Did Bush do anything right?

[Pseudonym2]

Did bush really do anything wrong?

Sure, plenty of people are against him on policy, but I can't think of that many things he objectivly did wrong.

And it isn't like this is a monarchy, the president has way less power than people tend to think.

There was a topic back in December called Why does everyone hate George Bush Jr? This was my response. It's a long list.

Spoiler

hese are the first things off the top of my head. Sorry I don't have enough time to go look up all the sources. Sorry for any typos. Yes, I hated him when he was still governor. Note these are not exclusive to Bush or even Republicans alone. Also this ignores deeper problems of hegemony but that would take entire books to explain.

9-11 (whether he caused it or just screwed up is irrelevant)

Illegal and immoral war in which thousands of civilians were killed.

Downing street memo
The funds from those wars weren't spent on education or infrastructure, like say, levees.

Abysmal "with us or against us" policies that pissed of the rest of world.

The only world leader in all of recorded history to raise taxes and go to war at the same time.

This lead to record debt. I lost count once we reached a few trillion.

Fired scientists when they came up with results that would be politically bad for him

Advocated torturing innocent people

Blackwater

John Poindexter

Karl Rove

Best friends with Ken "Kenny boy" Lay

Spying and other civil rights abuses including spending $600-million dollars spying of quakers. Infiltrating peaceful anti-war groups but ignoring KKK and actual domestic terrorists.

A new level double speak and Machiavellian phrasing (clean air act, healthy forest initiative)

A new level of secrecy.

Classified millions of unclassified documents

Color coded systems that tell terrorists when we are most prepared.

Push polling

Homophobia

K-street

Tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest fraction of a percent

Environmental deregulation

Supporting dictators

Poor treatment of troops and veterans.

Pandering to the religious right (he announced his run for president at Bob Jones university)

Favored candidates for office based of loyalty. (Heck of a job Micheal Brown!)

Played guitar while people drowned.

Leaking CIA agents WHILE they were on duty.

Stopping innocent people from voting/having their votes counted.

Deregulation, which lead to abusing workers, environment, ect.

Favored gas industry.

Lost 363 tons of money in Iraq.

When he was governor of Texas executed record number of people and did infamous mocking of the people he executed.

Racist anti-drug laws.

He stopped crazy people from getting medicine and when they were arrested he claimed he was saving money and being "tough on crime". (That happened to my uncle)

Drunk driving (4 times for Cheyney)

Got out of having to go to Vietnam yet is still a hawk.

Took a record number of days off.

Lied to SEC

Tricked Texas into paying for his new baseball stadium.

Bankrupted everything he's ever run.

Could not find oil in Texas

Could not have been as "successful" if it were not for his parents.

As for things he did right, giving money to Africa is the only thing that comes to mind.

 

[CIA]

You know this was a thread about what he did right. However everyone only seems to be talking about what he did wrong.

More material. Also, if you hadn't noticed, everyone on here disagrees a lot...

 

[Dragon Zero]

You know, a lot of people criticize his invasion of Iraq (obviously). He had a lot of potentially good reasons, but they all ended up not being true. But think about it. If Saddam didn't have WMDs, he would have soon. If he wasn't harboring terrorists, he would have been soon enough. Besides, Saddam was a terrible dictator and torturing/massacring huge amounts of innocent civilians, which we as the United States are supposed to stop if we are truly the "world police."

So, if we didn't go into Iraq then we would have had to soon enough. In fact, it's better that we did when we did before Saddam could build up his military, help launch terrorist attacks, or develop more chemical weapons or WMDs to use against us when we did go in.

So, we might have gone in for the wrong reasons, but it ended up being the right thing to do. Besides, did you ever consider that the Bush Administration knew all this, and purposely told the people Iraq had WMDs, whether they did or not, so that they could go in at the best possible time?

Sometimes the government is a lot smarter than you think. It may have been wrong to mislead the populace in order to be able to declare war on Iraq, but it was the right thing to do. Sometimes the government needs to do things like this for the greater good.

