My Lessons are Different
There is so much talk about lessons learned, now that Katrina and Rita are history. And yes, there were plenty of lessons learned, and lots more not learned, about our country's preparedness for disasters, our leadership and their strengths and weaknesses, and especially about government bureaucracy.
But for me, the lessons are different. I see the constant piling on the president with 20/20 hindsight and second-guessing, along with outrageous accusations ranging from secret orders from the president to blow up the dykes in New Orleans (see Farrakan) to the hurricanes themselves being an Israeli plot. Yes, those are extreme forms of kookism, but it's not too far of a stretch to compare them to the poll results provided by an all-too-willing Bush-hating press corps that something like 75% of black people believe that the problems with the government's response to Katrina were racially driven.
Amazingly, in a previous post that was eaten by Blogger, I seemed to have the ability to predict the future. Because, sure enough, just as I expected, reports from the anti-war rally in DC over the weekend quoted Cindy Sheehan and her cadre of left-wing crazies equating Katrina with the Iraq war, all in an attempt to continue painting the president as evil incarnate. They hope to lay every death from Katrina, Iraq, and even 9/11 at Bush's doorstep.
Then noted global climatologist Barbra Streisand gets invited on TV morning news shows to reveal to everyone that Katrina and Rita were directly caused by, *gasp!*, Global Warming! And her accomodating interviewers make no attempt to question her credentials for making such statements, but rather bow and scrape to her as America's very own form of royalty.
So what conclusion can the public reach, who have been informed only by CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN, other than this: Bush is a liar and a criminal who is singlehandedly responsible for global terrorism, invading an innocent soverign nation (Iraq) and killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens so Halliburton can get fat government contracts, refused to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol thereby accelerating the planet's demise of which Katrina is only a preview, and nominated a supreme court justice who wants to kill pregnant women and bring back the bad old days of institutionalized racial hatred and inequality.
Wow. I sometimes wonder if I'm the crazy one. Because it is getting to the point where I can no longer watch a TV news program without becoming nauseous over the continuous hammering on our president for all manner of inflated and invented sins. But even more disturbing is, if polls are a proper gauge, the strategy by the press to marginalize the president seems to be working. More and more people seem to be questioning Bush's performance and rethinking their support for the war in Iraq.
Does anybody out there remember why the war started in the first place? That congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the war? That since then, we have not had a single successful terrorist attack on our own soil? That the primary so-called "insurgent" group car bombing Iraqi civilians and US troops right now is Al Qaida? Agree or disagree with the original decision, how can any reasonable person argue that an immediate pull-out of Iraq would not result in anarchy, which would be certain to lead to a radical Islamic government emboldened to increase terrorism against the US? Not to mention the fact that the numbers of Iraqis killed in the intervening power struggle would likely dwarf the numbers of insurgents killed in the current war?
I feel like I'm in some sort of Twilight Zone episode, where I'm surrounded by zombies who have been mesmerized by Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer into believing and repeating the left-wing mantra: "Bush is evil", "Bush is a criminal", "Bush doesn't care about you", "Bush sucks".
The president is no satan. He's also no god. He's a politician, who is flawed in many ways. I'd love to spend a half-hour with him voicing my disappointment in his inaction on illegal immigration, his failure to use the bully pulpit to oppose pork-barrel spending in a now Republican congress, his overly laissez-faire approach to trade and big business, and his lack of meaningful action on healthcare (and I don't count the Medicare Prescription Drug plan, which I think started as an OK idea but was poorly designed and implemented).
My vote for Bush both times (2000 and 2004) were not necessarily because I thought he was a fantastic President, but because the alternatives, Gore and Kerry, were unacceptable. And I continue to have no doubt about the correctness of those judgements.
But for me, the lessons are different. I see the constant piling on the president with 20/20 hindsight and second-guessing, along with outrageous accusations ranging from secret orders from the president to blow up the dykes in New Orleans (see Farrakan) to the hurricanes themselves being an Israeli plot. Yes, those are extreme forms of kookism, but it's not too far of a stretch to compare them to the poll results provided by an all-too-willing Bush-hating press corps that something like 75% of black people believe that the problems with the government's response to Katrina were racially driven.
Amazingly, in a previous post that was eaten by Blogger, I seemed to have the ability to predict the future. Because, sure enough, just as I expected, reports from the anti-war rally in DC over the weekend quoted Cindy Sheehan and her cadre of left-wing crazies equating Katrina with the Iraq war, all in an attempt to continue painting the president as evil incarnate. They hope to lay every death from Katrina, Iraq, and even 9/11 at Bush's doorstep.
Then noted global climatologist Barbra Streisand gets invited on TV morning news shows to reveal to everyone that Katrina and Rita were directly caused by, *gasp!*, Global Warming! And her accomodating interviewers make no attempt to question her credentials for making such statements, but rather bow and scrape to her as America's very own form of royalty.
So what conclusion can the public reach, who have been informed only by CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN, other than this: Bush is a liar and a criminal who is singlehandedly responsible for global terrorism, invading an innocent soverign nation (Iraq) and killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens so Halliburton can get fat government contracts, refused to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol thereby accelerating the planet's demise of which Katrina is only a preview, and nominated a supreme court justice who wants to kill pregnant women and bring back the bad old days of institutionalized racial hatred and inequality.
Wow. I sometimes wonder if I'm the crazy one. Because it is getting to the point where I can no longer watch a TV news program without becoming nauseous over the continuous hammering on our president for all manner of inflated and invented sins. But even more disturbing is, if polls are a proper gauge, the strategy by the press to marginalize the president seems to be working. More and more people seem to be questioning Bush's performance and rethinking their support for the war in Iraq.
Does anybody out there remember why the war started in the first place? That congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the war? That since then, we have not had a single successful terrorist attack on our own soil? That the primary so-called "insurgent" group car bombing Iraqi civilians and US troops right now is Al Qaida? Agree or disagree with the original decision, how can any reasonable person argue that an immediate pull-out of Iraq would not result in anarchy, which would be certain to lead to a radical Islamic government emboldened to increase terrorism against the US? Not to mention the fact that the numbers of Iraqis killed in the intervening power struggle would likely dwarf the numbers of insurgents killed in the current war?
I feel like I'm in some sort of Twilight Zone episode, where I'm surrounded by zombies who have been mesmerized by Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer into believing and repeating the left-wing mantra: "Bush is evil", "Bush is a criminal", "Bush doesn't care about you", "Bush sucks".
The president is no satan. He's also no god. He's a politician, who is flawed in many ways. I'd love to spend a half-hour with him voicing my disappointment in his inaction on illegal immigration, his failure to use the bully pulpit to oppose pork-barrel spending in a now Republican congress, his overly laissez-faire approach to trade and big business, and his lack of meaningful action on healthcare (and I don't count the Medicare Prescription Drug plan, which I think started as an OK idea but was poorly designed and implemented).
My vote for Bush both times (2000 and 2004) were not necessarily because I thought he was a fantastic President, but because the alternatives, Gore and Kerry, were unacceptable. And I continue to have no doubt about the correctness of those judgements.
posted by Dan S. at 1:20 PM
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