"The destructive policies of President Bush" by H.D.S. Greenway | October 7, 2008
IT IS HARD to believe how far this republic has fallen since President George W. Bush took office. Eight years ago, the United States had a budget surplus, peace and prosperity reigned, and America was universally respected. True, Bill Clinton had besmirched the office of the presidency by his self-indulgence. In his memoir, he would put down his dalliance with a White House intern to the worst of all possible motives. He did it because he could. But that pales in comparison to what Bush has done to the country.
I believe that the decision to invade Afghanistan was the right one. But instead of finishing what he started, Bush botched the job and hared off into Iraq, which was not a threat, never committing the necessary resources and attention to Afghanistan. Iraq is, and always was, a diversion to the struggle against Islamic extremism. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia didn't exist before Bush invaded. And Iran has been immensely empowered.
Remember Donald Rumsfeld talking about hitting Iraq after 9/11, not because there was any connection between Iraq and 9/11 but because there were more things to bomb in Iraq than in Afghanistan? And no discussion, no dissent, no word of caution would be allowed to influence Bush's decision.
When all the various reasons for a preemptive war against Iraq are examined - the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, spreading democracy, helping Israel, etc., etc. - it all boiled down to the worst of all possible reasons: Bush invaded Iraq because he could.
Bush promised a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict before he left office, but his efforts have been half-hearted, sporadic, and pathetic - almost designed to fail.
The hubris and arrogance of Bush's first term still poisons the wells of good will this country once enjoyed. The undermining of the Constitution, the secret torture chambers have besmirched this administration more than any tawdry intern scandal ever could. Today we are bogged down in two wars and an unprecedented deficit, with a financial crisis of a magnitude not seen since the days of Herbert Hoover. The president has so little respect it's as if he has already left the stage.
The economy founders, and it may yet bring the world down with it. The same ideologically driven, hopelessly incompetent administration that brought you Iraq and "mission accomplished" was responsible for the sweetheart deal that the Security and Exchange Commission allowed the investment brokers to increase their debt in proportion to their capital, and then failed to police them.
That deal, according to The New York Times, "fitted squarely" into the broader Bush culture of deregulation that savaged everything from the "Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, to worker safety and transportation agencies."
There was a time when deregulation made sense, but, as in so much else in the life of this administration, Bush took it to extremes.
"I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals," Bush told Bob Woodward back in 2001. But now, in his fourth book on the Bush presidency, "The War Within," Woodward concludes that in the last eight years Bush has "displayed impatience, bravado, and unsettling personal certainty about his decisions. The result has too often been impulsiveness and carelessness, and, perhaps most troubling, a delayed reaction to realities and advice that run counter to his gut. . . . By his own ambitious goals of 2001, Bush has fallen short."
Whereas he once said he would unite the country, he has been deliberately and destructively divisive. Strangely detached, he has let his vice president run rings around him, and outsourced decisions that should have been his. As Woodward says, in the final days of his hapless presidency Bush "had not rooted out terror wherever it existed. He had not achieved world peace. He had not attained victory in his two wars."
And now this: a great financial meltdown coming down on his watch in the twilight hours of what history will judge as among the worst administrations in our history. When you think of Bush and his team, it's hard to believe so much harm could be done to so many by so few.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe. --more--"