And note that I'm saying that it was right to just invade Iraq and depose Saddam, not the entire Iraq War. After we defeated Saddam's military we needed to have a smarter occupation than sit on our asses in the desert and let insurgents take their anger out on us.

Damn, someone said it better than I ever could!

Anyway, I don't judge a president until a certain amount of time has passed since their exit from office. History must be the way of determining a President's effectiveness. Jackson was well liked during his time, in fact even though we give him all kinds of criticism, there was no other president that parties of the time tried to emulate in order to guarantee that their president would gain the office (why else would the Whigs choose William Henry Harrison over Henry Clay), so judging Bush this soon seems irrelevant.

Also all the Bush-bashing got old about five minutes after it started. I mean good God people imagine if something like John Adams' Sedition Act was in effect while Bush was president. At least you should give him that I don't think anyone on this forum could take the amount of verbal abuse that was offered to him.

 

[Internet Kraken]

You know this was a thread about what he did right. However everyone only seems to be talking about what he did wrong.

More material. Also, if you hadn't noticed, everyone on here disagrees a lot...

True but the errors of the bush administration have already been discussed to death.

 

[j0frenzy]

He didn't really do as much wrong as people make it out to be. The main point people bring up is that he got us into the war in Iraq. What people should realize is that it was immediately after 9/11, and nearly everyone supported the invasion. Looking back, it was foolish, but if we're gonna sacrifice the lives of our soldier we might as well do something good for the world. And then there's his IQ level...yeah he was pretty stupid. Let's face it, he wasn't the worst president ever, or even near it, and people should look at the facts before the accuse him. I'm not saying I supported him, but honestly, he's better than Kerry, and he's definitely better than Gore...He'd spend all our money on massive ice cubes to cool the ocean down or something...

Actually, I don't personally view him worse for the Iraq invasion (though I have never agreed with it). My point of contention with the man is the PATRIOT Act and the way he ran his campaigns as nothing short of a mud-fest.

 

[CIA]

You know this was a thread about what he did right. However everyone only seems to be talking about what he did wrong.

More material. Also, if you hadn't noticed, everyone on here disagrees a lot...

True but the errors of the bush administration have already been discussed to death.

I know. I kinda want to discuss what he did right, just so I can clarify it for myself.

 

[DrDeath3191]

I don't think Bush was all that bad.

The Iraq War was provoked by intelligence brought by the CIA from a source called Snowball. This informant told the CIA that Iraq DID have weapons of mass destruction. Not only that, but since the Clinton era, EVERYONE thought they had the bombs. So the Iraq war is not Bush's fault, but the CIA.
Let's not forget the brief campaign in Afghanistan. And I say brief because we KICKED ASS! That was handled perfectly by everyone involved, including Bush.

Bush is deemed 'bad' now because of Iraq, and that was a fault of someone else. As for the homefront, I can't say quite yet. It will take some time before any bills he has passed will show their effects. I can't say for certain that he was a great President yet, but I'm sure we've had worse.

 

[CIA]

During his administration..

No Child Left Behind.
Texas' Standardized Testing System. (Partly in No Child Left Behind)
Patriot Act.

Edit: Those are some of the screw ups to those who asked.

You thought the patriot act was a good thing? Dont let the fact that it has the word "patriot" in it fool you. It was possibly one of the most un-american things any president could have done, in the sense of almost making it legal to violate legal rights.

Check the edit.

By my reasoning I noticed that you have no problem with no child left behind, care to explain?

Actually i feel stronger about no child left behind. From its narrow curriculum standards to making it easier for military recruitment, its a good idea in theory but the loopholes are enourmos and leave too many options for exploitation or exclusion. Due to its incentive driven base schools could very easily manipulate test scores, schools basically were rewarded for their failures how did that make any sense? Also schools that threatend to cut or completely illiminate military recruiters were in danger of losing government funding under no child left behind. So in short, that policy sucked also, i just hate typing this much.

