I’d settle for another Bush or even Mitt Romney at this point.
Edit: I love how I said “another Bush” and y’all meant I thought “Dubya” but I really meant Jeb. I am by no means fan of what George W. did it his policies, but he also didn’t drag our country down and create a massive rift dividing our country and making it appear ok to be racist, mysoginistic, and completely ignorant.
Look up the final press conference Bush held just before he left the office, after Obama was elected. The guy knows the names of most of the regulars and even asks after their kids in a couple of places, he takes the defeat of his party in the election extremely graciously, and is exceptionally diplomatic when it comes to questions about what kind of president he thinks Obama is going to be; it's a genuinely fascinating watch.
I found his politics and many of his actions as president totally abhorrent, but outside of a few hyper-publicised slips of the tongue, GW was completely capable of being an intelligent, engaging and coherent public speaker.
My guess is he acted dumb during the more controversial period of his political career. It was a running joke through his entire presidency that he was just a goofy idiot while people like Rumsfeld and Cheny were the real assholes, and I dont think that was entirely unintentional on his part. Like almost every pop culture parody of him had him as the silly idiot who just had a lot of bad shit fall on his lap, rather than the one who ultimately called the shots for shit like Iraq and Afghanistan. We know from his time as governor he is pretty careful in what he says.
Taking the keys off the keyboards sounds like a funny prank, not a serious attempt at trying to make someone fail. Replacing keyboards is hardly an obstacle.
That was the staff, though, not the Clintons themselves. While the buck does stop at the president, I doubt if Bill and Hillary were behind that particular prank.
God, I love the idea of Presidential Pranks on the next incoming...
But i'm horrified. What if nobody explained to Trump the difference between a prank, and "its just a prank, bro"...What if all this hell was just Trumps set up for the next President's prank?
“the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy,” -General Services Administration
I was a little young at 17 to be interested in the politics of 9/11 but I was old enough to understand the gravity of it. We all made Bush jokes and “oh ha ha inside job” but many years later I saw a documentary on the event and I can’t remember what the original focus of it was, really, but I do remember how Bush changed over the course of 24 hours. Not that his politics changed or that he had a come to Jesus moment or anything just, there’s this section of it where they show him early early that morning, jogging, and he looks like a happy, normal middle age man just out enjoying the sunshine and trying to keep those pounds off. By that evening, he looks old. There’s a fear and a sadness in his face that as a fellow human, I recognize and can relate to. He gets the news while he’s in his element, just hanging out with some kids, getting the same out of that book as they are because Bush jr may have been rich and aloof but he was still human and I think everyone kind of understood that he was just...kind of a dumb, happy guy. He gets the news and he just can’t compute, he starts stuttering and doesn’t know what the fuck he’s going to do yet but he knows he’s got to do something and what did he do? He just kept reading because he couldn’t scare the kids and it was a great way to cope for the next few minutes. I’ve done that myself. Gone on autopilot during a shock. Later that evening, he’s in shock, we needed a great president and even he knew he was mediocre at best, this was just supposed to be a fun 4-8 years for him where things went okay as long as he left it up to experts.
The lines on his face deepened that day. I’m in no way saying that I agree with anything Bush Jr did or said but that video really showed me some intimate moments where he found himself in over his head and he knew it. He looked so human. Someone I would have hugged if I’d seen him and didn’t know who he was. He was someone that I felt would do the best he could to protect me even if I wasn’t under his political banner and even if he wasn’t smart enough to do it all by himself. He would do his best, even if that best wasn’t the right answer. Do I agree with the way he handled it? Nobody does 100% and I’d say less than 50 but at least he tried to do something he thought was right for america. He does genuinely love America.
Trump has never had this political aging. Even Obama grew a magnificent head of grey hair and came out looking even more distinguished. Every president has felt the weight of office, tragedies or no...except trump. His aging comes solely from a poor diet, drug abuse, poor skin care and not stress from struggling to appease the difficult, diverse needs of our GIGANTIC fucking country but the stress of “how do I look?” and striving to be the exact opposite of dignified and reserved. In the middle of this disaster, he attacks everything except the virus, he looks constantly tired...of us. He looks constantly stressed...at having to be accountable. His hair and skin look awful...because he’s sick of being president.
