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Proximity to November 4, 2008
election draws attention to failures of George Bush not deniable by McCain-Palin.·
By Jim
Wrenn, Editor, WrennCom.Com.
October 31, 2008--
Proximity to the 2008 presidential election
on November 4, 2008, draws attention to numerous failures of President George W. Bush that neither
John McCain nor Sarah Palin can deny. The list is long, and it begins with his first two
failures, which occurred in the immediate wake of 9-11.
First, knowing that he was on the
verge of demanding great sacrifice on the part of our military in operations against al Qaeda in
Afghanistan, he failed to call upon ordinary Americans to make belt-tightening economic
sacrifices; instead, he urged them to openly and flagrantly show defiance towards the terrorists by
continuing to exercise their economic and personal liberties and to help rebuild a shattered economy
by going to the malls, shopping, spending, saving, traveling, flying, and building (and rebuilding)
businesses, etc. Bush thereby failed to allow the country to sink into defeatism. (At
this point in this commentary, die-hard Obama supporters will read no further, but genuinely
independent thinkers still considering voting for Obama but not suffering attention-span
deficiencies are likely to continue reading to the end-- it's not short.)
Second, Bush failed to ignore
the risks that public recognition of Islamic fanaticism as the motivation for the 9-11 attack might
spark mistreatment of non-fanatical Muslims; instead, he set an example of tolerance and ecumenicism
by including an Islamic cleric to join with Christian and Jewish theologians in offering religious
sympathy, solace and inspiration in the memorial service he conducted in the National Cathedral
several days after 9-11, during which he lauded efforts by Americans to display tolerance and
understanding towards Muslims.
Third, in the weeks after 9-11, he failed
to heed warnings of experts confidently predicting that attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan would
yield defeat for the United States in a country which had forced a huge and ruthless Soviet military
machine to withdraw in defeat. Instead, he ordered our military to prepare a plan for ending
al Qaeda's use of Afghanistan as a base of operations against the United States and its allies.
Fourth, but in so doing, he also failed
to heed advice from many military experts that such mission could not be accomplished without
assembling a massive ground force in a manner similar to what the first President Bush had done in
the four-months-long staging operation for Operation Desert Storm in 1991 reversing Saddam Hussein's
August 2, 1990, invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Instead, he maximized the chances for
cooperation from, and minimized the chances of opposition by, Afghan "warlords," their
military forces and the Afghan population by heeding advice of other experts for using small
contingents of special forces in conjunction with massive air and naval power to help Afghans defeat
the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda bases and operations in Afghanistan. (Critics speciously
argue in retrospect that our reliance on Afghans rather than a larger American military presence on
the ground appears to have enabled Usama bin Laden and many of his top leaders to escape into
Pakistan; however, if we were to have taken the additional time to deploy a large enough force
of American "boots on the ground" for the purpose of capturing bin Laden, it seems highly
that bin Laden would have moved into Pakistan much sooner rather than simply sitting in Tora Bora to
await being surrounded and captured or killed by a massive American military force.)
Fifth, regarding Iraq, Bush failed
to heed assurances by many experts that continuing reliance on U.N. sanctions against Iraq could and
would prevent Saddam Hussein from continuing or resuming (and improving) his pre-Persian-Gulf-War
weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs. Instead, recognizing that such regime of sanctions
had become rife with corruption, that they would likely continue losing international support
(amidst Saddam's propaganda claims that the sanctions, rather than his corrupt diversion to his own
use of proceeds from the "oil for food program" intended to benefit the Iraqi people, was
"causing" the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children every year), that international
support for continuation of the U.S. enforcement of "no-fly" zones in northern and
southern Iraq would soon evaporate, and that such containment strategy had not significantly reduced
Saddam's extensive support for terrorism against Israel, Bush also recognized that following the
inevitable evisceration of such "containment" strategy, Saddam would soon expand his
extensive support of terrorism and reestablish his ability to dominate the Middle East by using, or
threatening to use, WMDs, as well as following the maxim, "The enemy of my enemy is my
friend," to covertly furnish conventional and/or WMD assistance to his otherwise natural
enemies such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. in their terrorist warfare against the West
in general and the United States and Israel in particular. Therefore, he made a strategic
decision for removal of Saddam Hussein from power by military force absent failure of international
coercion to accomplish same.
