Rewrite!

I've been hearing the bleatings of ex-Bush administration officials and other assorted "conservatives" (i.e. statist reactionaries) on the airwaves lamely attempting to reframe the history of the past eight years, now that it is safely past (and fading from the collective memory). You got your Ari Fleischers, your Frank Gaffneys... a whole rogue's gallery of familiar mugs, bandaging up what is without question the most sorry record in recent presidential history. This would be amazing if we lived in a sane world - as it is, it's just kind of laughable. Obama (which is to say, we) should be grateful that Bush rid the world of Saddam Hussein. W.t.f. - grateful for what? Saddam wasn't even a credible threat to Iraqi Kurdistan, let alone the United States. Is the world a better place without him? Not really. Not that Saddam made it any better, but simply because of the fact that it hasn't gotten any better since his passing. So even by the standards of the classic post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy, this claim doesn't work. Too many liberals fall into the trap of voicing pavlovian agreement that we are better off without that tin pot Iraqi dictator. I say, demonstrate how, exactly.

Don't say we're safer, because we're not. We've destroyed Iraq as a functioning nation, killed about a million of its people, and driven millions more into exile. Aside from the untold (by the mainstream media) misery that has meant for Iraqis, that is a formula for disaster for the rest of us. Now we can expect payback from an entire generation of Iraqis and, more generally, people in the Muslim world who sympathize with their plight. We've killed their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. ... and we will certainly hear from them again. So... are Iraqis better off? Decidedly not, after the experience of the last six years - far more deadly and destructive than Saddam's worst pogroms (many of which were carried out with our support, it bears remembering).

What about the "Bush kept us safe after 9/11" argument? Well... setting aside the fact that the time to keep us safe would have been before the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil ever, not after, this defense is pretty thin, too. More Americans have died since 9/11 than on that dreadful day, thanks to Bush's elective wars, so I guess it depends on just who Ari Fleischer means when he says "us". This claim is mostly based on the specious assumption that the Bush team stopped terrorist attacks, but if they had uncovered any actual operational terror attempts, they certainly would have broadcast their success over and over again, judging by the extent to which they bloviated over those kids from Buffalo who went to Afghanistan, or Jose Padilla who thought about maybe building a bomb, or those guys who fantasized about blowing up the Sears tower. It's a little hard to swallow that the Bush boys would have kept the lid on actual open-and-shut terror cases they'd foiled when they made so much hay over these lame examples. And, of course, there are many objective measures that place the threat of terror attacks at a much higher level than before the invasion of Iraq.

And the bit about fifty-odd straight months of growth followed by an unprecedented financial meltdown? Well... Madoff could make that claim. Maybe Bush should get 150 years in prison, eh?

luv u,

jp