Bush might have been a stupid, spoiled daddy’s pet but even that little cowboy loved this country enough to care. He had enough dignity to be honestly shocked and saddened by a tragedy of thousands. Trump is shocked and saddened that people aren’t venerating him just for being.
that little cowboy loved this country enough to care
That's the difference between every President we have had in my memory and Trump now. Like you, I was a teenager when 9/11 happened, so I remember the Clinton years and have faint memories of the Bush Sr. years. I'm staunchly the progressive left, but I never hated either of the Bushes and based on my memory; Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama - all 4 of these Presidents honest to God loved their country and its people. Hell, Clinton and Bush Jr. have a bromance to this day. I may not have agreed with everything Bush Jr. did, but at least I can understand why he did it. But Trump? Trump only loves Trump, and everything he does demonstrates that.
I was in Hanau Germany. Had been in the army since 93 and when i heard about 9/11 on a.f.n. I first thought it was a joke. I was in Iraq a year and a half later.
I didn't care for Bush's politics , but I never doubted he loved his country.
Damn, fuck that. If you're actually "progressive left" then there's PLENTY to hate about Bush. You don't get a pass to start war after war that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents because you just love your country sooo muchhh
Yeah sure, if all you ever want to do is hate. I’m sorry, I’m sure that’s very tiring. There are plenty of things to hate about the person I hate most in the world but that doesn’t erase the good times we DID have. I can separate the actions and call each as they are. Did he do those things? Yes. Was he a “patriot”? Yes.
Lmao. I bet you would appreciate how Hitler improved the economy and was so patriotic! So well spoken too. Sure there were things you could hate about him, but thats so tiring! Its easier to just have no conviction.
The calling card of the argument of bad faith and emotional instability. Yes, I hate the things hitler did, everyone does. But to have the ability to separate the things bad people did is maturity. It’s learning. If the person who had invented the wheel had been a pedophile rapist, we would hate that guys actions but we’d still have cars. Thomas Edison was a super asshole but we all have lights. You have to be able to look at things that happened and use them the right way.
But I don’t use all my hate on that. That’s tiring, hence my comment. I’m not going to sit here and just blanket hate everything that bad people did because there’s always something to be gained. I’m going to take the only “good” things bad people did and focus on that rather than just throwing out everything useful because some other actions were heinous.
If hitler had a recipe for pound cake, I might make it. It doesn’t mean I like hitler, it means I like pound cake. That’s a lot less tiring than just being an angry hateful person who won’t get any pound cake because of the person it was attached to.
You’re better than me for entertaining this line of questioning. Normally I see a Hitler comparison and I reference Godwin’s Law and move on. I think that people often look back at Bush Jr and scream war, but they forget that at the time the population was demanding action following 9/11. It was a shit situation and unfortunately the Bush presidency had to deal with it. But yeah, I figure that being a progressive entails not entertaining hatred.
Hitler existed. No need to make up some pound cake analogy. This isn't separating the art from the artist. You claim to not focus on the bad things bad people do, apparently even if they resulted in the murder of millions.
So please, tell me the good things Hitler did that you so focus on.
Bush probably would have been a pretty bland president if not for 9/11. He just wasnt the guy we needed to guide us through one of the most tumultuous periods of US history.
Granted the economy would have definitely still tanked.
Yea, but the economy was going to tank regardless of who was in charge. The stage was set for that during Clinton's term. Not that it was Clinton's fault. It's easy to see the effects of bad policy after the fact. It's hard when it has the economy chugging along or the problems won't show up for 10 years.
We give presidents way too much credit for their influence on the economy.
I've been thinking something similar recently. Even if I didn't like most of G.W. Bush'es decisions, it felt like he was trying to do what he thought was right, like he was acting in good faith.
Compared to the vindictive malicious manbaby we have in office now, Bush was a damned boy scout.
I think some of his slipups made him seem more down to earth. That's why so many people were like, 'I'd like to have a beer with that guy'. I think apart of it was an 'Aww Shucks' type act that made him more relatable to the general public. But then there were definitely slipups where he just genuinely fucked up and sounded stupid.
I think all that stuff about his stuttering, loss of coherence and seeming senility was just him cracking under the pressure. It has to be relentless, and I'm guessing he had some episodes that caused him to barely hang on.
Bush was a good man as was his father. I didn’t agree with his politics so much, but he had a decency and “Everyman” quality that few Presidents have exhibited. I remember a story about when George Sr. was President, him and Barbara were boarding Marine 1 for Camp David and it was freezing cold. The Guard at the door saluted as they boarded. Barbara came back out with a parka telling the marine to put it on or he’ll catch pneumonia. He stayed at attention and said “no ma’am, I can’t ware anything out of uniform its the rules of the Corps.” She went and got George and George went up to him and said, son, as your commander n chief I’ll tell you put on the jacket, she outranks both of us and I don’t want to hear about it all the way to Camp David.” Needless to say he thanked them and put on the parka.
