Posted on 07/15/2007 4:43:30 AM PDT by Jen's Mom
I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ping
Great editorial by William Kristol. Thanks for the ping
I hate to admit that I have to be reminded by people like Kristol to keep the faith, amid the negativity of the MSM. He does have good points. I should print this out and keep it posted so I can look at it everytime I start having doubts.
Kristol is right, as he mostly is. Except his comment on “immigration reform”, which IMO has to be stopped now and in future, he is spot on.
A lot of FReepers abused and cursed Kristol when he was critisizing the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy in Iraq and supported a troop surge. He has now been vindicated. We have enlargened our presence and we have more success.
Kristol was also right (and pretty close regarding the sear numbers) when he predicted the outcome of the 2006 elections... and I sure hope he is right when, as he predicted, an Democrat victory in 2006 will ensure a Republican victory in 2008.
We have been imbued with negatives through the media. A good dose of facts is always refreshing.
Read later
Agree. On balance, GWB will be judged a winner.
Kristol misses a very important issue: BORDER SECURITY.
Bush has been an utter failure on border security.
Over the dead bodies of many of us here (not to mention the 25 Americans who lose their lives to invader thugs daily ; 12 by murder, 13 by accidents-primarily DUI).
As for the lack of terrorist attacks: If he means on the scale of 9/11, yes-but there've been quite a few of what we here call Sudden Jihad Syndrome, PLUS the open MX/TX border has let in a lot of OTMs since 9/11. We can hope large-scale attacks continue to be prevented or fended off....But I think we're on borrowed time.:-( Look at what has happened because of 9/11 : All over the country, we see stories of how schools, businesses, and municipalities are bending over (backwards OR forwards, however you want to look at it) to cater to moslems. Footbaths in KCI and a few universities; women allowed to retain hijabs for driver's licenses in Ohio; prayer times for moslem children only in SF; a "broker watchdog" merger is going to change its name because SIRA sounded like the islamic word for a mahomet bio ; the attempts at forcing sharia in MN on Target shoppers and airport users was fended off, but the ones who tried are not being subject to penalties...That's just a few things I remembered off the top of my head. WHO on 9/12/01 would have believed we'd see dhimmitude like this in the USA ? With all these rewards for 9/11, they WILL try again-count on it.
There is one, key thing that sets President Bush apart from nearly every other politician in our system out there, and I support him for it.
He does not govern by opinion polls. He may be right. He may be wrong. But he doesn’t put his finger in the air to figure out what to do.
I think the use of polling data (the way it is being used) is one of the biggest cancers on American politics today.
History will judge GWB. That’s beyond my competence. His failure to secure our borders is very worrisome to me.
LOL. You could do the same thing with Carter, LBJ, or anyone else. Forget the bad things and look at the good things. Anyone would look like a statesman.
I can't believe anyone would say that in making an assessment, even Pollyanna.
Binnie seems to be among the disappeared, not that AQ has gone away.
There is the amnesty fiasco that makes President George W. Bush look like an idiot. No border protection! Incredibly and dangerous! Amnesty for millions of criminals! Offensive! The White House mocking conservatives and Christians! What liberal elitist attitude!
Binnie seems to be back by new tape.Check Drudge Report.
Well, there's a solid, ringing endorsement. Even Kristol is hedging his bet.
“Agree. On balance, GWB will be judged a winner.”
At present this is ALREADY true, however George Bush is governing in interesting times.
The open border and his failure to take AMERICA to war (he only sent the military) against Islamic extremeism are things that by their very nature (long term)can throw his legacy into the ash heap.
I don’t think the president has been looking ahead in these matters, rather, he has been reacting to them in the moment and as though one moment merely leads to another and little changes between them
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
That tape has proved to be an old tape.
I agree with Kristol on nealry every point, except the one on immigration. He thinks that some form of the legislation will eventually pass. He, like all the other elites in Washington, have missed the biggest popular uprising in America in our time: the public’s outrage over illegal immigration. Nothing less than full enforcement and driving out illegals from the country will be accepted by the public. Whoever appeals to this enormous bi-partisan grassroots movement will be President and will win in Congbress.
Binnie not referring to any contemporary events and gov’t claims to have seen the clip on Arab TV 5 yr ago. Apparently a lame attempt to show he is still kicking. He was previously quite the nappy headed media ho’ and well aware of the power of proving that he is aware of recent events.
I voted for President RINO three times, in the primaries of 2000, and the general elections of 2000 and 2004.
Kristol has slurped down the purple BushBot FlavorAid, and he has no idea how history is going to judge the GWB Presidency because history is still being written.
But we know some things already:
Our President apparently took leave of his senses on several occasions, signing the abominable ‘Campaign Finance Reform’ foisted upon us by Insane McCain, he made common cause with Fat Teddy Kennedy not once, but TWICE, first with the massive federal money and power grab known as ‘No Child Left Behind’, and most recently with the attempt to grant amnesty to millions upon millions of illegals in our Nation.
Add to that the failure to secure our southern border, in a time of war, creating unlimited opportunities for terrorists to infiltrate America from Mexico, and on the other side of the globe, George W. Bush has shown himself to be no better than Clinton was by essentially surrendering to Kim Jong Il in North Korea with this most recent and absurd ‘agreement’ which will be violated by Pyonyang before the ink is dry on the paper. The only difference now is that Condi Rice has not danced a jig for Comrade Chia Pet as did Maddy Albright.
