Tomorrow arrives the day a great many of the populace have craved for since November 2004, the unequivocal end of the current administration's eight year executive reign. The perception of President Bush during his two terms have swung wildly on the approval line chart. He oversaw the most calamitous operation to be carried out on American soil in generations - nee the Operation of the Century as the Iraqi state deemed it in September 2001. In a matter of hours, the Islamic chickens had come home to roost, nourished by previous Presidents' inflaming escapades on the soils of Saudi, Iraq, Libya; the empowering of religious warriors in the quest to combat Soviet aggression; the unabashed devotion to the Israeli state's hold on Muslim land.
What road was Bush to take? The road towards combating Islamic fanaticism had been paved long before his inauguration, and if there was anything the US was still best at among anyone in the world, it was sheer military might. The American street was hell bent on a paralleled response to the bold and brilliant Muslim exercise employed on 9/11/01. This was a chess game after all, and the previous moves had been made in the preceding 22 years. This time, Bush and his planners would chart out the following moves in advance, the other side's response be damned.
We live under a system of representative government. It is we, the people, who choose the candidates to voice our opinions, requests, and demands. It is in that body of representatives that lies the power to use military force. We chose nearly unanimously to engage the Taliban and terrorist threat. Then again we were asked approval for military action against Saddam's Iraq, and even the opposition political party who controlled the US Senate decided to give George Bush his pass to start the 2nd war. There certainly were no cries of disapproval during the October 2002 war deliberations among the governmental bodies (save for the man who will take the oath tomorrow). Iraq was not and is not George Bush's war - lo, it is the American people who own it.
There were two other points of damnation the political left has seared onto Bush's legacy, quite unfairly. One is the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina. There was no foreseeing the breaching of the levees. The city was given an evacuation order, yet it was the failure of the local and state government that supersedes any fault among the federal body. Secondly, Bush has been cast as a racist. How does it strike those critics when the first black secretary of State, the first female black secretary of state were appointed by Bush 43. His spiritual adviser, the man who officiated his daughter's wedding, is black. Bush has provided more aid to fight AIDS in Africa than any other president.
We must all analyze the George W Bush years and its effect on us not by how others perceive it - the biased media, academics, entertainers, but rather, how has his policies affected YOU...if at all. You'd be surprised by the answer.
