When George W. Bush leaves office in 10 months, the U.S. will have gone through a tragedy and a dark age for the past eight years. Never in my lifetime has our country witnessed so much incompetence, arrogance, and self proclaimed righteousness by our President. And it happened concerning everything he has touched. Lets examine the record.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Bush inherited a $5.6 trillion surplus and 4 years of balanced budgets from the previous administration. He not only blew that in his first year in office, but also gave the country the largest federal budget deficits in history. When he leaves office he will have added over $4 trillion to the national debt.
THE WAR ON TERROR AND 9-11: Bush failed to fight the real war on terror against the people who harmed our country on 9-11. The war in Afghanistan is going bad according to recent reports and may even be lost. We and our NATO allies in Afghanistan still have a token presence there seven years after 9-11. We just added more Marines and are trying to get NATO to add more troops. The problem: our resources are being wasted in Iraq instead.
THE WAR AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ: Bush started the war and occupation of Iraq over WMD that did not exist and tried to plant the seed in the peoples' mind that Saddam was involved with Al Qaeda. The President did not have the wisdom or character to make sure the intelligence was right. Instead, he manipulated the intelligence as an excuse to go to war. After 5 years of war and occupation, the President still can not tell the American people when this war will end or how.
SOCIAL SECURITY: The President sunk any chance of keeping Social Security on a sound footing with his reckless deficit spending and insisting on private accounts. This is the same President who told the people he would do something about Social Security. There was enough money in the $5.6 trillion surplus to make a difference in the program, but he blew it.
THE ENVIRONMENT: The President failed to have the U.S. join the Keyoto accord and left the safety of the environment in the hands of the polluters whose only regulations were to police themselves. Bush has even refused to recognize a problem exists.
LEADERSHIP: The President lost the moral mantle of world leadership with his arrogant go-it-alone, I'm-right attitude and tried to assume the position of "king of the world." He also has lost the respect of the American people and his approval rating still stands at around 32%.
THE ECONOMY: The economy has gone through one recession and another one is looming. $110 barrel oil with no end in sight, job losses, home ownership in peril with record foreclosures, a mortgage crisis, and the President still does not have an economic policy. He only has a tax policy. He has no policy to bring down oil prices and no policy deal with all the other economic problems the country faces. He is without any solutions.
SECRECY: The most secret administration in my lifetime is the current one. Afraid to let the American people judge the truth for themselves, Bush has openly lied about the Valarie Plame issue. Cheney has kept his meeting agenda with the energy companies secret. The President secretly authorized wire tapping of Americans without a warrant from the FISA court. The list goes on and on, including torture.
A DIVIDER, NOT A UNITER: The President openly divides the American people with his ideology and arrogance. He is such a small person he has to accuse people of not supporting our troops when they disagree with his Iraq failures.
THE MILITARY: Our brave men and women are over extended with 3 and 4 deployments in Iraq with no end in sight. Our wounded veterans came home to the horrors of the Walter Reed Hospital, where they received treatment or the lack there of. The recruiting of members in our armed forces has been declining because of the war in Iraq and the toll it has taken on our military families. Going into the sixth year of war in Iraq, our troops still do not have the necessary equipment to protect themselves. It's bad enough the President got us into Iraq and refuses to do the right thing by leaving, but he should at least have the decency to care for those he sends to fight the needless war.
CONGRESS: Bush used the Republican controlled Congress in a partisan way to promote the neocon ideology and to block any legislation proposed by Democrats. The energy problem, fiscal discipline, a true economic policy, and other progressive policies that could have greatly benefitted the American people were ignored.
MONEY AND GREED: Bush's policy is let business regulate itself and everything will be fine. Yea, for the wealthy. No checks and balances needed. Plant the seed that oil inventories are being depleted in order to run up the price. Destabilize the Middle East and Iraq in a war over WMD that did not exist to assist the escalation of oil prices.
The list can go on and on, but the American people understand. The bottom line is that the country and its people were better off in all walks of life under the previous administration and were also safer. Bush has accomplished just what he set out to do. Reverse the progress that America enjoyed and instead govern with an ideology that has been destructive and divisive.
This is the President who had the country and the world behind him after the tragic event of 9-11 and so much good could have been done, but he exploited that unity by using the good will of the people to undermine our Constitution and what America and its people stand for.
