George Bush Is A Complete Retard

If you have read my blog for any length of time, you have probably noticed that I don't usually talk politics on here. This is not because I am not interested in politics, quite the contrary. It usually has more to do with the fact that most people who know me, know where I stand on a lot of issues and I don't feel like making this the place to argue about some of my near-Fascist(aka Republican) beliefs. But after seeing a snippet about Bush using what happened in Vietnam as a parallel for why we should stay in Iraq, I can't stay quiet anymore.

First, anytime you are a politician, especially the President of the United States and you are using the Vietnam War for anything other than a way to win over vets, you are an idiot. There is not much that can be said about Vietnam that is going to strengthen any pro-war argument you can make. While I won't go so far as to say that our involvement in Iraq is Vietnam all over again, I will concede that the two conflicts share similarities that shouldn't be ignored. Bush basically said that if we do not stay in Iraq, what happened post-US pull out of Vietnam will happen there. What Bush doesn't get is that whether we stay there or not, we are not changing what Iraq will become for the better. Iraq is on the verge of civil war and we are not going to be able to stop that; we are merely delaying full blown strife.

Bush is trying to play up the Cold War tactic of "containment" minus the Communism, but what he doesn't see is that most of our Cold War efforts to prevent the spread of Communism failed. Our track record for trying to shape countries into how we would like them is pretty bleak. Look at Cuba, Korea, China, Vietnam and now look at our Middle East policy, if I were just looking for black and white, positive outcomes in any of these areas, I would say that our foreign policy and strategy is being dictated by a one-legged, illiterate, semi-autistic, monkey on acid. If Bush had half or even a quarter of a brain left in him, he would realize that, just like in Vietnam, if we stay or if we go will not dictate how the country will turn out but how many American lives will be lost. The United States is extremely good at militarily dominating a country but has absolutely no idea how to deal with other cultures. If we are dealing with other white people, we usually do okay. Throw in an Asian culture or, God forbid, a Middle Eastern one and we are screwed. As a government we have no clue what it means to be Muslim, especially a fundamentalist one. We can't comprehend why they fight amongst themselves and why they fight against us and until we can, we will never have any minute effect for the better on that region. Like the United States learned in its various wars in Asia, I think soon it will start to realize that the best thing it can do to help the Middle East will be to keep out of it and let those countries figure stuff out for themselves. It will be a hard lesson to for George Bush and I doubt he even is willing to learn it but, when we leave the Middle East it is going to get ugly and stuff is going to probably turn out in a way that is not favorable to the US but something we will have to deal with nonetheless.

Whether you like the way China does things or not, you cannot deny that it has become tremendously powerful and extremely wealthy. The key to remember is that it did this largely without the help and against the will of the United States government. Most of the bright spots in Asia came to light without US help. The only real exception to this is Japan and its economy sucks right now, just like ours. It is high time that the United States starts to focus on the United States again. We are the hands that are trying to shape the rest of the world but the sculptor is not as healthy as it once was and needs to work on getting better.

Sadly, I don't think any of this will happen in George Bush's time in office. I voted for the guy twice and I am now positive that the second term was a definite mistake. Given the choices at the time it seemed like the right thing to do but if I knew this is how he would waste his last four years in office, I would have not voted at all that November day. You will hear some of the Neo-Cons say that history has yet to catch up with George Bush and that judgment on the effects of his Presidency are years away. I can save you the wait and tell you right now how history books will see George Bush. He will go down as a middling to sub-par President that happened to get lucky when September 11, 2001 occurred. Thanks to that tragedy he was given the chance to look like a hero and had he only been a one-term President, he probably would have stayed that way and most people would be willing to overlook his stupid quotes and at times "gray area" administrative practices. But thanks to his second term, the majority of the country and the world now see him as a shady, bumbling, unintelligent, hick. His domestic policy and his choice in aids and cabinet members will be compared to those of the Hoover administration, while his foreign policy will be sorted in with the likes of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Many people start off by comparing him to Richard Nixon; what they don't get is that Nixon wasn't that bad of a President policy-wise, but Nixon the man was a shady and paranoid character. As for foreign policy, I dare you to name a 20th Century President that did more good than Nixon did for this country; I can only think of one that would beat him and two that even come close. George Bush on the other hand, has done nothing. He will be a nothing President because he was too dim-witted and bull-headed to grasp or act on what should have been done both at home and abroad. His Vice-President hasn't helped matters either, but then again, Cheney was also Bush's choice. If his track record holds, the next time Bush does anything of positive significance will be when he leaves the office and someone else takes over. He has hobbled the Republican party for at least the next decade and he has back peddled the US in the eyes of the rest of the world. I am frankly ashamed that I voted for him at this point.