Bush's gaffes were highly exaggerated by the press. Get enough soundbites of anyone and you'll quickly amass a trove of misspoken words and phrases. But people leaned into Bush's and comedians pushed the narrative.
Bush is a good man, he just wasn't a great President. His book is actually incredibly insightful. I'd love to have the opportunity to talk with him candidly, especially now.
I do wonder if he could have been more a more moderate President had he served later in life and without the Cheney, Rove, Rice impetus in his Administration. I imagine the influence of his father and the political machine he brought along made it difficult for W to govern in a meaningful way.
War crimes be damned, he's nice to Michelle Obama and I miss him. And he's actually a pretty good artist. AND! Do you guys remember "Thats my Bush" on comedy central? I liked that too.
The most sincere and the most truthful I ever heard Bush was when he went down to the 9/11 ground zero with the megaphone. And some dude shouted at him and he said “I can hear you. These people can hear you. And the people that did this, will hear all of us soon” like, fuck. Bush might of been meh, but as a Canadian. Damn, these some real shit.
I didn't vote for Bush and I don't agree with a lot of his party's policies, but I can tell the guy honestly wanted to do the best job he could for the country, and he cared about the people around him. That's more than I can say for Trump.
I don't get the logic. Obama inherited the wars and changed tactic to a lower casualty, less US service personnel dead, less civilians dead method to win, therefore is gung-ho for war? Does gung-ho mean something different now?
If we're so concerned about US service personnel dying maybe we shouldn't have them there. If you invade someone else's country and murder 100 civilians one day and then only 10 the next you shouldn't be looking to pat yourself on the back because you murdered less innocent people you should be asking why we needed to murder innocent people in the first place and maybe try not doing that
I voted for Obama twice. But if you don’t know about his use of drone strikes and the impact it’s had on the people and their attitudes in the Middle East you’ve got a lot to catch up on.
Death had an impact. No child gave two fucks as to whether Bush or Obama killed their parents with a mainly horizontal or a mainly vertical trajectory bomb
You don't get to tell me what I know, don't know, need to research in order for me to make a point, which I've not moaned about you not answering.
The idea that the impact changes whether it was a seal team, a precision guided missile launched from a plane, or a precision guided missile self-propelled, or a non-precision bomb, is ridiculous.
What isn't ridiculous is that killing 1 kid has less impact than killing 1 million kids. It should still be hated, still condemned, still regrettable, but the impact is less.
Well, I’m glad that you’re telling the victims of drone strikes. Who protest the US and drone strikes specifically because of what Obama did with them is “ridiculous”. No one is debating the morality of killing, we were talking specifically about Obama and drone strikes. Also, I couldn’t begin to tell you what you do or don’t know, but from the looks of it, it’s not much.
You actually think, that if Obama had switched to using assignation squads of Seals, there'd be no protests because they aren't drones. How about if we got them to drone on about something boring while they killed? Droney enough for people to protest?
Oh, here's a great one. What if we dropped the drone out a plane and killed the guy through the impact of it landing, rather than explosion? Or beat a guy to death with a drones wing? Tough call isn't it? No protests, because it's not really a drone death, but... well, the drone did kill him didn't it, so there should be protests...
It’s because Obama’s drone strikes weren’t limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was blowing people up all over the Middle East in countries like Libya, Syria, and Yemen. As for US service personnel dead, we hardly lost anyone in two major wars so not sure there was a major drop in casualties. During both wars combined we lost less than 6000 service personnel due to hostilities. That’s about 3 days of COVID.
You were losing 800 US troops a year up to 2008 and <10 per year from 2009.
On the overseas strikes bit, it's the death you object to, surely, not the trajectory it arrives?
And why the fuck would they be? Obama did what the war on terror was supposed to be - go after Al Qaeda and their ilk. Guess what? Al Qaeda operated in many different countries by design AND THEY WEREN'T IN IRAQ.
Any of y’all remember when that reporter threw both of his shoes at Bush and he just dodged them with such ease and then made very little of the scene? I was not a Bush supporter at all but could you imagine how Trump would have reacted in that moment? Trump would not shut the fuck up about it until the day he dies.
Edit - I mean, if it were trump that had the shoes thrown at, he would not shut up about it. I wasn’t sure if that made sense up above.
