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

[DrDeb]

THANK YOU for posting this brilliant analysis — MANY more such commentaries will be written in the future about our courageous, visionary President (President Bush that is)!!

[ohioWfan]

It's like the sun is coming out in a very dark, bleak place.

Some people are catching on, and you are right. MANY more will follow.

[smoothsailing]

It was a pleasure, I assure you!

[FTJM]

Yawn, any time someone has a dissenting opinion, they are called a "newbie" or troll. What's ironic is that with all the talk about RINO's here, Bush is one of the biggest.

The author of the article leads with a discussion of the Beirut bombing of the US marine barracks. It was an act of war committed by Iran. Nothing was done. If you can't handle hearing that fact, maybe the internet is not the best place for you.

[FTJM]

I blame him for what he is responsible for, nothing more.

[FTJM]

You missed the point of my comments; that bringing up the Beirut bombing was misplaced in a discussion about terrorists and the US’s (including Bush) actions against them. Iran was behind that attack and it was an act of war, among others.

[x]

Where did this blame President Bush for Obama tripe come from? Who started it? It's absurd, and ignores all the real factors that led to the election of Obama.

No Republican presidential candidate would have had a chance after the banking mess and the bailouts.

Bush has to take a lot of the blame for that, and that means he also shoulders a lot of the responsibility for Obama's getting elected.

[smoothsailing]

You missed the point of my comments..

No, FTJM, I didn't miss your point at all, not by a long shot.

[FTJM]

Oh, good.

[ohioWfan]

That would only be true if there were only one reason Obama got elected, and of course, only if your theory is right that the first bailout made people vote for a Democrat (why would it?)

You still have to ignore another mass of hardcore, factual data to place the blame on President Bush.

It's an unsustainable argument. It's just not consistent with the facts.

[ohioWfan]

#1 - RINO is so overused it's absolutely meaningless.
#2 - President Bush was a consistent tax cutter and pro-business conservative
#3 - President Bush was the most pro-life President we have ever had.
#4 - President Bush was strongly pro-military.
#5 - President Bush was strongly pro-American sovereignty and stood up to the world on behalf of this great country (including multiple times to the UN).
#6 - President Bush nominated two of the most conservative SC Justices on the court, and completely consistent conservative judges on the federal bench.

Ergo, your "assessment" that President Bush was "one of the biggest" RINO's is incorrect.

[jch10]

Since 2008 11-05.....you are a newby, probably a troll. You failed to appreciate a very good article that most of us enjoyed.

You blame President Bush for not responding to the bombing that happened 30 years ago? I am well aware of the outcome of the bombing. I remember it well. However, GWB kept this nation safe for 7 years. I will forever be grateful for that. You should be too.

[FTJM]

Bush sold us out on immigration, spending and the deficit. He originally failed on the occupation of Iraq, was slow to increase troop levels and starting pulling them out too soon. He increased the size of government, didn't reform the tax code, gave the Democrats the advantage and lost both Houses of Congress, to name a few. IIRC, Giuliani, Romney and McCain have all been called RINO's on this site. Surely, Bush fits the criteria if they do.

He also nominated Harriet Miers and didn't nominate Scalia for Chief Justice.

[FTJM]

Lol, there's the troll attack. Wow, I didn't see that coming.

I blame Bush along with previous Presidents for not holding Iran responsible for its actions.

You're clueless, I never said I was not grateful for keeping him keeping the country safe from terrorist attack and made a distinction between terrorist attacks and acts of war by a sovereign country.

[smoothsailing]

Here's another reason I'm thankful for President Bush...

Betraying America's Soldiers: Iranian War Criminals Go Free

Nothing like this would have ever been allowed to take place on W's watch. As a veteran myself, I am infuriated by this naive and boneheaded action of Obama and his leftist stooges. In my mind, this is no less than treason.

BTW, on a lighter note, I just noticed your tagline. Please thank your son ( or is it daughter) for their service to our country. God Bless.

[ohioWfan]

You've got the talking points down pat, don't you? But you've got most of your information wrong.

You can't sell people out if you do what you said you'd do and operate according to your beliefs that have been well identified. You may disagree with Bush's attempts at immigration reform (I do), but to say he "sold us out" is poppycock. I believe that he could have reduced spending by vetoing Congress' spending bills (you do realize that Congress is who spends money, right?), but a large part of those bills was to fight the war on terror, and that's what kept us safe.

Your Iraq stuff is nonsense. Sounds like you got it from the Obamafreaks on YouTube. One thing that you're obviously ignorant about (among many), is that President Bush, like the strong Commander in Chief that he was, allowed the Generals in the field to dictate how the mission was being run. Making a long story short, he, like Lincoln, needed to find the right one to do what needed to be done to win the war, and chose Petraeus, who proceeded to come up with the strategy that did win the war.

Yes, he increased the size of government, but so did Reagan. Reducing it is pretty much impossible, no matter what your goals are.

HE did not lose Congress, the wimpy Republicans lost Congress by abandoning him, the War in Iraq and our troops. He held firm. The Republicans went wobbly. As for the tax reform, where did that come from? You don't respect him because he was fighting two wars, battling a lying media and a wimpy Congress turned Dem, and didn't reform the tax code? How ridiculous!

Giuliani is pro-abortion, Romney enacted liberal healthcare, McCain has fallen for the global warming nonsense. ALL of them might be called "RINO" (though it's still ridiculously overused), but Bush cannot. Period.

The Republican party is not now, nor has ever been 100% aligned with the conservatives in the party. We have always had moderate Republicans in the party, and those of us who really ARE conservative have always known that.

Therefore, if you are in the chorus screaming "everyone is a RINO!" then you are either a troll, or ignorant about what the Republican party is. In either case, you are wrong about President Bush.

But you get an A on regurgitating talking points. Good job, newbie.

[ohioWfan]

btw, your use of the word "occupation" regarding Iraq gives you away as a liberal.

You'd better work on that before you post your nonsense on another thread.

[ohioWfan]

Thanks, smoothsailing. It's our son, and we are so proud we could explode!

Second tour (volunteered to go back), 200 missions, led in combat with no casualties, meritorious service.

Not in the Iraq "occupation" as our newbie Bush basher has suggested, but in IRAQI FREEDOM!

[smoothsailing]

The use of the word "occupation" is certainly a word used by defeatocrats. They're an impossible bunch to reason with.

[FTJM]

btw, your use of the word "occupation" regarding Iraq gives you away as a liberal. You'd better work on that before you post your nonsense on another thread.

That's one of the dumber things I've heard here. We needed to occupy Iraq from Day One. I have no problem with the term and Bush shouldn't either. Because he was swayed by politics and did not want to appear to occupy Iraq, it hurt us. We OCCUPIED Germany and Japan after WWII. That you're scared of the term suggests that you're just another RINO running scared from Democrats. See, I can play that game too.