This letter is in response to Rick Wallace’s op-ed praising President Bush. I like Rick but his letter made me sick to my stomach. I would like to give fellow Malibu citizens a chance to consider a few other facts before declaring George W. Bush a great president.
About “not getting hit by another terrorist attack” is a ridiculous reason for praising Bush/Cheney.
There was a lack of response to incoming intelligence all summer, 2001, on an imminent attack and a failure to order fighter jets sooner over NYC and Washington. Whatever has caused us for not getting hit again it is certainly not by us destroying Iraq or Afghanistan in war-without-end. These bankrupting wars have only created more terrorists.
Bush/Cheney have concentrated unprecedented power in the executive branch of government by pushing legislation through Congress at time of crisis. Notice the Patriot Act, the executive order giving Bush the power to suspend elections and declare martial law. In this crisis in the financial market caused by the deregulation of the Greenspan era, greed, carelessness and rampant gambling on complicated derivatives, we can watch Bush/Cheney/Paulson scare Congress into handing over my grandchildren’s tax revenue to the Executive Branch.
The crisis of rising oil prices is making many Americans consider saying “yes” to drilling off our shores and in protected areas of the Arctic.
Bush/Cheney have bankrupted America. They took a surplus of money and turned it into a 9.8 trillion dollar deficit so far, putting America’s economy in the hands of foreign investors and outspending any President in history. So much for Republican small-government ideals.
Bush/Cheney stand for corruption, incompetence and torture. They have rolled back the state of our environment by decades, ignored climate change, and wasted eight years of potential breakthroughs on clean power by supporting big oil, coal and natural gas, instead of building an economy around an emerging Green Energy industry. They were criminally incompetent in handling Hurricane Katrina, declaring a no-fly zone so we couldn’t see the bodies floating away!
I’m sure there is more, but this collection of facts is enough to consider before any Malibuites, however Republican they may be, dare to call the past eight years of Bush/Cheney success on any level.
Kara Soufer