Sixth, after assembling
a massive military force (nearly 300,000) on Saddam's border as the only means for persuading Saddam
to permit U.N. inspectors to return to Iraq, and after concluding that Saddam's behavior was
sufficiently impeding such inspections that the U.S. would be unable to confidently deem such
inspectors' failures to find evidence of WMD capabilities to be evidence that Saddam lacked such
capabilities (or the means to reacquire or reconstitute, them), Bush failed to take a leap of
faith that "absence of [such] evidence [being found] was evidence of [their] absence."
Instead, Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to topple Saddam and thereby prevent him from (a)
threatening to use, or using, WMD's or (b) covertly furnishing them to "the enem[ies] of [his]
enemy" for use against the U.S. or its allies.
Seventh, Thus, Bush
thereby failed to permit Saddam's reconstitution of his WMD capabilities and the continuation
of his reign of terror. (Regarding Saddam's propensity to support covert operations against
America as well as Israel, don't forget that during the Clinton Administration, Saddam Hussein
facilitated an assassination attempt on former President Bush. Also, don't forget that before
being toppled by Bush, Saddam was paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers killing Israeli
civilians.) Furthermore, one cannot seriously doubt that Bush's toppling of Saddam
was a significant factor influencing Libya's Khadafi to fully disclose and terminate his
nuclear-weapons program, which had progressed much further (courtesy of assistance from Pakistan's
A. Q. Khan) than our intelligence sources had previously believed (and about which our intelligence
services learned vital information through contacts in Pakistan developed in part as a result of
Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan).
Eighth, by toppling
(and capturing) Saddam Hussein and thus teaching an important lesson to Khadafi, Bush also thereby failed
to permit continuation and potential completion of Khadafi's nuclear-weapons program (without
military action against and/or in Libya being necessary to destroy such program).
Consequently, as a direct result of Bush's failure to allow Saddam to remain in power and for
Khadafi's nuclear program to go un-checked, he thereby failed to allow what otherwise would
have been the emergence by 2008 (if not sooner) of two terror-sponsoring states possessing (or on
the verge of possessing) nuclear weapons in addition to biological and chemical weapons. See
"Rewind, Rewrite & Replay" in GoogleVideo
format here or in YouTube
format here or in Windows Movie Video (wmv) format with accompanying text and links
at http://PoliSat.Com/RewindRewriteReplay.htm.
See also "Exposing Bush on Iraq" in GoogleVideo
format here or in YouTube
format here, but more important, see the "Dear
Mr. Obama" YouTube video here, here,
here,
here or here.
Ninth, Bush failed
to effectively respond to vicious attacks on his motives and patriotism by demagogues on the Left,
such as Ted Kennedy's hateful, demagogic allegations (in
2003/04-- link to Senate speech by Kennedy no longer working due to link-decay) that Bush
had "concocted" a scheme to invade Iraq in order for his political allies to make
"profits" on war and Al
Gore's Elmer-Gantry/Cotton-Mather-like speech accusing Bush of having "betrayed" our
country. These are but two examples of an unrelenting pattern of hate-speech
against Bush by leftist
allies of Kennedy and Gore.
I digress. In July,
2004, when Barack Obama, who has made his claim of having opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom "all
along" and "consistently from the beginning" the cornerstone of his claims of
superior "judgment" (which claim he lately makes in an effort to divert attention from his
demonstrably bad judgment in opposing the "surge"), was seeking election to the Senate, he
said this about Iraq: “There’s not that much difference between my position and George
Bush’s position [on Iraq] at this stage.” (Hat Tip to Peter
Wehner.) So much for "all along" and "consistently from the
beginning."
Tenth, in the 2004
campaign, Bush failed to aggressively re-emphasize his 2003 warning (through his
then-Treasury-Secretary John Snow): (a) that failure to reform the corrupt and irresponsible
"sub-prime" mortgage-lending/accounting practices being foisted on the mortgage/banking
industry by FannieMae and FreddieMac would lead to a catastrophe in our banking/financial system
(such as that which occurred in 2008-- go
here to view video clips on the subject) and (b) that FannieMae's/FreddieMac's political
patrons such as Democratic Representatives Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi with the aid
of Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd, Harry Reid, Charles Shumer and others utilizing the
Senate's cloture rules has blocked efforts for such reform. However, in fairness to Bush, few
voters would have applied the attention-span needed to understand such complex mortgage-banking
issues, and, in 2004 he had of necessity subordinated virtually all issues to the effort to persuade
the country to stay on course in Iraq, which al Qaeda had chosen to make a "central front"
in its war against classical western liberalism. To be blunt, if Bush were to have
aggressively focused on the need to reform the FannieMae/FreddieMac fiefdom of the Democrats, their
demagoguery not only would have (a) completely obscured the nature of a problem too complex
for casual analysis by voters and (b) successfully characterized it as "alarmist" but also
would have succeeded in duping much of the public into believing Bush's position to be founded on
"bigotry" (i.e., opposition to lowering lending standards for
"minorities") rather than sound analysis of mortgage/banking principles. Thus,
although Bush's failure to aggressively promote such reform was a genuine failure, but given the
fact that the need to cope with a political "insurgency" at home against staying on course
in Iraq made it virtually politically impossible for him to have so, it's a forgivable
failure.
