more people that were happy about this than not.

 

[drizzle]

- Reduced the total number of dictators in this world by 1.

That's when he retired ?

good point

 

[Moridin]

He did nothing right by virtue of being George W. Bush. Pretty much any president that listens to his science advisers would support alternative energy projects. But not any president would perform the unwise foreign policies that he enacted.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

1. "Eliminating a dictator " is right
2. "sacrificing over US 4000 lives" is wrong
3. "disrupting or permanently changing or ruining the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and family members" is wrong
4. "at a cost of over a trillion dollars" is wrong

I don't think 1 is dependent on 2, 3, or 4. It is right by itself.

You are arguing that consequences don't matter. That is an incredibly naive view of the world.

And 2, 3, or 4 losses are short term unlike the benefits (from #1) which are long term and so it is hard to tell right now if it was right to do 2,3,4 for achieving 1. I would wait for 50-100 more years to see if it was in Iraq/US interest to invade Iraq.

The fact is that TODAY we live with the consequences. What happens in 100 years is a matter of fortune-telling. If you want to read the future, then I can read the alternative reality: In a few years Saddam would have been gone anyway. Prove me wrong.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

Prove it. Anytime after 911, one could have towed a trailer carrying a nuclear weapon across the Mexican border with a tank. We had over a thousand of miles of wide-open border that Bush all but refused to protect.

 

[BoomBoom]

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

I highly doubt it...

I hear Cheney and others make this claim all the time that somehow the fact that we were not attacked after 9/11 is some sort of "proof" that their policies made us safer. When in reality, we were not attacked because they haven't attacked us yet.

Not to mention, the 9/11 attacks were on their watch, and they were even warned it would happen and still did nothing! Unfortunately, they (AlQueda) probably will try something within the next decade or so and of course if it does happen, all the Bush/Cheney lovers will claim "See?, We told you so! Obama made us less safe." ...it's just sad.


...back on topic of what Bush did right...ummmmm (tough question)...he didn't invade Iran?

 

[CRGreathouse]

I think Bush did a few things right near the end of his term.

1). Quit listening to Cheney et. al. and instead listened to his dad's old buddies.

2). Dumped Rummy and brought in Bob Gates as Sec of Defense

3). Changed the war plan as per 1) and 2).

Yes, YES!, yes.

4). Signed the bailout plan

I'm not really sure that was a good thing. Of course it wasn't quite in its hideous current form then, but having the plan "I'll come up with a plan later" still doesn't qualify.

And the number of dictatorial regimes by two.

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

Yes and perhaps. It's very hard to tell what otherwise might have been. It seems likely to me that he did reduce the number of terrorist actions that would otherwise have happened in the country, but only at a high cost to civil liberties. This was in some ways a sensible response to Sept. 11 (though I didn't favor it), but I think the PATRIOT Act should have been allowed to expire. Also, it seems likely to me that although some terrorist actions were thwarted the major effect was shifting multinational terrorism to Europe -- anyone want to comment on that supposition?I'm surprised to see no mention of the tax cuts or his support of Clinton's NAFTA. Did no one support those?

 

[Cyrus]

Let's not forget the government handouts for BIG SUVS!

That was a real winner idea.

 

[drankin]

Hey! Another Bush-bashing thread! Surprise, surprise!

Is Iraq better off now than before? If not, then we shouldn't have gone in. If so, it ended up a good thing. Even if the premise was bogus.

 

[LowlyPion]

Is Iraq better off now than before? If not, then we shouldn't have gone in. If so, it ended up a good thing. Even if the premise was bogus.

Which side are you taking? Are you going to represent that flushing a trillion dollars and 5,000 American lives, and abandoning Constitutional principles is worth what? A country invaded without cause, on trumped up evidence and now 6 years later still in chaos and the US saddled with a stumbling economy?

As you look at increased gas prices, and withered prospects for employment, and mounting debt, diminished housing values, I trust you will keep telling yourself what a great thing it was that Bush and Cheney wasted our resources on, dissipated the flower of our military on.

 

[Moridin]

That is a very conservative estimation regarding the cost of the war. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes estimate that if you include various hidden costs, it rises to http://threetrilliondollarwar.org/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece

 

[Civilized]

George W not signing the Kyoto protocol was a good move, with the UN estimating the outcome as a 0.1 degree decrease in global mean tempeature by 2050 at a total cost of $1Trillion to the global economy. That is just not a reasonable bang for the buck by any measure, no matter how you feel about anthropic climate change.

 

[Cyrus]

George W not signing the Kyoto protocol was a good move, with the UN estimating the outcome as a 0.1 degree decrease in global mean tempeature by 2050 at a total cost of $1Trillion to the global economy. That is just not a reasonable bang for the buck by any measure, no matter how you feel about anthropic climate change.

How many degrees change would be worth it in your opinion? (Just curious)

 

[Civilized]

How many degrees change would be worth it in your opinion? (Just curious)

I think that we should be able to solve the whole thing for much less than a trillion dollars! I think the plan of reducing emissions is too costly to be practical in general, and offsetting carbon emissions and researching new ways to do so would be a more sensible solution.

 

[Cyrus]

I think that we should be able to solve the whole thing for much less than a trillion dollars! I think the plan of reducing emissions is too costly to be practical in general, and offsetting carbon emissions and researching new ways to do so would be a more sensible solution.

