Posted on 08/03/2009 7:52:32 AM PDT by Shellybenoit
Not really...the NIE ended any Bush plans to rein in Iran. That wasn't Bush's fault, that was our "intelligence" agencies fault.
Please — Bush never had any plans to rein in Iran. If he had had any plans he never could have executed them because he was incapable of articulating a strategy for victory in the counter-jihad. W meant well, and he did better than any Democrat would have done. Iraq was a genuine achievement. In the end, however, Bush was mostly ineffectual in the face of a serious challenge.
Heheh! That proves it! Call the Vatican...and work up an ad for eBay!;-)
This is not mutually assured destruction in which our enemies, caring about their own country, would not engage in an exchange of nuclear fire fights.
This is a religious fanatic who thinks it's his responsibility to assist in bringing about the end of the world. You are allowing a mad man to have the most powerful weapon on earth.
Sorry, but the nation couldn't even back him in our WINNING effort in Iraq...articulation didn't have a thing to do with that either.
The NIE cut the legs out from under his administration in regards to Iran. Period.
The nation was fully prepared for war on 9/12/01. President Bush could have gone before the nation, announced that we were at war with every Islamic nation on the State Department's list of terror sponsors and demanded a declaration to that effect from Congress. Nobody would have dared to oppose him. If he had gone on to wage war as though he really meant it, instead of wasting time chattering at the UN and nation building in Iraq, the war would be over and we would be living in a very different world. He would have retired widely-admired instead of almost universally reviled.
George W. Bush failed as a war leader years before the NIE to which you refer was issued. Like Lyndon Johnson, he tried to be a war President by halves, which was never going to work. For that we have nobody to blame but W. The CIA didn't do him in. His own instinct for moderation was the culprit.
This matters even now that the Bush administration is in the rear-view mirror because we must highly resolve to tolerate no more “moderate” Republican leaders. From Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush they have always gotten us into terrible trouble.
He had backing after 9/11, but by 2004, the press and his enemies attacked him daily on the war in Iraq and the WOT.Maybe you have forgotten, but Al-Qaeda attacked us, and I don’t think anyone would declare war on several billion Muslims because of it.
However, our strategy for removing the Taliban worked flawlessly, and he was able to get Congress and the UN to authorize action against Saddam.
The war in Iraq removed Saddam in short order, used Iraq as a killing ground for tens of thousands of jihadists...while costing less than 4000 men and less than 5% of our budget...without reinstating a draft. He left a functioning democracy in an area that no one believed democracy could exist.
Arm chair quarterbacks like yourself are quick to criticize, but you have no idea if any strategy would have succeeded better. I personally believe without the two years of bloodshed after the Golden Mosque was blown up by Al-Qaeda, the Iraqis would never have stood up.
From all indications, his strategies worked. We won the war the day he announced a surge of troops instead of tucking tail and running away. He did that in spite of opposition from Congress and his own staff.
You can keep spewing crap about GWB, but it doesn’t make it true, and its difficult to revise history that happened in the immediate past. Do you think Iran would be having the problems it is having today with its population if 15 million Iraqi Shiites were not living in freedom next door?
Peddle your revisionism elsewhere.
You seem to concede that the country would have supported a war to topple every terror sponsoring Muslim regime in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when you say: “He had backing after 9/11.” You then jump immediately to circumstances in 2004 when Bush was under intense fire, apparently to support a claim that he did the best he could. But the initial concession destroys the rest of your argument. My point from the begining was that Bush could and should have done much more in 2001-2002, and nothing you have to say even grapples with that point. Your passing reference to a billion Muslims is a Moveon.org talking point. There are nothing like a billion people living in the Muslim nations on the state sponsors of terror list and war against those nations would have been quite feasible, politically and militarily in 2001.
Bush was certainly under fire in 2004 but he exposed himself to that fire by refusing to fight the only kind of war America will support — a decisive one.