Now as for the assertion that there has been ‘no second terrorist attack’ on U.S. soil, that is an exercise in semantics because we have seen more than a few instances in which Islamic terrorist acts have been carried out, one of the most prominent being the sniper shooting operation of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in the metropolitan Washington area in 2002. Don’t forget that Islamic terrorist who shot up the El Al ticket counter at LAX (also in 2002), and are we forgetting the still unsolved anthrax attacks?
Oh there have been terrorist attacks since 9/11, perhaps not on the scale of the hijacked airliners that took out the WTC and damaged the Pentagon, but there have been attacks, and when you have the Commander-in-Chief taking his shoes off in an Islamic ‘cultural’ center in deference to ‘allah’, that is no different than if FDR had decided that the National Cherry Blossom Festival should not only have gone forward as scheduled in 1942, but had personally opened the festival by raising a Japanese flag.
We’re either at War, or we’re not. The example being set by President Bush is one of ambivalence and uncertainty.
You need to read Mark Stein’s “America Alone”. It is scary - how he points out what is going on around the world that W has to consider with what he does about muzzies.
kristol is a big support of amnesty!!!!
The closer the dems get to pushing through an Iraq defeat, I sense some backlash from the American people realizing that is not a good solution.
W will do alright in the LR based on WOT and economy to date. WOT needs to be reframed as WOIF though. If the SPP issue coming up this Fall goes poorly for the US, then history will be less kind.
When our economy actually does go bad and we are attacked again, the MSM will have only GWB to blame when he is retired from office the short memories toted by most of our public today will then finally remember.
I agree, he will be remembered as a winner.
Why blame Kristal for a policy he opposed, which was the light foorprint in Iraq? Or for the failed “two-state” solution in the Holy Land? Or, for that matter, an American foreign policy that since Jimmy Carter’s time has been dominated by “realists” and “pragmatists” who even now refuse to confront “islamofascism.” as a driving force in affairs and behind it the consequences of trillions of dollars in oil money fed to a Saudi regime.
The path of least resistance is the path of negativity!
Nice picture even though I despise two of them because they would take KKK Byrd;s cane and stab Bush in the back after he’s helped him.
Amen.
Thanks for posting this!
All over the country, we see stories of how schools, businesses, and municipalities are bending over (backwards OR forwards, however you want to look at it) to cater to moslems.
Footbaths in KCI and a few universities;
women allowed to retain hijabs for driver's licenses in Ohio;
prayer times for moslem children only in SF;
a "broker watchdog" merger is going to change its name because SIRA sounded like the islamic word for a mahomet bio;
the attempts at forcing sharia in MN on Target shoppers and airport users was fended off, but the ones who tried are not being subject to penalties...
That's just a few things I remembered off the top of my head.
WHO on 9/12/01 would have believed we'd see dhimmitude like this in the USA?
With all these rewards for 9/11, they WILL try again-count on it.
Thank you Verloona Ti.
The Surge is Working and terrorist Cowards are Dying
President Bush will be rewarded by history.
Pray for W and Our Troops
New tape is actually an old tape. Check your facts.
Kristol is right. Thank’s for the post.
There’s probably a lot more I could have added, but those are the ones that came most readily to mind. (All but the SIRA story were posted to FR, so that’s the only one for which I posted a link.) If anyone wants to add to the list, feel free, though it’s certainly depressing enough as is.
“but whenever I have a real tough time I harken back to the recent photo of him helping Senator Byrd”
Unfortunatelely, the senile old “bird” prolly thought that GWB was just a “house-nigga” whose job it was to wait on him hand and foot.
Petraeus himself has said that the Rumsfeld-Abizaid strategy (which is really just the strategy that Creighton Abrams used to turn Vietnam around) was working reasonably well until the Al Qaeda bombed the Golden Dome in Samarra.
I don’t want to play armchair general, but I think it’s safe to say that with an evolving enemy and an evolving battlefield, you need to change your strategy to pursue the goal of victory. The Samarra bombing was early 2006. There was no decisive strategy adjustment until January 2007.
The tape was dating in 2002 back from the dead maybe
A Chat with General David Petraeus
As far as what happened after the Samarra bombing, lets look at that. After Samarra, the Shiites finally started going into areas containing Al Qaeda sympathizers (i.e. Sunni neighborhoods) and cleaning those areas out. On the one hand, it was messy, ugly and violent. On the other hand, it effectively destroyed the Sunni illusion that they could regain power by terrorizing the Shiites back into submission. In fact, it is no accident that only after enduring months of Shiite attacks, did some Sunnis finally start seeing the writing on the wall that the good old days were gone and that the 65% of Iraq that is Shiite would never go back to being ruled over by the 15% of Iraq that is Sunni.
And that really is what this war is about -- destroying the Sunni illusion that as soon as we leave, they can run Iraq again just like they did when Saddam was in power. That belief is the lifeblood of the insurgency and if you destroy the belief, you destroy the insurgency.
However, we must also remember that over the long run this administration will likely be a successful one in spite of itself, not necessarily because it was always on the right track.
I would never have thought anything like this would have, or even could have, ever happened. It's shocking and outrageous. PC is destroying this country. And, they will try again, because pc has infected and infested everything....
Kristol was not opposed to that policy. He only became opposed to it after it failed miserably.
Remember -- it was these "neo-conservative" morons who generally thought the war in Iraq would be over before the 2004 elections.
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