[image source]It's interesting to be in another country as the 9/11 anniversary approaches. The US media is all over the story, but the reporting is so biased as to be laughable.
ABC News just asked a White House advisor on Homeland Security if we are safer now than before the attack. I'm sure you can pretty much write the response yourself -- perfect Bushite propaganda. And all the networks do this crap as though it were actual news and not mere propaganda.
I am forced to wonder how the world would be different if we had been led by a man of vision and intelligence rather than the painfully limited man now in the White House.
* We would most likely have captured Osama bin Laden, or have killed him. Most likely we would have also captured or killed most of the other al Qaeda leaders.
* We would still have a harmless and contained Iraq. Under this scenario, the Israelis would not have had to bomb Lebanon into the Stone Age.
* We would have had serious resources to intervene in Darfur, where there is a true humanitarian crisis -- a crisis that has existed for a decade or more. Both Bush and Clinton failed on this one. But, hey, there's no oil in the Sudan.
* The US economy would be much stronger internationally without the enormous increase in our national debt. There would be more jobs, higher incomes, and a more powerful dollar.
* The US -- and the world -- would be safer. With Bush's invasion of Iraq, he created the instability necessary for terrorists to get on-the-job training.
But, instead, we had George W. Bush. I can't imagine a situation under which things might have been handled worse than Bush has handled them.
I'm sure the conservatives out there will flame me (assuming they still read this blog) for being such a naive liberal. They will argue that Al Gore would have been the wrong man for the situation.
Too bad the Supreme Court took away our right to know if they are right.
tag: George Bush, 9/11, Iraq, Al Gore, Osama bin Laden, Israel, war, terrorism, al-Qaeda, war on terror
Bill,
ReplyDeleteWe probably are safer now than before the 9/11 attack.
Three-quarters of al-Qaeda's leaders have been killed or captured, but more importantly, the organization has been cornered and cut off from funds. The problem now isn't al-Qaeda, as it was, it is the culture of anger in the Middle East that the Bush Administration stupidly aids.
The war in Iraq has been a fiasco, but Saddam was an ongoing nightmare for the Iraqi people: After gassing hundreds of thousands of Kurds, running torture chambers, and war with neighbors, Saddam build a dozen palaces for himself during the 'containment' while starving his people. Some containment that was, held in place by US jets and run by the corrupt UN.
I don't see the leap to how we might now be better able to help in Darfur. The propoganda must have gotten to me since I am of the understanding that America has been more courageous than the rest of the world in trying to aid Darfur.
I certainly agree that Bush is terrible -- the very worst president in our history. But the best of the rest of the world is timid and self-interested and eager to find fault with American policies, while, at the same time, unwilling to sacrifice to confront the monstrous leaders of totalitarian regimes.
I find it instructive that a significant minority of moslims in Western Europe side with the terrorists -- something you don't find in very integrated America.
Be not too hard on Uncle Sam. He will always stick his head up above the crowd and catch extra flak because of it. The rest of the world, meantime, is not so fine as it thinks itself.