It started with the questionable election of George W Bush. Imagine if you will the shitstorm that would have happened if, say, a Kennedy was running for president and it came down to the results of the voting in Massachusetts. You don't think the conservatives would be howling like castrated minks if after 3 months of shenanigans, obstruction, and misdirection it was determined that the Kennedy won?
Please.
Ok, so he gets into office on the narrowest of margins but begins to act like he has this tremendous mandate. He scares the hell out of the departing administration by barely paying attention during briefing sessions. And then, on 1/20/01, he's sworn in.
It was a rough and tumble election, no doubt. But despite that, the country's in decent shape. The economy, while slowing from its white-hot pace of the Clinton years, is still pretty robust. The treasury is flush with money- for the first time since the 1950s the federal government was running budget surpluses that were projected to continue through the next decade and there was great hope that by that time the national debt, which stood at about $6.5 trillion when Clinton took office, would be whittled down to a trillion if not less.
Then 9/11, a horrible day in our history. As Americans, we were all shocked and stunned by the events of the day and the subsequent weeks.
But out of the horror there was something rarely seen in America- people put aside their differences and were Americans first, and we all came together. The world felt our pain as well. In some corners of the world, there was rejoicing over 9/11, but those places were few and far between.
The name Osama Bin Ladin became known to us all and Al Qaeda no longer some shadowy group.
At that moment in time, the US was poised on the brink of history. 9/11 shook our country but did not destroy it. We had the world standing by, waiting to see our next move, offering their help and support.
There is that line from Shakespeare that "Some men are born great, others achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
Unfortunately for our country, none of those applied to George Bush. From the very moment he received the news and sat there for ten full minutes, he failed the test of leadership.
His failure continued when he demanded that the intelligence services connect 9/11 to Iraq even though they told him there was no such connection.
His failures were compounded by this blind obsession with Iraq. He demanded a preconceived conclusion and Dick Cheney made sure it happened and woe to anyone who dared speak differently. While the Administration is to be given credit for sending US troops into Afghanistan, where it was proven that Al Qaeda had training camps, Afghanistan took a back seat to this preoccupation with Iraq.
They manufactured the lie that Hussein had purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger and when it was proven that the evidence upon which they relied was a forgery, they chose to kill the messenger by destroying his wife's career by outing her as an undercover CIA operative. They put petty personal politics above the safety of a member of our own government.
They sent General Colin Powell before the United Nations to make the case for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein. General Powell is a rare individual in that his integrity was beyond question. Yet Bush and Cheney used him and sent him forth, unbeknownst to him, to lie.
They attempted to sell the need to go to war on an increasingly shaky foundation of lies, mistruths, and deceptions that kept running afoul of nasty facts.
Saddam Hussein stopped playing obstructionist and allowed UN weapons inspectors led by Dr Hans Blix to enter the country and conduct inspections of Iraqi military and WMD programs to show he had complied and Blix's report, delivered on 3/7/03 showed that while there were still some questions that would require additional time to answer, he found that for the most part it appeared Iraq had complied.
This was not good enough for George Bush. Less than 2 weeks later, the US invaded Iraq.
While the initial operations went well- Baghdad fell within the month- the results of the military action were immediate and far-reaching.
The US essentially ignored Blix's report, instead relying upon its own manufactured conclusions to justify the invasion. As we would later learn from the Downing Street Memo, the Administration had decided to fudge the intelligence reports to support their foregone conclusions.
The results of the invasion are this.
First, there's been a tremendous cost in human lives- 2500 dead US service people with thousands more injured and maimed. It's been estimated that 31000+ Iraqi civilians died in the war, or more than 10 for every person killed in the WTC attacks.
Second, the war has cost over $400 billion and will cost untold hundreds of billions more before all is said and done.
Third, by actively disregarding Blix's report and telling the United Nations to bugger off, the US isolated itself politically, with only England and Poland choosing to stand by us.
Fourth, for years Osama Bin Ladin's been preaching that the United States was evil and that its goal was to invade and occupy an oil-rich Muslim country. He had been saying that for years. So what does the US do?
Exactly. Thanks to George Bush, Bin Ladin went from being a megalomaniacal lunatic to a geopolitical visionary and this caused many Muslims to rethink their attitudes toward his philosophy.
Fifth, back during the first Gulf War, his father listened to the counsel of his generals and experts and chose not to invade Iraq. He realized it was a potential quagmire and would unleash a vicious civil conflict that would be difficult to quell.
His son, however, ignored his counsel.
And with this I will end this post and pick back up on this another day.
Tags: Bush Iraq 9/11 UN Blix WMDs Cheney Hussein
