Yes.
When Bush took office I was convinced he would do little harm. He appointed strong people to key positions - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Miller, Whitman - and Ashcroft... but well...
I was hopeful that Bush would build on the economic success of the Clinton administration while maintaining the affairs of our nation in a responsible manner.
Did Bush do so? No.
His tax cuts contributed to dangerous budget deficits now and for years to come. Our nation's physical security is based in large measure on economic security, and cutting taxes while boosting spending is not the way to ensure the long term health of our economy. We haven't felt the full impact of these absurd economic policies, but we will.
It takes a strong leader to look at the numbers and say, we cut taxes when the government was running a surplus. We don't have a surplus now. We need to increase revenues to pay for what the government must do. Bush has not done that, instead adopting Cheney's logic of "Deficits don't matter.".
A stong leader would have demanded proof that Iraq possessed banned WMD before sending troops to invade that country. When I watched Powell's presentation before the UN regarding Iraq's WMD I was appalled. He presented drawings of mobile weapons labs... drawings that could have been drawn in any high school art class. He presented a recorded telephone conversation that sounded to be like a commander telling his subordinate "Yes, I know you said you don't have any banned stuff, but double check and make sure you didn't overlook anything." That was interpeted as an attempt at concealment. A thousand UN inspectors begged for evidence that America said it had regarding WMD. We didn't provide it because we didn't have it, yet Bush disregarded the lack of evidence of WMD because the CIA director said WMD were a "slam dunk". A strong leader focuses on the facts as they are, not on what he wishes them to be.
Before the Iraq war, the State Department prepared a 1,500 page blueprint for postwar Iraq. It covered every conceivable issue, from the status of the Iraqi army to water, to health care, to museums to electric power to undoing Saddam's economic rape of Iraq's southern marshes. Rumsfeld tossed it in the trash. Bush backed Rumsfeld and the neocons in the Pentagon who believed the Iraqis would welcome us with flowers, we will install Chalabi as head of state and be out in a year. A strong leader would have insisted on preparing for the worst case, not winging it and assuming the best.
Bush fired Larry Lindsay, who suggested well before the invasion that an Iraqi campaign would cost $200 billion. A strong leader doesn't dismiss alternative points of view, but considers them to validate or invalidate his own thinking.
At one point Bush said he wanted Osama "dead or alive". Years later he said "I don't think about bin Laden.". A strong leader intent on fulfilling his oath to "protect and defend" this nation would make the mastermind of the most deadly attack on America his priority, putting a half million troops in the field to look under every rock in Afghanistan and Pakistan to find that criminal. Bush had the support of virtually the entire world in this endeavor... even Iran, a member of the so called "axis of evil" and no friend of America offered use of it's airspace in the event American pilots ran into trouble while flying long missions to Afghanistan. A strong leader would have marshaled the world against Osama and used every resource at his command to bring Osama to justice. Instead, Bush went to Afghanistan on the cheap and Osama is still free while our cities are under "elevated" terror theat levels. This was not strong, resolute leadership, it was incompetence.
If America had focused on Afghanistan and had captured Osama, demonstrating what America's global reach was capable of doing, is it possible that would have made Iraq a non issue? Perhaps Saddam would have taken a more open, conciliatory approach... ending his potshots against aircraft in the "no fly" zones, publicly renouncing WMD programs, cracking down on corruption and perhaps avoiding a war entirely? A strong leader would have done everything in his power to ensure success against Osama and the Taiban and leveraged that success to AVOID further war.
A weak leader with visions of greatness uses war as a means to an end rather than as a last resort.
Bush went into Iraq thinking it would be a cakewalk, that he would remake the map of the middle east and bring democracy and freedom to people who crave it, and ensure America a steady supply of oil. All noble objectives, to be sure, but a strong leader recognizes limitations to power.
John Kerry is by no means perfect, but who is? Where Bush offers only ideology, Kerry offers thought, intelligence, the willingness to examine different viewpoints, the realization that the world is a complex place and simple solutions are not always the best. Those are the qualities a leader needs in difficult times.
cirrus, are you convinced that John Kerry would make the type of strong leader the USA needs at this crucial time? |
