Why I'm Thankful for George W. Bush

American Thinker ^ | 7-9-09 | Ken Russell - Commentary

[smoothsailing]

July 09, 2009

Why I'm Thankful for George W. Bush

By Ken Russell

On October 23, 1983 the Marine Corps Battalion Landing Team (BLT) building located at the Beirut International Airport was blown up.  Two hundred twenty Marines, 18 Sailors and 3 Soldiers were killed in a split second by a suicide bomber.  I wasn't there at the time.  I was participating in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada.  I was a squadron CH-46E helicopter co-pilot in Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 261 (HMM-261) and also the squadron classified materials officer.  Being the one who set up the squadron classified messages, I read about it before most others.  It was an unbelievable gut punch and breathtaking in a bad way.

I did arrive in Lebanon with the rest of HMM-261 about two weeks later to relieve the aviation combat element for the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit, HMM-162.  My first day landing in LZ S-Bird, located directly besides the now destroyed BLT building was quite sobering.  Twisted metal spikes of rebar jutted out of the concrete wreckage in no particular recognizable fashion.  Bits of boot leather, t-shirts and camouflage utility shreds dangled from the several feet long ragged rebar.  Indications of human occupation in the flattened mass demanded no comments about what happened and how.  Silence and reverence was the only response we could muster every time we saw it, every day we landed there for the next few months.

We did all ask each other and comment with each other about this new and wildly evil enemy that knew no boundaries, no uniforms, no flags, no geographical limits and no respect whatsoever for human life.  They were the new head of the food chain; the great white shark killing machine with no intentions of killing for survival.  Theirs was to kill for ideology and for effect, terrifying effect.

How do you fight this enemy?  How do you fight such a stealth and taunting ideology who uses all of your assets and all of your weaknesses against all of your decency and love for freedom?  When was there an enemy in history like this, whose object of passionate faith was in a sick, self destructive ideology?  What the hell is this thing and how do we meet and engage this enemy on the battlefields or locations on which we are trained?

It was all new to all of us and we knew it.  We talked about it and then quickly changed the subject.  Marines aren't used to being in a place where we couldn't seek and destroy the enemy.  It was strange ground.  This new threat was going to require new school books, new manuals, unknown training and above all leaders who could figure it all out.  We kept busy occupying ourselves with the task at hand, international peace keeping -- whatever the hell that meant -- but the eerie new enemy never left our deeper thoughts.

Fast forward years later and that enemy became active again like a gurgling volcano.  The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Kobar Towers, African embassies, USS Cole all went unanswered like the '83 BLT bombing.  I was off active duty, had inter-service transferred into the Navy Reserves and working a civilian job in the aerospace industry when the first WTC bombing took place.  Obviously no one figured out how or still didn't have the moral courage to close with and engage the enemy even after the USS Cole was bombed several years later.  Terrorism, the exact same kind from the exact group of ideologies in 1983, was slowly defeating us and we acted like a nation locked out of a motel room, standing in the rain, naked.

Then, the worst terror attack in world history took place on our shores.  We all know it.  We all felt that same gut punch, but this time we had a leader who had his clothes on, the room key, an umbrella and a reassuring smile on his face.  Why so many hated him for that can only be explained by unbridled pettiness but there was no time to focus on destroying his life.  This enemy had now engaged us in our house and we had to close with him, borders or no borders, uniforms or no uniforms, battlefields or no battlefields.  George W Bush was that leader -- but how was he going to defeat these guys?

General Tommy Franks told us precisely how on Day One of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Few caught it.  It was so very simple and so very brilliant and almost everyone thought it only applied to one objective; overthrowing Saddam Hussein.  Remember what he said? 

"We will close with and engage the enemy at a time and place of our choosing." 

It was genius and anyone in the United States who thought it only meant Saddam Hussein were rope-a-doped along with the new enemy.  The American rope-a-dopers whose occupation it was to destroy George W Bush, unknowingly helped severely weaken the most difficult enemy faced by any state or alliance in human history.

Now how did we win and cripple for life this new enemy?  Using their ideology against them, we lured them into a location in which we could engage them using our superior capabilities on a battlefield with which we were quite familiar.  This enemy is a worldwide cancer and occupies not merely Afghanistan (an extremely difficult theater to say the least) but also the entire globe.  It would have been impossible to go to several nations, cross their sovereign borders, find the terrorist hideouts then close with and engage them.