Well, we agree. I'm the intellectual orphan of No Child Left Behind.

I don't think Bush was all that bad.

The Iraq War was provoked by intelligence brought by the CIA from a source called Snowball. This informant told the CIA that Iraq DID have weapons of mass destruction. Not only that, but since the Clinton era, EVERYONE thought they had the bombs. So the Iraq war is not Bush's fault, but the CIA.
Let's not forget the brief campaign in Afghanistan. And I say brief because we KICKED ASS! That was handled perfectly by everyone involved, including Bush.

Bush is deemed 'bad' now because of Iraq, and that was a fault of someone else. As for the homefront, I can't say quite yet. It will take some time before any bills he has passed will show their effects. I can't say for certain that he was a great President yet, but I'm sure we've had worse.

We, the Culinary Institute of America, had nothing to do with that.

 

[Inverse Skies]

He reacted in the correct way to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, one of the most shocking tradegies to ever befall your country. What he might have gone on to do in places such as Iraq is questionable, but the intitial reaction the to the terrorist attacks was the correct one, its just a shame we're unable to win in Afghanistan yet as they're putting up a hell of a fight.

 

[dreadedcandiru99]

Sure it's easy to bash ol' dubyuh, but is there anything he did that you think is a positive?

He left.

 

[supermaster1337]

Oh, I admire him. Truly. No other man could possibly have done such a fine job to ensure that Obama got elected in the last election. It was a superb performance.

NICE. That is probably the best thing he ever did. i applause your answer. lol

 

[elemenetal150]

During his administration..

No Child Left Behind.
Texas' Standardized Testing System. (Partly in No Child Left Behind)
Patriot Act.

Edit: Those are some of the screw ups to those who asked.

You thought the patriot act was a good thing? Dont let the fact that it has the word "patriot" in it fool you. It was possibly one of the most un-american things any president could have done, in the sense of almost making it legal to violate legal rights.

Check the edit.

By my reasoning I noticed that you have no problem with no child left behind, care to explain?

Actually i feel stronger about no child left behind. From its narrow curriculum standards to making it easier for military recruitment, its a good idea in theory but the loopholes are enourmos and leave too many options for exploitation or exclusion. Due to its incentive driven base schools could very easily manipulate test scores, schools basically were rewarded for their failures how did that make any sense? Also schools that threatend to cut or completely illiminate military recruiters were in danger of losing government funding under no child left behind. So in short, that policy sucked also, i just hate typing this much.

school weren't rewarded for failures, they are penalized. The lower the test scores the less money the school gets....now that doesn't make sense

 

[supermaster1337]

ive seen that alot, what is a flame war?

 

[dnnydllr]

Did bush really do anything wrong?

Sure, plenty of people are against him on policy, but I can't think of that many things he objectivly did wrong.

And it isn't like this is a monarchy, the president has way less power than people tend to think.

There was a topic back in December called Why does everyone hate George Bush Jr? This was my response. It's a long list.

Spoiler

hese are the first things off the top of my head. Sorry I don't have enough time to go look up all the sources. Sorry for any typos. Yes, I hated him when he was still governor. Note these are not exclusive to Bush or even Republicans alone. Also this ignores deeper problems of hegemony but that would take entire books to explain.

9-11 (whether he caused it or just screwed up is irrelevant)

Illegal and immoral war in which thousands of civilians were killed.

Downing street memo
The funds from those wars weren't spent on education or infrastructure, like say, levees.

Abysmal "with us or against us" policies that pissed of the rest of world.

The only world leader in all of recorded history to raise taxes and go to war at the same time.

This lead to record debt. I lost count once we reached a few trillion.

Fired scientists when they came up with results that would be politically bad for him

Advocated torturing innocent people

Blackwater

John Poindexter

Karl Rove

Best friends with Ken "Kenny boy" Lay

Spying and other civil rights abuses including spending $600-million dollars spying of quakers. Infiltrating peaceful anti-war groups but ignoring KKK and actual domestic terrorists.