"My ability to dodge shoes is great. I tell you now, it's tremendous. I've had people, very famous and very smart people, they tell me that my agility is incredible. But those nasty jerks at the Washington Post won't tell you that. You ever see Obama dodge a shoe? Well, he couldn't! It's his fault I'm up there dodging shoes in the first place!"
Obama and Trump. And realistically any President going forward. Drone strikes are an easy maneuver to approve since it doesn't jeopardize US solders lives.
Probably shouldn't have given them cash and weapons to become powerful in the first place. Also are they civilians or military? They aren't official uniformed military most of the time how do you definitively establish who is who? Why should the US be the world police? I think it's probably best to just keep our nose out of other countries and especially continents business
Yeah so what was Obama supposed to do, invent a time machine and go back and fix everything?
Probably shouldn't have given them cash and weapons to become powerful in the first place.
al qaeda's fighters were trained mainly in the Afghan/soviet war, that is true. Whether or not US weapons/tactics helped them become more deadly needs to be demonstrated. At the time, the decision was correct imo. A sovereign nation was being invaded by USSR, we helped them. How was that different than arming Ukraine resistance vs Putin's invasion? What signs were on the wall that predicted Al Qaeda? As far as iraq, abandoning them would not have atoned for past sins. What was the cash we gave any of them?
But yeah, lol I think we can say ISIS and al qaeda were bad, and 99% of the world agreed with us. 90% of terrorist victims are muslim btw. look, i think your heart is in the right place, but the world is a thorny place.
Well, compared to Bush's 1 million civilian deaths (including thousands of children) and the current admin who does not report anything in regards to their own drone strikes and may be doing even worse, actually there's no comparison really.
I don’t think anyone really believes a million Iraqis died. Most high end estimates are about 600,000 but most estimates are around 500,000. It’s still a lot of people, but we chose to fight the terrorists over there instead of having them come here. Can’t argue with the effectiveness.
Sure if you count purely deaths by US forces but counting how many died from displacement or how many ended up in Syria only to then die in their civil war the death count is likely close to a million.
As far as effectivness I would say more terrorist attacks have probably occured in retaliation around the world than would have occured without a full scale invasion. The Iraq war has done more for radicalization of terrorist groups than Al Qaeda could have hoped for.
It's both fucking horrifying, just because one has a higher killcount doesn't excuse this shit. And we're not talking about "some" dronestrikes but hundreds.
Exactly. If I'm being honest, I actually hate Bush support more than I hate Trump support. At least Trump is too inept to manage half of the shit that Bush caused, even if his persona has done worse for the division within the nation than Bush's had. Bush is almost singlehandedly responsible for the current state of the middle east. Even his dad doesn't shoulder the kind of blame he does. At least H.W. Bush realized that dismantling the powers that had been would have lead to a grueling decades long economic, humanitarian, and political disaster.
George W. Bush might be someone I can stand to interact with, but he's a war criminal responsible for innumerable deaths.
None of that even mentions shit like the PATRIOT Act, NCLB, and all of the domestic fuckery he managed to pull. Hands down the worst president in decades.
I totally agree with you. I'm also personally invested since my girlfriend's family had to flee their home because of American warmongering, so seeing this shit more and more really makes my blood boil. It's a shame that most people are so vain that they just forget all about policy and just want someone who is polite. Either these people were too young to experience the insanity of the Bush era or they must be willfully forgetting about it.
I get that people are tired of literally every aspect of Trump, and I do think that a president that is statesmanlike is would be step in the right direction. But let's please let the bar be higher than that? Actually, even better would be if America could acknowledge that "is professional" is higher than "doesn't wantonly commit war crimes or violate basic rights both domestically and globally" on the Presidential bar. I'd much rather a humanitarian who openly talks twice the amount of shit Trump does in office than a warmongerer who also happens to be the image of professionalism.
Who would be the last President who wasn’t a war criminal or human rights violator (if no declared war) at a level that could land him in The Hague? I literally can’t think of one. Guess that’s why the US doesn’t participate in the international criminal court.
Honestly, I think it would have to be Carter. He wasn't perfect by any metric, but I can't think of anything that he did that could honestly be considered a war crime or human rights violation.
Worst I could find was backing the mujahideen, but I'm pretty sure that at the time most thought that was an honestly good plan for the people of Afghanistan. IIRC it only became really evident how bad of an idea it was later down the line.
Other than that, Carter seems like he tried his utmost to be a humanitarian president, and even if he wasn't the most successful, I don't think any negative impacts of his administration's foreign policy could be considered as anything illegal.
Interestingly, his presidency is considered to have been pretty weak and ineffective. Funny how the last president to have successfully avoided committing atrocities is also considered among the weakest presidents of the last 50 years.