Imagine the worldwide hair lighting on fire had that happened.  It was bad enough when yellow cake was hidden by glasses of mint tea in Niger from one of the Bush hating torches.  Barney Frank would have gone straight, found his false teeth, worn them and lit his hair on fire if we invaded several nations.  We didn't.  We drew them into Iraq and we killed them there.  Simple and genius.

Even Barack Obama admitted it -- and as usual, was clueless when he did so.  Remember his pre-election interview on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly?  Bill asked him if George W Bush was right about the surge and defeating al Qaeda in Iraq.  Remember what Obama said? 

"Before Bush invaded, there was no al Qaeda in Iraq." 

You got it Sun Tzu, er, I mean Mr. President.  The strategery worked as planned, just like Tommy Franks said it would "at a time and place of OUR choosing."

The enemy's ideology drew him to attack American forces in Iraq with the intention to force an American loss.  The more the mainstream media and Democrats celebrated each thousand American deaths, the more terrorists from all over the globe flocked to Iraq.  Each worked with the other to further their own set of agendas and ideologies; one for political power and the other for twisted religious ideology.  While doing so, we destroyed the enemy and their leaders, most going completely unreported.  It was brilliant.  So much so that they still haven't figured it out because they simply do not have the ability to do so.  The domestic opposition did however have the ability to take credit for W's win last week, celebrating Iraqi victory over terrorism.

That is why I want to thank George W Bush and the military leaders who finally, finally after all the lost friends, lost Marines, lost three thousand plus Americans, had the courage and temerity to close with and engage this new enemy and defeat them in so many ways, crippling them to the point of near extinction.  You also taught our new president how to authorize a surge like the one now taking place in Afghanistan.  Leftist pettiness would never allow them to call it that, but that is exactly what it is patterned after, General Petraeus. 

Thank you President Bush.  I know it doesn't mean much coming from some former Marine in Missouri but I appreciate what you did and I'll never forget it.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/why_im_thankful_for_george_w_b.html at July 09, 2009 - 01:19:05 AM EDT

[FTJM]

Lol, anyone here who has a dissenting opinion is accused of being a troll or using talking points. It's pathetic. Bush let Conservatives down, that's a fact at this point. I supported Bush just like every Conservative tried to do up to a point.

That you think I'm calling everyone a RINO shows that you can't read very well. I was pointing out the absurdity of those on this site who do.

[x]

Bush let Conservatives down, that's a fact at this point.

That's it in a nutshell.

OhioWfan: Your name says where you're coming from, and your loyalty is admirable, but with Bush's approval ratings in the twenties, an unpopular war, and a financial catastrophe, there's no way any Republican presidential candidate could have won last year. By this point, President Bush himself would admit his share of blame for the defeat if you pressed him. It's sad, but there it is.

[ohioWfan]

Yes, I can see that you play a lot of games......including using a word that leftists use to describe what was in fact the liberation of Iraq.

I'm not "scared" of the term. I just recognize where you got it from - the left.

Your accusation that Bush was swayed by "politics" regarding Iraq is just silly, and not one bit conservative, as I highly suspect you are not. If he had been playing politically and not strategically and defensively, he would have pulled out of Iraq as the left and many hapless Americans wanted him to (I'm sure you're part of that crowd). But since he wanted to win and keep us safe rather than play politics, he stayed the course, against the advice of guys like Obama (and you?), who wanted us to lose, we ended up winning and Iraq is free.

Game over, FTJM. Feel free to play your games somewhere else.

[FTJM]

Yes, I can see that you play a lot of games......including using a word that leftists use to describe what was in fact the liberation of Iraq. I'm not "scared" of the term. I just recognize where you got it from - the left. Your accusation that Bush was swayed by "politics" regarding Iraq is just silly, and not one bit conservative, as I highly suspect you are not. If he had been playing politically and not strategically and defensively, he would have pulled out of Iraq as the left and many hapless Americans wanted him to (I'm sure you're part of that crowd). But since he wanted to win and keep us safe rather than play politics, he stayed the course, against the advice of guys like Obama (and you?), who wanted us to lose, we ended up winning and Iraq is free. Game over, FTJM. Feel free to play your games somewhere else.

Your response was moronic, could be that you are too.