A trillion dollars for us, or the entire world? Again, you didn't answer my question about how much.

 

[wildman]

Made the World's largest marine reserve:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-01-05-mariana-trench_N.htm

 

[CRGreathouse]

George W not signing the Kyoto protocol was a good move, with the UN estimating the outcome as a 0.1 degree decrease in global mean tempeature by 2050 at a total cost of $1Trillion to the global economy. That is just not a reasonable bang for the buck by any measure, no matter how you feel about anthropic climate change.

I'm not sure how that's measured. That's a yearly cost of about $200 billion per degree. For comparison, the current world GDP is around $70 billion. For each 1% of GDP, this would represent about 0.0035 degrees.

Do you have a source for that number, by the way? Does anyone else? Also, for those more knowledgeable than I: to what extent does this represent a reduction in nonrenewable resource use vs. cleaner ways to use them? I see the economic hit of running low on nonrenewables as inevitable, so in a sense I don't want to double-count.

 

[Phrak]

I don't think Bush managed a scandle a week as Clinton and Shrew were scoring in their last year of office, reminding us of the fundamental nature of the Democrat party. I guess that's something.

 

[LowlyPion]

I don't think Bush managed a scandle a week as Clinton and Shrew were scoring in their last year of office, reminding us of the fundamental nature of the Democrat party. I guess that's something.

Looks like things have flip-flopped then. The Democrats have a wholesome American family in the White House and ...

Ensign resigns from GOP leadership after affair
By David Espo

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former campaign aide to Sen. John Ensign confirmed her involvement Wednesday in an extramarital affair with the conservative Republican, lamented his decision to "air this very personal matter" and said she eventually would tell her side of the story.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gAKHK5xBT5NdBleTXH5_-Htc2p4QD98SS6JG0

And here Ensign was part of the morally outraged mob going after Clinton. How the worm turns.

 

[BobG]

Control a city or two (in which US surrogates are still not truly safe) and cede control of the rest of the country to local warlords, Taliban, and other groups that support opium production, oppress women, burn schools dedicated to the education of girls, and generally enforce their own religious dictates? (The recent attack on musicians playing at a wedding, shaving and humiliating the musicians, etc, shows how open-minded these despotic groups are.) Does that equate to military/administrative "control" of a country in anybody's world (outside of la-la land)? Neighboring Pakistan cannot adequately exert control over areas of their country just 10s of miles from the country's capitol. How was the war in Afghanistan any more successful?

Actually, if the US stuck to the policy you outlined, I would consider the Afghanistan operation a nearly complete success (it did disrupt al-Qaeda, but it didn't cause total collapse).

However bad the Taliban might be, their main crime was standing between us and al-Qaeda. The alternative to the Taliban is some other group headed by local warloads that would probably be better than the Taliban, but would probably still be considered pretty bad by international standards.

Who runs Afghanistan and their living conditions shouldn't be a big enough concern to justify US involvement. Our main concern in both Afghanistan and Pakistan should be to cause the collapse of al-Qaeda (although Pakistan having nuclear weapons make us more concerned about their stability than Afghanistan's stability).

And the number of dictatorial regimes by two.

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

Eliminating Hussein should be put into perspective. How long would he have lasted and what were the chances he'd pass rule on to his sons? How long will war in Iraq last?

Chances are, war in Iraq will last a lot longer than Hussein's rule would have lasted. On the other hand, war in Iraq would probably have broken out a few years after Hussein's death. The long term affect on Iraq of the US invading Iraq is pretty small.

The net affect on the US is hard to judge. The way things played out have definitely been bad for the US. The way things could have played out for the US sometime in some future where the crisis was pushed off to Hussein's death is unknown.

 

[mheslep]

Health Savings Accounts! Roughly 5-6 million people have them now, but I suspect they're impact on restraining health costs extends much further, restraining health costs that otherwise might have been much greater. They were first instituted as http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/public-affairs/hsa/pdf/all-about-HSAs_072208.pdf" Bush pushed them as part of large health care policy and addressed them in his state of the union; the 2006 Heath Care Act extended them further.

 

[Civilized]

Do you have a source for that number, by the way? Does anyone else?

It comes from http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=85, although the site is obviously biased towards the skeptical position on climate science, of course this doesn't mean they are just making things up (notice I also round up there numbers, they also cite studies for which the cooling is as little as 0.01 degrees).

 

[Al68]

For comparison, the current world GDP is around $70 billion.

I really didn't want to post in this thread, but I know of a certain Democratic Party supporter that is personally worth more than $70 billion. Typo?

 

[Al68]

OK, what did George W. Bush do right?

I won't get into details, but a clear sign to me that he must have done something right was whenever Democrats screamed bloody murder. And that was a lot, so he must have done a lot right.

 

[LowlyPion]

I won't get into details, but a clear sign to me that he must have done something right was whenever Democrats screamed bloody murder. And that was a lot, so he must have done a lot right.

This then is your defense of the Party of No fundamental operating principles? Just say no to anything that Democrats would be for?

That's a rather pouty way to be isn't it?

 

[mheslep]

I really didn't want to post in this thread, but I know of a certain Democratic Party supporter that is personally worth more than $70 billion. Typo?

That's $70 trillion. ~14 trillion for the US alone.