Amateur Megalomania

I’ve been losing my respect for Bush pretty quickly over the last six months or so. I’ve been mentally drafting post after post, slamming him for a litany of things, but frankly, I just haven’t had the energy to write them out. My blogging absence is primarily a result of utter disgust with him and his Presidency over the past couple of years.

The War. I supported it. I still do, but I’ve completely lost faith in the manner in which it is being conducted. Color me naive, but I really thought the Iraqis could be a model for reformation in a poisonous region of the world. I thought that people were people, and given an opportunity, civilization would be embraced. Hell, if I didn’t believe that, I’m left with the rather scary belief that some cultures are un-reformable, and therefore incompatible with civilization. I’m afraid that view leaves you with few options when faced with war. We fought WW II with the belief that Germany and Japan would someday be restored, and both nations turned out nicely. Back then, belief in the constancy of barbarism would have left us with a blockade of Japan and nuclear carpet bombing from one end to the other.

So those that opposed the war from day one can laugh at me for being naive in my faith in humanity, and for actually underestimating the poison that is Islam.

But back to Bush. For the past few years, we’ve been fighting like our primary goal is to see no one gets hurt. We never took down al-Sadr despite his agitation and his gang of thugs. We’ve taken no serious efforts to block out Iran’s influence despite plenty of evidence of meddling. Soldier blogs are full of stories of limitations on what they can do, despite knowing where the bad guys are.

What the hell? We haven’t exactly demonstrated a strong alternative to barbarism, have we?

There’s been no leadership on this war. Bush has done next to nothing to sell the ideas behind this conflict. The powerful erosion of will, through the agency of the media and the opposition, has not been countered in the slightest. Bush can’t be dumb enough to be surprised when support softens, can he? A leader leads. He gets people to follow. This President has simply charted a course and moved in a direction, not pausing a moment to get people behind him. Leaders look over their shoulder from time to time and check into the resolve of the people, pausing to fix it and keep everyone lined up.

Bush is over the horizon and hasn’t bothered to take a peek back.

And the most infuriating aspect of this, to me, is the thundering importance of this conflict and the coming wars with nuclear Islam. Bush’s failure to rally the people and SELL the horrors ahead has poisoned the well. President Hillary, or President Giuliani, or whomever, are going to find it nearly impossible to talk about Islam without bad memories from the past three years.

To me, this is the most damning result of Bush’s Presidency. Under-performing the war is one thing, poisoning our resolve is simply unforgivable.

Then there is illegal immigration. Gag. Jorge Bush, President of Northern Mexico. And no, this is not a racial thing with me. If the Canucks were flooding down from the North, I’d still have a problem with this. The collective indifference of both parties on this issue is criminal, but the buck stops at the top. You can’t swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and then do nothing when you have a virtual invasion of a nation’s sovereignty.

Gah!

Now we have this.

President Bush will send Congress a $2.9 trillion spending request Monday that seeks billions of dollars more to fight the Iraq war and tries to restrain the spiraling cost of the government’s big health care programs.

Does it really cost $330 million an HOUR to run the Federal government? Sure, $100 billion for Iraq is a big number, but it is still only 3% of the total budget. And what kind of major efforts does he embrace on health care?

Bush’s budget would achieve nearly $100 billion in savings over five years by trimming increases in Medicare, the health insurance program for 43 million retirees and disabled, and Medicaid which provides health care to the poor.

$20 billion a year. 1% of the budget. This is what fiscal conservatism has come to?

I haven’t really counted myself a party Republican in quite a few years. Crap like this pretty much assures I’ll be leaning Libertarian for a long time to come.

Hell, maybe President Hillary won’t be that bad. At least we can’t say we don’t know where she’s coming from.

Gah!

Filed under: Politics