the Bush actions are much more liberal than Clinton's
Well, in some respects, not in others.
Fiscal issue DO MATTER. NATO matters, Iraq matters, the UN matters. Institutions matter. Lives really matter. Does Bush care?
No, they don't -- not unless you fix SS. SS will break the country unless it is privatized. There is no other way of fixing it. You can patch it, you can delay it, but you can't fix it, unless you get some of the funds earning higher returns. The most basic actuarial science problem.
NATO doesn't matter, not to me. It's usefulness is pretty much gone in my view; now it looks more like the local country club. And the UN has hung on much too long. In particular, I'm sick of US presidents ceding our sovereign decisions to the UN. Bush's actions in this regard have been important, because we had really begun a slide down a slippery slope to having foreign nations with veto power over our national security -- a process which began during Bush 41.
One other important point about Bush: It is easy for the facts to become obfuscated in the high-flying political rhetoric we're seeing just now.
LET'S KEEP IN MIND that eliminating Saddam is CENTRAL to eliminating the threat of MidEastern terrorism against us on our soil. Eliminating Saddam and putting a democracy right in the middle of the region puts massive pressure on Iran and Saudi Arabia -- the benefits of which we are beginning to see. Furthermore, Bush's handling of Arafat has been absolutely perfect. Marginalized him, now he is replacing him, and before Bush leaves office we'll see peace for the Palestinians. Result: Decreased anti-Americanism.
The anti-Americanism took years to build and will take years to abate. But George Bush had the guts to order this rearrangement of the region which is going to ultimately result in a diminished threat to us. Not to mention Afghanistan, which by any reasonable measure is amazingly better off today.
It is important not to have too narrow a focus and be thinking "Iraq". It is, and never was, about Iraq. The administration knew in advance of 9/11 that Iraq was a problem and as long as you had this destablizing dictator in the middle of the region you could never have security for those people -- and without that, their jealousy & hatred of America would proliferate.
Again, you have to be careful not to take too narrow a view. This is what the Dems are doing (which is going to destroy them) and this is what the media has done. The scope of the issue is much, much larger than Iraq. It is an aggressive attack on a problem that has been brewing for years. And frankly, we are closer to having it whipped than anyone wants to give Bush credit for.
While some can make the case that Bush pushed to the limits the rationale for the war, they have never wavered, for one instant, that it was about our security. And that is precisely what this plan has been from the outset. There is just very little doubt that it is working. |