I didn't get the term "occupation" from the Left. I got it from history. That's what you do after you've defeated a country. Look no further than Japan and Germany. Why? Because it is necessary and because it works.

The Left screamed occupation and the Muslims screamed crusade so Bush went out of his way not to appear to be occupying the country. It was a huge mistake, WE SHOULD OCCUPY IRAQ with massive troop numbers FROM THE START. I never shied away from the term and disagreed with Bush waiting unbelievably long to do it, not to mention reducing those troop levels before he left office for political reasons. Vietnam taught us never to let politics get in the way of war, Bush did. That you don't see that shows how blind you are.

The fact is that Bush didn't invade Iraq, because we were already there and Iraq was in direct violation of the terms of the ceasefire signed by Bush I and Powell when they wimped out half way to Baghdad. Bush prosecuted the war with politics in mind and it gave the Democrats the opening that they needed. Saddam didn't need to have WND (even though he did) for us to take him out and we needed large numbers of troops to go in and OCCUPY the entire country. We let a quagmire develop with a weak plan that was used to win elections.

The last thing my position is, is leftist. You have zero intellectual integrity by accusing anyone with a different point of view as a liberal playing games.

[ohioWfan]

I'm a conservative, and the President didn't "let me down." That's not to say that he didn't do things I didn't agree with. No one agreed with everything he was doing.

But the things you list - his approval ratings -driven through the floor by a lying press and a wimpy Republican party, an "unpopular" war - one that is now won because HE stayed the course when all others abandoned the mission, and was "unpopular" because of the lies of the left and the weakness of our American culture, and the financial catastrophe - which was the Dems fault and he tried to avert -- in NONE of those things is he responsible for the defeat.

I repeat, you have to ignore a score of significant historical factors to blame President Bush. Of course, if you are determined to blame him for some reason, you are free to do so. But if you are looking at it historically, it is an unsustainable, unsupportable argument.

Blaming Bush for Obama is ludicrous.

Oh, and btw, he has said that he knows that he did what was right and is comfortable with what he did as President. I doubt very much that he would blame himself for Obama's win. That doesn't even make sense.

[ohioWfan]

It was not a moronic response, and I am not a moron.

I know my history, but I also know who has used the term "occupy" to indicate wrongdoing on Bush's part.

I also know the history of Iraq, but thanks for the lesson. Your accusation of politics interfering with the strategy in Iraq is still silly. If you were paying attention to the reasons he gave in speeches for going into Iraq, you will know that the presence of WMD was only one of the reasons he gave. The emphasis was only because of the defense given before the UN and their preoccupation with it. If you were observant, you would know that.

Quagmire?? LOL! There you go again, using the leftist anti-Bush vocabulary. If you don't want conservatives to think you're one of them, why do you use the same words? (There never was a quagmire). When it was clear that things were deteriorating in Iraq, Bush looked for and found a stronger General with a better plan, and we began to win.

Now, since you have accused me of having no integrity (I love that one), and being a moron (my IQ doesn't indicate that), I shall end this lovely discussion.

Be thankful that I didn't respond in kind to your ridiculous insults.

No more games, newbie. Good day.

[ohioWfan]

Yes, indeed.

And yet pointing out the correlation of the word "occupation" with those who use it to bash the military and President Bush to certain individuals on this forum leads to name calling and nastiness in response.

We'd better be careful smoothsailing. ;)

[smoothsailing]

We'd better be careful smoothsailing. ;)

Thanks for the great laugh!!! ;o)

[ohioWfan]

No problem.

I find that, when being called a moron without integrity, laughter is the best medicine. :)

[FTJM]

It was not a moronic response, and I am not a moron. I know my history, but I also know who has used the term "occupy" to indicate wrongdoing on Bush's part. I also know the history of Iraq, but thanks for the lesson. Your accusation of politics interfering with the strategy in Iraq is still silly. If you were paying attention to the reasons he gave in speeches for going into Iraq, you will know that the presence of WMD was only one of the reasons he gave. The emphasis was only because of the defense given before the UN and their preoccupation with it. If you were observant, you would know that. Quagmire?? LOL! There you go again, using the leftist anti-Bush vocabulary. If you don't want conservatives to think you're one of them, why do you use the same words? (There never was a quagmire). When it was clear that things were deteriorating in Iraq, Bush looked for and found a stronger General with a better plan, and we began to win. Now, since you have accused me of having no integrity (I love that one), and being a moron (my IQ doesn't indicate that), I shall end this lovely discussion. Be thankful that I didn't respond in kind to your ridiculous insults. No more games, newbie. Good day.

