I’m not jumping into this debate, but from one librarian to another, I will recommend you a book that is fascinating reading (and will piss you off even further):
We used it as one of the texts in my Human Rights and Librarianship class.
If you are basing your judgment on the number of innocents killed, W is arguably several orders of magnitude guiltier than these folks, who are responsible for a number of egregious deaths that you can count on one hand. W, on the other hand…
Um, do you have anything substantive to add? Or just this dismissive ad hominem bullshit? No? Din’t think so.
I think a better title for this thread would be, “Is Bush The Worst Political Leader In American history” and then it would be a simple yes.
I have no doubt that history will record the Bush Administration as the all-time low point in American history. It will take decades, if ever, to undo what this asshole idiot has done in less than 8 years.
I am old enough to remember thinking, “Nobody could be worse than Nixon.”
Then Bush came along and I thought, “I’m wrong. Somebody really can be worse than Nixon.”
I hope to god I am not alive to ever have to say, “Holy crap. Somebody really is worse than Bush…” My guess is that phrase will only be uttered on the day of the apocalypse.
Evil by stupidity is not an excuse. Asking for an enlistment bonus back is an outrage. I can barely believe anyone would even concieve of it.
Wow–Bush is worse than slavery or the Trail of Tears? The war in Iraq is worse than the Civil War?
Not hardly.
Daniel
Thank you, sir. […a salute…]
Jackson vs Bush? Hard to say, on the “we could of gone one way, but went another and saw the results years later.”
With Jackson, if we’d gone the way of the establishment of the Cherokee, Creek, etc. as active political entities in the overall dynamic, it’s possible that that factor might have averted the US Civil War.
Viewing Bush as a man in way, way over his head yet cradled in an obtuse confidence of his own sense of Mission, he still can’t compare with Woodrow Wilson, whose bumbling & meddling made the First World War even worse than it already was, and guaranteed the outbreak of the Second.
Why do you attempt to use the Patriot Act as an example of President Bush “destroying our liberty”? He didn’t enact it by divine, or even presidential, fiat. In fact, the Patriot Act was enacted by We the People, in Congress Assembled. IOW, we enacted it on ourselves.
Besides that, those who voted for it include Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and Democrat Presidential candidates Biden, Clinton, and Edwards.
But somehow, in your “mind”, it’s all Bush’s fault. :rolleyes:
I think this is a pretty disingenuous argument. There’s a HUGE different in the responsibility that is assigned to someone who initiated something, who argued for it, who pushed for it, who took advantage of the mood of the country to push it through; and someone who acceded to said pushing.
And the Bush administration was clearly the driving force behind the patriot act, even though it was an act of congress.
How many Christians actually want to kill all non-Christians? Hyperbole and actual action are worlds apart. A lot of people talked big about nuking the middle east after 9/11… But how many of those people actually seriously pressed for that as a course of action? How many of those people actually went out and got guns and went to mosques and started shooting? How many could keep killing tends of thousands of people, day in, day out, for years and years? Thankfully, very very few. (And, all hyperbole about Bush aside, he has NOT been trying to commit genocide in the middle east. If he wanted to, he could be firebombing cities left and right. However high the death toll is, and it is tragically too high, it would be orders of magnitude higher if Bush actually wanted to kill every Arab the way Hitler wanted to kill every Jew.)
Hitler’s evil had several components, not all of which were just genocide:
(1) He took the fairly normal (albeit rarely good) human trait of grouping people into “us” and “them” to extremes
(2) He was utterly ruthless in his power-hungriness. He didn’t just kill jews+gypsies+gays+communists, he was also totally willing to use violence against anyone who got in his way
(3) He was seemingly utterly without personal honor or integrity. He would lie, cheat, steal, whatever, with no compunction
Those were all things that made him evil. Add those to the following, not-necessarily-evil but unfortunate things:
(1) A great desire for personal power
(2) Incredible charisma
(3) Living in the time and place he lived in
And you’ve got somewhat of a perfect storm for evil.
Very few people were as evil as him. And very few people gained as much power as he did. We’re very lucky that the two have gone together so rarely. Trivializing it is just plainsilly.
Max, another advantage that Hitler had in his bag of tricks was the ability to give mesmerizing speeches. No one is going to accuse Bush of that.
It is for the Iraqis.
Millions of them. Most of them intend for God and Jesus to do the actual killing, fortunately.
Judging from world history, very, very many. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ghengis Khan, and all the other tyrannical mass murderers of history didn’t kill most of their victims personally, you know.
That, at least, fits Bush like a glove.
I’m not. You and others are trivializing how common evil is by demonizing Hitler, by pretending that he was far more special than he was. It must be comforting to think that way; after all, if he was such a unique monster, we don’t need to worry much about someone like that taking over here or elsewhere. And we can lay the blame all on him, and pretend that people who would do such things are vanishingly rare freaks.
But history show different. Tyrants and crusaders who have the opportunity and power, have never had much trouble gathering literal armies of people willing to commit such evils.
Worse than Jefferson Davis?
I dunno. How many illegal foreign wars did he start? How many citizens of other countries did he have kidnapped and tortured? How many brutal foreign occupations did he preside over?
Well, technically, they were the descendants of kidnapped citizens of other countries that were tortured. So I guess that means ol’ Jeff gets off scot free!
He instituted slavery then?
If not, he does not have the direct culpability Bush has for crimes. The only crime Davis seems to have committed was being on the losing side of a Civil War.
Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall down a manhole and die.
Yeah, the Iraqi War is worse for the Iraqis than the American Civil War; this is obvious and irrelevant. THe fact that my local UPS center is closed today, so I can’t pick up my new video card, is worse for me than the Iraq War is. Does that mean that I ought to consider the operator of the local UPS center the worst person in the world?
To use a less flip example, someone who is badly beaten by a racist asshole is going to be more affected by the beatdown than they are by the Iraq War, in most cases; that has nothing to do with whom they should consider the WPITW.
Daniel
I’m going to nominate Fred Phelps. The man has no redeeming social value whatsoever.