The failure of President Bush

18 years ago after 9-11, President Bush had a real opportunity to transform the U.S. and the world for that matter. The American people were briefly willing to support almost anything. He could've greatly increased the size of the active duty U.S. military and recapitalized it entirely. He could've moved against not just Iraq but Syria and Iran and laid the ground work for destroying the North Korean regime. The benefits eliminating such governments and their weapons of mass destruction programs would've benefited the rest of the world and the U.S. for decades if not centuries.

President Bush could've called for rolling back his tax cuts that had just been passed to help pay for it and probably even gotten Congress to agree to some major entitlement reforms. All in all laying the basis for greatly reducing U.S. deficit spending in the future.

Yet Bush failed to do so. Why? Mainly because Bush was too keenly aware of his being a minority president. One elected while (apparently) losing the popular vote. This made the Bush administration hyper sensitive about taking radical actions. Not to mention, Bush was elected with no interest in being a foreign policy president as his father had been. Abandoning his tax cuts would've meant abandoning what he saw as his defining achievement.

Bush's immediate post 9-11 leadership was inspiring and I'm convinced no other possible president would've done as well. But his failure of vision and daring in the aftermath is costing us to this day.

Happy Patriots Day!.

You're right, in that the Bush administration completely fumbled the ball on 9/11, but not for the reasons you state.

Bush did enough damage. Other than rolling back tax cuts, these are terrible ideas that would have led to enormous numbers of deaths, even beyond the million or so that his attack on Iraq led to.

Not to mention that exploiting a brief window of public anger and disorientation following a terrorist attack to push through policies that would otherwise be seen as unacceptable is completely undemocratic.

Fuck you, Dayton.

160,000 Iraqis died due to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq and the following occupation. Any "million" figure is from sources that opposed the invasion in the first place and thus have no credibility.

Destroying the Assad regime in Syria would've probably cost even fewer lives and certainly prevented the deaths of the 500,000 who died in the civil war there a decade later.

And no Iran regime, no Iranian nuclear program. Good news for everyone (including the Iranians).

No North Korean regime, a North Korea effectively occupied by the South Koreans, in all likelihood up to two million North Koreans would not have died of starvation and disease hence.

Your criteria for determining credibility suck.

How many Iraqis were involved in 9/11?

How can you trust information from sources which are pushing an agenda.?

I think this is quite deliberately an attempt to use an emotive date as an opportunity to troll in entirely tasteless fashion.

Who cares? The invasion of Iraq was justified independent of the 9/11 attacks.

Nope.

It was not.

Please show a little more respect than this.

Agree to disagree.

What do you think would've justified the invasion of Iraq?

An imminent threat to the US.

Which there wasn't.

Nor was there any evidence made available which anyone looking objectively would have accepted as such.

By examining things like methodology and track record.

An "agenda" - that is a point of view - is something that just about everyone has. It is not nefarious and is often the result of facts such as this, rather than existing antecedent to them.

If you wait for a threat to become "imminent" you've waited too long.

Law enforcement officers (or anyone) do not wait for a known killer (like Saddam Hussein was) to draw their weapon and bring it to bear before they use deadly force.

International law disagrees, but you don't respect it because it (heaven forbid) places restrictions on the criminals in the White House.

There was no threat. Iraq posed no threat to the US.

Nice attemot to troll 9/11 @Dayton Kitchens , but you need a little more nuance and less stupidity. I will give it a 4 because you really cannot squeeze intelligence from a sack of rocks.

The US is not "law enforcement". And once again, the same logic can be applied in reverse.

What makes you think "International Law" applies to the United States? If you look up the particulars you will find that it does not.

And Iraq was attempting to shoot down American aircraft. (and British). An internationally recognized act of war.

“Happy”.


Dayton’s like those dumbasses who say “happy Memorial Day”.

What a scumbag.

It is a common greeting.

What's wrong @shootER? Are you aggravated that I didn't leave here because of this minor Samuel Montgomery FUBAR?

Treaties entered into by the United States (which are what make up international law) are regarded by your constitution as the highest law of the land. You need to stop promoting what is little more than your personal fantasy as being an unarguable reality.

Those aircraft were invading Iraqi airspace under the guise of an illegal no-fly zone.

Only among the ignorant or willfully stupid. So which are you?

Not at all.

Having you around is good because no matter what bad thing may happen I can say, “At least I’m not a worthless failure like Dayton goddamned Kitchens.”

And it’s so cute when you try to act like a tough guy when you’re the board’s biggest pussy.

And this is why it should.

But that's ok, because it opens the US up to all manner of foreign interventions.

This might be the most tasteless 9/11 thread in the board's history, and considering the tone of many others, that's one helluva feat.

Indeed, I'm going to bow out rather than keep being suckered into this revolting shit fest.

That's honestly a good tactic for any thread Dayton starts.

That's a common misconception. It takes more than signing a treaty and having it ratified by the U.S. Senate to make them binding upon the United States.

Two big things (from the Oxford Companion to American Law).

1) Congress once the Senate ratifies a treaty must pass and have signed by the president supporting legislation that officially enshrines into law specific penalties for Americans violating the specified treaty.

2) No treaty is valid if it does not have (to paraphrase Al Gore) a "controlling legal authority" which is authorized to enforce treaty provisions. Note, when the UN was created it was thought (hoped) that it would evolve into such an authority in matters of international law but of course that didn't happen.

El Chup and I used to debate this question quite a bit. But of course, he died.

Those things are not from the Oxford Companion to American Law. They are pulled directly from your ass.

For once, I agree with you.

Incorrect

https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/01/limits-on-the-treaty-power/