A new level double speak and Machiavellian phrasing (clean air act, healthy forest initiative)

A new level of secrecy.

Classified millions of unclassified documents

Color coded systems that tell terrorists when we are most prepared.

Push polling

Homophobia

K-street

Tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest fraction of a percent

Environmental deregulation

Supporting dictators

Poor treatment of troops and veterans.

Pandering to the religious right (he announced his run for president at Bob Jones university)

Favored candidates for office based of loyalty. (Heck of a job Micheal Brown!)

Played guitar while people drowned.

Leaking CIA agents WHILE they were on duty.

Stopping innocent people from voting/having their votes counted.

Deregulation, which lead to abusing workers, environment, ect.

Favored gas industry.

Lost 363 tons of money in Iraq.

When he was governor of Texas executed record number of people and did infamous mocking of the people he executed.

Racist anti-drug laws.

He stopped crazy people from getting medicine and when they were arrested he claimed he was saving money and being "tough on crime". (That happened to my uncle)

Drunk driving (4 times for Cheyney)

Got out of having to go to Vietnam yet is still a hawk.

Took a record number of days off.

Lied to SEC

Tricked Texas into paying for his new baseball stadium.

Bankrupted everything he's ever run.

Could not find oil in Texas

Could not have been as "successful" if it were not for his parents.

As for things he did right, giving money to Africa is the only thing that comes to mind.

Half of the things you said were rumors spread by Bush-hate groups. The other half were mostly untrue....for christ's sake just because he was president whenever 9/11 happened did not make it his fault, and more or less the entire government approved the war...you guys really need to get your facts straight...

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Bush didn't do anything right or wrong, he's too plain stupid, and he was just Cheney's puppet. And if you're asking if Cheney did anything right? The answer would be "not on purpose."

 

[quack35]

Bush made a lot of mistakes.

But much of the time he was just a scapegoat.

 

[supermaster1337]

Aid for Africa. That was nice of him.

Africa doesn't need any more AIDS.

Racist.

nice.

 

[twistedshadows]

Oh, I admire him. Truly. No other man could possibly have done such a fine job to ensure that Obama got elected in the last election. It was a superb performance.

So true.

 

[dnnydllr]

He didn't really do as much wrong as people make it out to be. The main point people bring up is that he got us into the war in Iraq. What people should realize is that it was immediately after 9/11, and nearly everyone supported the invasion. Looking back, it was foolish, but if we're gonna sacrifice the lives of our soldier we might as well do something good for the world. And then there's his IQ level...yeah he was pretty stupid. Let's face it, he wasn't the worst president ever, or even near it, and people should look at the facts before the accuse him. I'm not saying I supported him, but honestly, he's better than Kerry, and he's definitely better than Gore...He'd spend all our money on massive ice cubes to cool the ocean down or something...

Actually, I don't personally view him worse for the Iraq invasion (though I have never agreed with it). My point of contention with the man is the PATRIOT Act and the way he ran his campaigns as nothing short of a mud-fest.

The Patriot Act did not take away the right's of the people as much as people make it out to be. If you were a suspected terrorist, they could tap your phone, etc. Otherwise, it had no effect on you and no one who is innocent needs to worry about it. I'm all for the right to privacy and everything, but when it comes to saving thousands of lives from another 9/11, or suspending a suspects rights, I'd go with the latter. And, in case you hadn't noticed, there is no such thing as a clean campaign anymore, and his wasn't particularly worse than anyone other politician for the last 50 years.

 

[Glerken]

His initial response to 9/11 was good.

His initial response was to sit there for, what was it, seven minutes? Reading a book after he was told our nation was under attack.
Not to sure that's a good initial response.


On the plus side, he gave a lot of material for comedians and inspired plenty of musicians.