Yes, your response was moronic. You have been insulting, so I responded in kind. Go cry in your milk.

You are not paying attention. I'm not using the term occupy to indicate wrongdoing at all. I'm using it to indicate that that is exactly what the US SHOULD HAVE DONE and that not doing so fully and correctly at the outset was a mistake. The Democrats and Muslims used the term occupy to keep Bush from doing it. He obliged them. Further, what I said was that WMD wasn't a necessary reason to go back in. Bush gave the idiots an opening, they took it and he failed to play offense much less defend himself.

The civil war that resulted from the flawed plan resulted in a quagmire (a violent civil war with no US control that could have gone on for years). It's ironic that you are being a word Nazi. The fact is that the light army that Bush used to invade was ill equipped to fully OCCUPY Iraq. Conservatives called for increased troop levels for years but Bush didn't listen. Had he listened, Iraq would have been stable much sooner and the Democrats would have lacked that major issue to win seats with, not to mention giving the GOP an issue to run on.

You may think that you know the history of Iraq but you don't understand it.

[ohioWfan]

Word Nazi?? Now that's pretty funny. No more insults, OK?

I've been paying very close attention to your arguments. That's why I haven't fallen for them.

And I do know the history of Iraq, whether you like it or not. Disagreeing with you on your own particular anti-Bush assessment of what happened in Iraq doesn't imply ignorance (nor stupidity, thank you). I'm glad you fancy yourself an Iraq expert, but there are many other positions other than your own from scholars greater than yourself.

There are many who say that had we invaded with large troop numbers, the Iraqi people would have never come to their own conclusion that they needed to govern together.....that sectarian violence would never have ended had we "occupied" as you suggest we needed to do.

There are many who say that it was the sectarian violence (NOT a "civil war") and the brutality of alQaeda who was inciting that sectarian violence, that eventually convinced the Iraqi people to rid themselves of the enemy and govern in peace (which they are doing now).

There are also experts who understand that it took a length of time for the Iraqi Army to be built up enough to do what they are doing now - controlling their own security.

Petraeus' plan was NOT to "occupy" but to assist with our military force and with our working with the Iraqi people, police and military to help them govern themselves. And it WORKED.

You can argue against success all you want, but we have, in 6 short years, accomplished the nearly impossible task of assisting in creating a democracy in the heart of the Middle East and uniting the people of Iraq.

That is exactly what George W. Bush wanted to do, and he succeeded in doing it. You can be an armchair expert to your heart's delight (and use arguments from wherever you got them, left or right), but the proverbial proof is in the pudding. We won the War in Iraq, and we have our awesome troops and their Commander in Chief - George W. Bush to thank for it.

[ohioWfan]

btw, I'm done with this conversation.

You can blame President Bush for all the problems in the world if you want, but you aren't going to convince us 'morons' who respect him, no matter how hard you try.

He is a man of courage, integrity, strength, patriotism and perseverance, and we 'morons' will respect him for all that he did to strengthen and preserve this great nation.

Have a nice life.

[smoothsailing]

I find that, when being called a moron without integrity, laughter is the best medicine. :)

I agree, it's almost always better than continuing a conversation with them.

I usually laugh, and then decide to ignore such people in the future. Life's to short to waste time on them.

I've also learned two interesting hints about such people since I've been here. It's not scientific, but I'm amazed at how many times it works out.

I'll check a person's homepage, if there's no flag flying there, that's the first hint. But that isn't enough to be relatively sure.

The second hint is the Free Republic donor list.

https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/donors

I put those two hints together and I get a better understanding.

For example, you and I both have flags and other information on our home pages. We are both also listed on the FR donor list.

Once you do this two part test, I bet it will not come as any surprise to you as to who flunks.

I consider the flunkies to be Free Republic's version of welfare queens. They expect the same benefits and respect as those of us who actually keep the lights on around here. Well, they'll get the same benefits as we do, but the respect part is another question entirely.

So, Mom, again, all my best to you, and your fine son who keeps us free. :o)