Bush has done a great job on taxes and judicial appointments.
Actually, I differ from most conservatives on his Iraq policy and immigration stand. I believe we are WAY on the wrong side of the picture with our incessant twiddling with Iraq and our desperate hope that if we stay there long enough playing "whackamole," we will get a gov't that is stable, peaceful, and friendly to the US. This will doubtless get me the normal mindless braying about "deserting the troops" and "closet DU" and other such stupidity, but the fact is that our policy is incoherent, feckless, and being made up as we go along. We have no idea what "victory" would look like if we had it, and we are asking our troops to "win" something without giving them clear defineable goals. Each time we give them something to do, they do it, and then we decide that this wasn't enough, so we give them something else to do. We cannot achieve our true objective which is to have a Jeffersonian Democracy with a crapload of oil which is friendly to the USA and resistant to Islamic radicalism. We won't come out and say so, because no one has a forking clue how to define a strategy to achieve such an objective. That IS the objective, though, and it is unreasonable, unobtainable, and won't work with the present population in Iraq and our reluctance to commit enough troops even to gain control of the borders, much less re-educate an entire population. Therefore, we continually wave the flag and lugubriate about "fighting terrorism abroad" and other such stuff. This is, simply, a red herring, and emotional manipulation from a gov't I have ceased to trust. We are trying to do this "on the cheap" and that is because of blatant political reasons. Unfortunately, the time has passed when the admin could ask the country to sacrifice and they would step up and do so. Like so many other things about Iraq, the admin has squandered the ability to..., for example, cut spending by 5% "across the board" in order to pay for a ramped up war effort. Instead, they have tried to borrow and have run into the limits imposed by exploding domestic fiscal spending (worse than the democrats!). So, we try to do it cheaply, to avoid driving up the borrowing and pray fervently that we don't have a hiccup in the economy.
When someone brings this stuff up, you get the normal chorus of caterwauling imbeciles who really have nothing to say, but think that invective, abuse and vitriol are somehow arguments for the administration. The REAL pathetic ones are the blue hairs who will just plain lie in their accusations about the political stand of anyone who challenges the war. Accusations of "coward" "betrayer of troops" "islamofascist apologist" and "anti military" are bits of the usual canard of this mindless troupe of performing monkeys. However, they have no real defense of our policy (or lack thereof) and just propose more of the same, in the empty hope that somehow kids with American Flags on their shoulders are going to magically reverse 20 centuries or more of tribal hatreds, internicene murder, and happily killing cousin Haji because he doesn't buy into the "true" succession of prophetic teaching from the chief pedophile (Sunni vs Shi'ite).
Folks, we are in a rat's nest of hopeless cultural collapse. Figure out a way to declare victory and GET OUT. We have no business trying to nationbuild in Bosnia, and we don't have any business doing it in Iraq.
Iraq is 100% part of the larger WOT. There is no question about this. As our CINC correctly said..(paraphrased here).."we did not ask for this war, our enemies did....and war is what they are now getting....It did not start on a date of our choosing, but it will be fought at the times and "places" of our choosing now".
Which is absolutely correct.
Additionally much good is happening in Iraq (as well as Stan). There is an evil in these places that must be confronted. Plain and simple. And the simple reality is since Sept 11th, our enemies have suffered one strategic defeat after another....we have not suffered one (hell you'd be hard pressed to find a tactical engagement we've lost). Over 3/4 of al Qeada's known leadership has been killed or captured and thousands of their supporters are in the ground as well.
The world is safer because of our actions in Iraq and Stan. We are deliberately and systematically destroying al Qeada and their mimics 24/7 throughout the ME, SE Asia as well as the Horn of Africa.
One could talk or think themselves in circles for reasons not to act...or reasons not to be proactive....That luxury of thinking in circles passed on Sept 11th, 2001. We are in a world war here against a mindset (not nations) that want to kill us.
The world today is too small not to be proactive (preemptive) against such people / groups. For far too long the citizens of the ME have been at the mercy of thugs, warlords and tyrants......providing the opportunity to begin to shape their own destiny is the only long-term solution to this war. That won't happen over night....but that process is most assuredly happening (it is just not reported about with the enthusiasm which it should be by the world MSM.....because they have an agenda to see us fail....GWB fail).
People say the ME can never support free ideas or quasi-democracy's.....but the same was said of the Japanese at the end of WWII (there are differences here, I'm well aware, but the premise remains the same).
The notion that we are simply playing "whackamole" isn't true on the whole....and where it is true, it is because there is no better option..and until the political solution takes full root......whacking thugs/terrorists is the safest and most productive policy for our national security interests.
One of the first steps to true leadership is understanding one has to make choices between options that are actually available to them (not wringing ones hands foolishly over pie in the sky solutions that aren't actually available to begin with).
After Sept 11th, we had to take action. We had to acknowledge we were 15 years late to entering a war that was being waged against us. We have since removed two national security threats in the regimes of Saddam and the Taliban (the world is safer because of this).
We removed Saddam for a variety of reasons with the WMD equation being simply one of those reasons. And that equation has been solved! Saddam will never pose a threat again via WMDs (bluffing or not). The world is safer because of this fact.
Would have been a great idea. But the fact it never entered Bush's mind is no mere oversight. It is reflective of the fact that he has never harbored the intention of limiting or shrinking the size of government. Outspending Bill Clinton on worthless domestic programs is an empirical indicator that Dubya couldn't care less.