Text 19636, 233 rader
Skriven 2006-05-07 07:01:30 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: WOW!!!
==============
Doug's apology
AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER

By Doug McIntyre
Host, McIntyre in the Morning
Talk Radio 790 KABC

There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the
way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you
don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go
out on the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in
my case, hear it.

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In
historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in
the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be
made that he’s the worst President, period.

In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn’t sure about the Texas Governor. He had
name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What?
Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of
President Gore was… unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.

For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new
Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and I
like tax cuts.

Then September 11th happened. September 11th changed everything for me,
like it did for so many of you. After September 11th, all the intramural
idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a
vicious and determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the
same direction.

And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he said
we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11
murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the
terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after
all, that’s where the Taliban was, that’s where al-Qaida trained the
killers, that’s where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced
when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.

I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell
impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a
Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I was
worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, "The Project for
the New American Century." It’s been around since ‘92, and it raised alarm
bells because it was based on a theory, “Democratizing the Middle Eastö and
I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq was being
justified on a radical new basis, “pre-emptive war.ö Any time we do
something without historical precedent I get nervous.

But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat of
Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on
to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the President
said, "The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud." At least that’s
what I thought at the time.

I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I
worked with a guy, Frank O’Brien, who put the elevators in both towers. I
lost a very close friend on September 11th. 103 floor, tower one, Cantor
Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to take out Iraq to make
sure something like that, or worse, never happened again, so be it. I knew
the consequences. We have a soldier in our house. None of this was
theoretical in my house.

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked
repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk,
inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the
President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons
for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus
necessary to catch the real killers of September 11th.

I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the
battlefield decisions, and the war won’t be run from Washington. Yet,
politics has consistently determined what the troops can and can’t do on
the ground and any commander who did not go along with the administration
was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of
Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi
army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new
Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice
President told us we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.ö And I
started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but
what if it’s the wrong course?

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to
victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving
civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed.
Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making  tapes.
It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy
did.  

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably
accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from
now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George
W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make
public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the
votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the
conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle
of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works.
Or both.   

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter,
Warren Harding-— the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst.
Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades
to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His
mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly
authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about
President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined
with reckless spending and borrowing is  criminal mismanagement of the
public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s
credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied
to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true
cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps
nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller
government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown
exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after
the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker’s rights.

I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t bore you with a
rehash. It’s enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the
wages of working people; he’s debased the work ethic itself. "Jobs
Americans won’t do!" He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders of the
country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor
for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational
trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11
world. The President’s January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first
trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. I
couldn’t and didn’t vote for him in 2004. And I’m glad I didn’t.   

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices,
shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign
debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American
people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a
cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the
most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in
any American’s lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public
be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history
remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to
another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you
use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a
distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be
unapologetic in its condemnation.

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the
opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second
crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when
America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck
majority party. It requires it. It doesn’t work without one. Like the high
and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers
a path back to the center where all healthy societies live.

Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic
cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for
anything. In fairness, I don’t believe a Democrat president would have gone
into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don’t know if President Gore would have gone
into Afghanistan. And that’s one of the many problems with the Democrats. 

The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has only
collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was civil war.

I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the
brink of a second collapsed. It’s currently running on spin, anger,
revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.

We’re being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red, white
and blue, but hollow to the core. Both parties have mastered the cynical
arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They’ve learned the lessons of
Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned to divide the nation for
their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness to exploit any
tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt they have for the American
people is without parallel.

This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you, painful to read. But
it’s impossible to heal the country until we’re willing to acknowledge the
truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated
partisan lies.

With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so
broken, it’s almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W.
Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and
women of vision and accomplishment?  Why do we have to settle for recycled
hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic
competence and simple honesty too much to ask?      

It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and
contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility
that I’m all wet about everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it out
there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it
today. I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months
and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational
force of its own.

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t
believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our
own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a
gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and it’s rightful owners,
We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the
damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious
truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost
feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t
generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular
mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be
President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point
whose buying the act?            

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to
call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also
fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were
kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)