I’ve been corresponding with a Writ reader who asks a very poignant question:
I went back to your blog yesterday and read some more. It was very interesting. Since you were kind enough to answer me and send more communication today, I’ll ask you because I trust that you will give a well reasoned response.
George Bush is far from perfect, but why does the left “hate” him so much?
First off, who’s this “the left” I keep hearing reference to?
Second off, “hate” is a strong word. I don’t hate the man. I figure he even might be a swell fella, fun to hoist a brew with while watching a football game.
The proper feeling is “despair”. George W. Bush makes me despair for my country. I can’t speak for everyone on “the left”, but it is my feeling that Bush is the Worst President Ever, a man who never met a corporation he wouldn’t benefit and a little guy he wouldn’t screw over. He is the great and powerful Oz, a sham of a leader acting as the puppet for Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, Halliburton/Bechtel/KBR, ChevronTexacoExxonMobilShellBP (why don’t they just get the mega merger done already?), EliLillyMerckPfizerBristolMyersSquibb (again…), and the babbling biblical literalists who think the earth is 6,000 years old (dinosaur bones, oil, and all) and the omniscient maker and shaper of the Universe is deeply concerned about what we do with our pee-pees.
Or, as one of blog friends on “the left” (Days) so elequently puts it:
- For 1,900+ dead American soldiers. 15,000+ American soldiers wounded. Countless numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians dead. (“We don’t do body counts.”) For what? For nothing.
- For doing squat since 9/11 to make us safer here at home.
- For the policies that have led to the tripling of global terrorist attacks around the world.
- For seizing on the fear that surged across this country post-9/11 to push your unjustified, unnecessary war on Iraq. Mushroom clouds anyone?
- For “fixing the facts around the policy.”
- For flat-out lying about WMDs. And soooo many other things.
- For joking about those missing WMDs while soldiers were still dying. Yep, that was hilarious.
- For attempting to conduct a ‘war on the cheap‘.
- For not putting enough troops on the ground in the first place.
- For not properly equipping our troops before sending them to war.
- For failing completely to plan for or understand the post-invasion chaos and insurgency. Rumsfeld’s explanation? “Stuff happens.”
- For not firing Donald Rumsfeld.
- For losing track of $1 billion in Iraq earlier this week, added to the $8.8 billion you lost earlier. And hey, how about the $300 billion already spent on this endeavor? We can pretty much consider that ‘lost’ too, can’t we? $300 billion… that’s like an entire hurricane.
- For approving the interrogation practices that led to torture at Abu Ghraib.
- For the August 6, 2001 PDB which stated “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.”
- For being too busy ‘clearing brush‘ to pay attention to that memo.
- For clearing brush. Period.
- For ‘My Pet Goat’.
- For continuing to cover-up 9/11 failures.
- By the way, where is Osama?
- For that bullshit bullhorn moment.
- For squandering the good will the world showered upon us after 9/11.
- For turning so many goddam corners in Iraq that we’re now running in circles with no way out.
- For sending America’s children to be blowed up when you yourself spent the Vietnam era swilling beer in Alabama.
- For the Swift Boat attacks.
- For Karl fucking Rove.
- For rushing back to DC from your ranch to ‘rescue‘ Terri Schiavo.
- For fiddling at your ranch while not rescuing the entire city of New Orleans.
- For having the audacity to link anything, including Hurricane Katrina, to the War (Struggle?) on Terror in order to justify your policies.
- For continuing to reward loyalty over competency, moving forward with your policy of cronyism (and nepotism!) even in the face of the Michael ‘Heckuvajob’ Brownie debacle
- For continuing to allow the crooks and thieves who permeate your party to run wild.
- For having Lynyrd Skynyrd on your iPod.
- For completely ignoring the environment.
- For saying “the jury is still out” on Global Warming.
- For saying “the jury is still out” on Evolution.
- For thinking Jesus Christ was a philosopher. And a Republican.
- For being the only president ever to cut taxes during wartime. And for cutting them in such a way that the richest 1% benefit the most.
- For continuing to insist on making those tax cuts permanent, even in the face of a $200 billion+ reconstruction effort in New Orleans.
- For proposing cuts to benefits for military families to pay for that reconstruction instead.
- For repeatedly treating disaster as an opportunity.
- For an all-time high trade deficit nearing $700 billion.
- For the 7 percent decrease in real value of minimum wage over the past four years.
- For the 11 percent increase in poverty over the past four years.
- For four straight years in which median household incomes have not increased.
- For the 6 million more uninsured Americans created in the last four years.
- For hiding the true cost of your Medicare prescription drug bill until it was already passed.
- For ramming through a transportation bill filled with a record amount of pork to support such “special projects” as Alaskan Don Young’s “bridges to nowhere“.
- For pushing through an energy bill which includes billions in tax breaks for your oily friends as gas prices continue to soar.
- For treating your failed war as though it were a charity, asking Americans for donations to support it. Talk about last throes.
- For ignoring real crises while claiming a “crisis” in Social Security when there isn’t one.
- For being a divider, not a uniter.
- For fueling discrimination and hatred of homosexuals by pushing the frivolous idea of a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in order to polarize the electorate so you could win re-election.
- For “Mission Accomplished”
- For “Bring ’em on”
- For “Last Throes”
- For “We’ll be greeted as liberators”
- For “Smoke ’em out”
- For “Watch me hit this drive”
- For generally being an asshole.
By any objective standard, this administration is a dismal failure and has made a mockery of all the things I love about America. Things like fair elections, habeus corpus, privacy, separation of church and state, care for the less fortunate, protecting our homeland, respecting the environment, curbing the power of corporations, standing for human rights, transparency in government, respect for our military, and so many many more. Bush is steering our country back to the pre-New Deal rich-man’s playground of the Robber Baron era, while simultaneously squandering any post-9/11 worldwide goodwill and alienating what few allies we have left.
But I will say one thing good about Bush: he never got oral sex from an intern and lied about it to America.
(Huge hat tip to Jed at Days)
