Not quite. ObL wasn’t the “mastermind” behind the 9/11 attacks. That was Kahlid Sheik Mohammed-- now residing in Guantanamo.
Ok, Dubya is 0 for 2 in catching terrorist ringleaders. Better?
I am reluctant to credit that, if only because these people have pretty much lied to me in every instance where it might benefit them.
Sadly, it isn’t.
Just so. Alas.
Which specific policies would those be?
Or do you really mean to say that the man is perfect and blameless and that each and every single thing he’s done is “the right thing”?
Who, exactly, has claimed that tough action isn’t required?
Why, exactly, do you make the leap from ‘tough action is required’ to ‘Bush is doing something that’s rough, therefore, it’s right’.
There are numerous possible ‘tough’ courses of action. What makes Bush’s correct?
Define how, exactly, we’re fighting global terrorism.
Exactly, mind you.
Please point to anybody here who has said that the proper way to deal with jihadis is to talk to them.
You do realize that there is a middle ground between ‘invade countries on false pretexts, curtail American civil liberties, torture and imprison innocent people… and just chat with Jihadis.’
Right?
How long, exactly, did it take our enemies to plan the second WTC attack?
He’s caught the Number 3 guy in Al Qaeda, what, 4 different times so far?
Bush knows what the polls say, and so does Cheney. When pressed, they’ve both just said that they don’t matter, they did the right things and history will vindicate them.
BTW, 9/11 *was *the second WTC attack. The Clinton administration caught the perps of the 1993 one.
And one of those was a chauffeur!
Yeh, big catch all right, in fact the driving force behind the wheel of terror!
:: groan ::
Don’t tell anyone, but the CIA is closing on the pizza delivery guy who used to deliver “Halal lover’s pizzas” to al Qaeda meetings. They say he’s the number three guy in aQ.
Maybe they’re all the number 3 guy!
Hmm, perhaps we should send a kid with a baseball bat and psychic powers after them instead of the army.
I take issue with the contention that George Bush displays moral courage.
Bush pulled strings to avoid the Vietnam draft and get a cushy spot with the National Guard. Afterwards, he couldn’t even take it upon himself to show up consistently. Yet he fervently believed others should go to war, just not him.
Years later, he was quick to say, “Bring it on”, when asked about the emerging Iraqi insurgency. These are the words of a man who will never lose a loved one to the battlefield.
In office, I can’t think of a single difficult decision Bush has made. He uses his political capital for … tax cuts. His Iraqi strategy has essentially consisted of running the clock, though I concede that the men and woman on the ground have done a solid job in a bad situation.
No, the idea of a stalwart President Bush is wishful thinking.
When faced with an attack from Jihadists in Afghanistan, George Bush pulled resources out of the country and invaded Iraq.
Though the news wavers between Iraq and bullshit attacks on Obama, the real issue is the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the terrorist sanctuary in western Pakistan.
Tough minded analysis implies skillful use of limited resources, and not transforming every security challenge into armed combat.
You want an example of a difficult situation? Again, try Pakistan. Bush has taken the easy way out by cuddling up with the local autocrat, rather than pushing for stronger contacts with wider populace.
Can I interest you in this magic rock? It prevents tiger and polar bear attacks. I’ve been carrying it around for years and I’ve never been attacked by a tiger or a polar bear. That’s how I know it works!
Just think of all of the things Bush has prevented!
Rips in the time-space continuum
Giant insect attacks
Nuclear strikes
Entire country under water
Everyone’s head explodes simultaneously
Rapture
Alien invasion
Attacks by trees ala the new M Night movie
Clown revolt
No need to wait for History to judge this man- he is more awesome than Eisenhower and Galdalf combined.
For the first, say, five years after 9/11, people would say to me, well, you may not like Bush, but I’m glad in was in the White House on 9/11 rather than Gore. And I’d say “Why? What did he do that you think Gore wouldn’t have done?” Sometimes they’d just mumble, sometimes they’d mutter something about another terrorist attack(as if Gore would have been opposed to going after Al Qaida’s finances, I guess), sometimes they’d say “Go after bin Lauden in Afghanistan”(Democrats, despite Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton are apparently unwilling to ever commit forces to military action).
Well, here we are, a hair short of seven years after 9/11. We’ve blown the vast majority of political capital we had around the world. We’ve blown billions of dollars, thousands of our lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani lives. We’ve invaded a sovereign nation that had no connection whatsoever with 9/11 (although, yes, it was run by A Very Bad Man) and then in a build up intended to win there, have pretty much eliminated whatever tiny chance we might have had of getting bin Laden, and watched conditions in Afghanistan deteriorate pretty much in direct proportion to their improvement in Iraq. We’ve become the greatest recruitment tool ever, not only for Al Qaida, but for any other Islamic terrorist group, Shia or Sunni, that hides under the local rocks.
So, yes, Botox Sinatra, we do need to watch for Islamist Terrorists. But that’s not what GWB was doing, because Sadam Hussein wasn’t exporting terrorists. He was too busy terrorizing his own people, and in the mean time exporting oil and running an adequate secular nation. Sad, but at that point not our major concern. GWB had a world where most nations’ people (people, not governments) were indifferent to us at worst and liked us at best. By invading Iraq, he got a world where most nations’ people now dislike us at worst and are indifferent to us at best.
In the meantime, bin Laden is hiding somewhere in north west Pakistan thumbing his nose at us, and Pakistan is taking our money and basically saying “Hey, we can’t help it!”
Heckuva job, there, Georgie!
So…for years you were attacked periodically by tigers and polar bears both at home and on the road, culminating in a vicious sneak attack a few years ago, but you have been attack free at home for the past several years?
Maybe there is something to your magic rock after all…
-XT
Question for you…at what point between the 1993 WTC bombing (the perpetrators of which were effectively prosecuted and jailed in the normal American criminal justice system) and 9/11 were we attacked on American soil by Islamist terrorists?
The 9/11 attacks were a fluke. They were an incredibly rare and possibly unique event which could have actually been averted had anyone in the Bush administration actually paid any attention to what the outgoing national defense team was saying. Or if they had paid any attention to their own internal security memos, for that matter (“Bin Laden determined to attack on American soil”?). We went after the actual perpetrators of 9/11 until we could plausibly turn our attention to an easier target, then immediately all but denuded Afghanistan of American troops, basically leaving the whole ogforsaken country to be babysat by NATO while the Taliban rebuilt itself in preparation for taking the whole damn thing back. All of this so we could completely destroy a stable and contained, if nondemocratic, nation in the most volatile region in the freakin’ world and set up a Friedmanesque paradise of Randian delights. And, incidentally, create the world’s largest Al Qaeda recruitment and training ground ever seen. Good job, Georgie!
The War on Terror is, as most of us on the left have been saying since it began, a huge boondoggle designed to grant this administration more unchecked power than almost any presidency has ever had, and to funnel public funds to private contractors, most of whom have some very close relationship to people in this administration, at a rate that’s mind-boggling. They’re stealing American lives, American money, American reputation and American guarantees of liberty.
But no Tigers and Polar Bears right? I think we can call it a draw in that case.
I bid five dollars for the Magic Rock.
Not only that, but when he did invade Iraq he didn’t have the political courage to tell his rich friends that they should pay for it with a tax increase. Valuable enough to spend the lives of soldiers on, but not valuable enough to ask the rich to sacrifice that fourth car.