You are quite right, Bush had support after 9/11 and he squandered it. He didn't take the fight to the enemy's center of gravity and the result was disastrous. Now we have a leftist President and our principal enemy is about to secure nuclear weapons. Yes I do think Iran would be having the problems it is having even if Saddam were still in power. Those problems have been simmering for a long time. But the Iranian regime will survive those problems, in part because the US, under Bush as much as Obama, has been unwilling to exploit them in any way.
As for the observation that Al Qaeda attacked us — that is pure leftist twaddle. Radical Islam attacked us. To say that Al Qaeda attacked us is like saying that the Japanese Imperial Navy's pilots attacked us at Pearl Harbor. It is true is some narrow sense, but profoundly misleading. Bush was never willing to identify the broader enemy which was why he could never articulate a rational for the war in Iraq.
The fact is Iraq never made sense as a one off. As part of a strategy for toppling Syria to its west and Iran to its east Iraq would have been brilliant. In isolation, which is how Bush insisted on viewing it, it was indefensible. We are going to pay a terrible price for his tunnel vision.
Peddle your fawning hero worship someplace else.
My point from the begining was that Bush could and should have done much more in 2001-2002, and nothing you have to say even grapples with that point.
What are you talking about? 9/11 happened in 2001 (the day after Bush's FBI director was confirmed), by 2002 we were at war with the Taliban and killing Al-Qaeda worldwide!
Your passing reference to a billion Muslims is a Moveon.org talking point. There are nothing like a billion people living in the Muslim nations on the state sponsors of terror list and war against those nations would have been quite feasible, politically and militarily in 2001.
None of the attackers of 9/11 were from a state on the terror list. Duh.
Bush was certainly under fire in 2004 but he exposed himself to that fire by refusing to fight the only kind of war America will support — a decisive one.
Americans have no will for anything that takes more than a week. That's not GWB's fault. Decisive? This is the only war since WWII that has been decisively won. Desert Storm doesn't count, because we left Saddam in power.
Now we have a leftist President and our principal enemy is about to secure nuclear weapons.
Sure...that's Bush's fault.
Yes I do think Iran would be having the problems it is having even if Saddam were still in power. Those problems have been simmering for a long time. But the Iranian regime will survive those problems, in part because the US, under Bush as much as Obama, has been unwilling to exploit them in any way.
I'm sure there was far more pressure on Iran under the Bush Administration than has been publicly revealed. (You're not CIA are you?) Yes, Iran has had simmering problems for years, but Bush's democracy in the heart of the Middle East is obviously having an effect....far more than any covert action by the west could ever have IMO.
As for the observation that Al Qaeda attacked us — that is pure leftist twaddle. Radical Islam attacked us. To say that Al Qaeda attacked us is like saying that the Japanese Imperial Navy's pilots attacked us at Pearl Harbor. It is true is some narrow sense, but profoundly misleading.
Twaddle? Yes, radical Islam attacked us, but Al-Qaeda was THE organization that made 9/11 a reality. Your comparison to Pearl Harbor is ludicrous. Your analogy would be more appropriate if you said we should have attacked all asians because some of them attacked us.
Bush was never willing to identify the broader enemy which was why he could never articulate a rational for the war in Iraq.
I understood the rationale for removing Saddam...you know, WMD, international sponsor of terror, shooting at our pilots in the NFZ, plotting Presidential assassinations. Not to mention what he was doing to his subjects, or the billions of dollars he was accumulating under OFF.
The fact is Iraq never made sense as a one off.
What a foolish statement. We already had Al-Qaeda and the Taliban on the run in Afghanistan. Iraq was about the only choice of a place to continue the WOT. We had access from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The terrain is favorable..flat and barren. Saddam was extremely unpopular. His belligerence allowed Bush to get enough support to go after him. And why do you think it was intended as a one off? It put huge pressure on Syria and Iran. 140,000 US troops on your border gets any nation's attention, whether the troops are used or not. Beyond that, can you imagine Iraq and Iran rushing towards a nuclear weapon, undoubtedly having one by now? That is what the situation would be if Saddam had not been taken out.
Peddle your fawning hero worship someplace else.
No, just common sense. Notice the tag line.
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