Eleventh, after
reelection in 2004, Bush failed to understand the need to continue "campaigning" to
maintain public support for victory in Iraq and to counter the increasingly and relentlessly vicious
attacks on him by the Left. He was too content with his belief that having made the right
decision (in toppling Saddam) and having then been reelected (with the largest number of popular
votes of any president in history), he no longer needed to "persuade" the American people
that toppling Saddam had not been a "mistake." He failed to understand how short is
the attention-span of the American electorate. He thus failed to aggressively and sufficiently
counter propagandistic (and specious) arguments by the Left that we would have been "better
off" leaving Saddam in power and that, therefore, toppling Saddam had been a
"mistake." (Regarding the "better off" and "mistake" propaganda,
see also video-links in the paragraph above on his "Eighth" failure.)
Twelfth, in 2005 and
2006, Bush failed to recognize that the strategy in Iraq was failing more than succeeding in
seeking to replace an anti-western, terror-supporting, genocidal dictatorship with
non-terrorist-supporting ally against terrorism in the Middle East. His secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, who had initiated and presided over brilliantly successful initiations of military
actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, likewise failed to adequately perceive such problem. When Rumsfeld
resigned, he told Bush that perhaps the strategy in Iraq needed the "fresh
view" of "new eyes."
Thirteenth, in the wake
of Rumsfeld's resignation, Bush failed to embrace the prevent-defense
recommendations of "The Iraq Study Group," and likewise failed to heed Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid's assertion that we had already "lost" in Iraq and Speaker
Nancy Pelosi's demands for an early-timeline withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, he
accepted recommendations of General David Petraeus that a "surge" of military, economic
and diplomatic forces in Iraq to implement a counter-insurgency strategy could lead to victory
rather than defeat.
Fortunately, in Bush's determination to achieve victory rather than
concede defeat in Iraq, he failed to heed Barack Obama's "judgment" that the surge
could not lead to victory (as well as Obama's
"judgment" favoring sharp reductions in our defense budget), and he failed
to be a "lame duck,"
thanks in part to enough Americans
communicating to Congress their support for the surge rather than the Reid/Pelosi
plan to withdraw in defeat.
Fourteenth (and most important),
from 9-11-01 until now, he failed to relax or dilute offensive and defensive strategies
against terrorist plots and thereby failed make it possible for a number of serious,
potentially catastrophic attacks to succeed. Stated conversely, by staying aggressively on the
offensive against al Qaeda on all fronts, he kept them on their heels and forced them to expend most
of their energies and resources on battlefields on which they are weakest and we are strongest.
Our military in Iraq took the brunt of the full fury of many thousands of al Qaeda's fanatics in
both Iraq and Afghanistan. There can be no serious doubt that our military fighting (and
killing) so many thousands of fanatics "over there" has virtually eliminated the risk of
our being threatened by those many thousands "over here."
Oh, by the way, there's one
more "failure" that is more significant than all the others: It has been the
failure of our military to let the unrelenting criticism of Operation Iraqi Freedom to demoralize
them or to in any way diminish the courage and skill with which they have risked their lives for the
sake of their country, their fellow citizens and our posterity. They have exemplified the very
best of the noble ideals John F. Kennedy articulated in his inaugural address (I paraphrase):
America will bear any burden, pay any price, oppose any foe and support any friend to assure the
ultimate triumph of liberty over totalitarianism. For that, we must say to our troops,
"Thanks In Our Name For Deeds In Our Name," in YouTube format for highest-speed
connections here, for high-speed
connections here, for medium
speed connections here or in Windows Movie Video (wmv) format via links at http://PoliSat.Com/Thanks.htm."
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