Topic: My general observations about the Repub. Convention
You guys really have a lot of balls. George W. Bush has possibly the shittiest military record of any President in modern US history. Infact, I'd argue he has a negative military record. He not only dodged the draft like Clinton did, he used Daddy's influence and money to do it. Even after that, he barely showed up most of the time and he read flight manuals. Then he went AWOL. George W. Bush only defended Lubbock from the VC, to cite quote.
But to endorse and refuse to condemn attacks on a man that clearly has a better military record than Bush is just over the top. Kerry saved someone's life, even if he was only over there for 4 months. He volunteered, and he actually showed up.
Bush running on terrorism is almost absurdly laughable, at least from my perspective. He failed to prevent 9/11, whether you blame him for it or not he didn't stop it. I don't blame him, of course. I couldn't have prevented it, I doubt many people could have connected the dots. But he didn't even focus on terrorism. He didn't even hold a metting on counter-terrorism. He basically ignored an August 6th briefing he received entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside America". Rice said it was too vague to matter. But the point is he didn't even try, he did absolutely nothing. Except vacation before it happened, which is something I find almost completely unforgivable.
But the real sin came when George W. Bush had to rise to the challenge. He sat in a classroom for almost 10 solid minutes with a dumbfounded look on his face. No, I don't agree with the conclusions Michael Moore draws from this. Moore states that Bush was connected with the Saudis or that his "buddy" Saddam did it. I think Bush is just an impotent moron and an ignorant simpleton that can't do anything other than what his teleprompter tells him to do. His programming had no immediate response.
So, while thousands of people burned or jumped to their deaths on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush sat in a classroom dumbfounded and then continued to read to school children.
In Afghanistan, he screwed up. He didn't send enough troops to fully stabilize the country, get all the Taliban or even capture the man it was all started for: Osama bin Laden. He instead abused our trust and manipulated our fears to pass his own agenda of tax cuts, an almost obscenely named 'Patriot' Act and has since used 9/11 as a campaign tool in numerous ads, speeches and even now at the convention. There are not words to describe how incredibly wrong this really is.
Fast forward to 2002. October. George W. Bush has told the country for the last year that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in some subtle speeches or press releases. They were, at this time, the only case for war we were articulating. Then comes a speech in Cincinatti Ohio where for the first time he states plainly Iraq is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. In the state of the union, this claim is repeated followed with again an invoking of 9/11's image to scare people into supporting the war. It worked. After toying with inspections for less than 3 months,on March 19, 2003, George W. Bush rushes into a unilateral, pre-emptive war against the nation of Iraq.
May 5th, 2003. George W. Bush proclaims the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Mission Accomplished, the banner reads behind him. This was a made for tv moment like none other.
August 2004. Too bad the "terrorists" didn't get the memo in Iraq. An insurgency we were told by Rumsfeld would never exist is still fighting strong. Zero weapons of mass destruction found, 968 and counting dead American soldiers, over 200 billion dollars spent. Najaf ceases temporarily as a problem, but even the military isn't too optimistic and begins patrols in Sadr City. Resistance continues in Mosul, Baghdad and elsewhere.
Strike two for Dubya as the war we rushed into with no allies, no post war plan and not enough soldiers has become an undeniable quagmire. The public is divided on whether it was even worth it and largely we still have 120,000+ troops tied down there. Something Rumsfeld once again said would never happen.
Now Bush says we can't win the war on terrorism. He says he miscalculated in Iraq, which he also simultaneously claims as a "catastrophic success". We can't combat fear with more fear.
We can't afford to have a third strike, and we cannot afford another 4 years of this man. George W. Bush is not a solution, but he is the singular problem. Pre-emptive unilateralism has proven itself to be a failure of a policy. Moral absolutism as a worldview has isolated America in the world and left us tangled in the web of the Middle East, at the mercy of the very terrorists we are trying to destroy.
We didn't elect George W. Bush, and we certainly do not have to keep him. Kerry might not be a solution, but I am confident he is far more intelligent than Bush.
And I believe no problem can be solved by the same type of thinking that created it.
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