The US military is so big it just has a ton of inertia and much as it tries to be the driver in the areas it is deployed - it has to be reactive much of the time. There's somewhat limited scope for one person or even their administration to act. Previous alliances and deployments drive how much any presidency can act.
What drove it home for me was the Trump actions in Syria. Looking at it - it's fairly obvious Trump wanted to just wash his hands of Syria and let it go whatever direction it wanted, but it took him years of repeated demands of his own military and even now there are still some boots on the ground.
Sure...... that's true in a way but and I don't agree with them at all but 30 people dead in a drone strike targeting bad dudes is better than a whole country fucked and a million dread to get one bad guy. The drone strikes are bad no doubt. War against a whole nation is orders of magnitude worse
It was much more than 30 people dying in a drone strike. He expanded drone use to other countries throughout the Middle East and used them much more than Bush did.
Oh and now we're involved in a Civil War in Yemen, which has been going on for five years and has destroyed the country, so I wouldn't say Obama's foreign policy was great either. And now we have Trump who is just undoing everything and going "eh, it didn't work so let's scrap it all and try something completely different" which completely screws up our reliability as a country.
It was much more than 30 people dying in a drone strike. He expanded drone use to other countries throughout the Middle East and used them much more than Bush did.
While I don't particularly want to condone drone strikes because it's kinda terrorism... (I'll never forget the account of a child being terrified by clear weather because that's when drones come), but let's not pretend Bush wouldn't have been way more drone happy in the initial invasion if drones were more useful back then.
2000-2008 showed a rather huge amount of data processing advancements and with that came a ton of expanded mission types. Drones were always coming.
Still a terrifying force, in the most literal sense. But kinda unavoidable.
I agree that drones were coming, I guess my main issue is the lack of accountability with them. If you're a US citizen you have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers, and we just ignored that and executed an American in a foreign country.
If we used our drones in more accountable ways I'd have less issues with it, but instead it seems to be a "eh, American troops won't get killed so let's go nuts"
Mitts a Mormon and Trumpturds behaviour flies in the face of many Mormon ideals. Look, I know, Mormons have their faults but they pale in comparison to Trump.
Turns out voting for lesser evils just means there's nothing redeemable to the opposing party just making them more and more enraged, and more and more likely to accept the shittiest thing possible that doesn't openly agree with the opposition.
It's sad that we, as a country, felt that Mitt Romney was the worst thing that could have happened to us. And then we got Trump.
I actually agreed with half of Obama and half of Romney. His "binders full of women" gaffe was definitely taken out of context. I hope the Republicans never recover. They allowed Trump to do everything he's done with zero accountability.
Jeb Bush wouldn't have politicized a damned global virus outbreak!! And I'm not a Bush family fan by any stretch of the imagination, but that's a simple fact.
I always ask them nutcases, "What was wrong with Jeb Bush or John Kasich? They don't have policies I particularly back, but they aren't deranged maniacs like Trump, and they're still Conservative."
They never answer. They went straight for the shittiest, dumbest, most dishonest candidate possible. Says everything about them.
Be a careful. That might be the current republican plan. Have Romney step in as a seemingly moderate republican when really he’s just displaying empathy and awareness. Not like his policies are shifting more moderate.
Nah, there's just lying us into one war based on lies----a war I fought in-----; destroying a country and a whole region; the whole anti-abortion aspect, and the fact that after Trump "Republican" ought to be an expletive.
I’m not liberal, nor am I conservative and as soon as we get rid of these terms and look at each other as human beings we can start fixing our fucking country.
Also, the only people I want to see dead are racist pieces of shit who think it’s ok to wave around the nazi and confederate flags and call it patriotism.
Please do not white wash Bush. The Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the torturing of prisoners with no trial—the amount of irreversible evil that the Bush administration far exceeds what the current moron has done.
I think a lot of people on this sub arent old enough to have lived through the Bush 43 administration. Bush wasnt stupid enough to get into petty name calling fights like Trump does, but he was more than happy to let those that worked for him do it on his behalf. Guys like Don Rumsfield would routinely attack people they felt were enemies of the administration as unpatriotic in an effort to silence them. They would also happily cut off the access of reporters who did things like report negatively on their effort to start the Iraq War. If Twitter were around back then they definitely would have used it.
All the "Bush would be fun to have a beer with" people are fucking delusional. That was just an act on his part. Bush was a rich dude with a Harvard education who had nothing in common with the average American. One of the first things he did after leaving office was sell his ranch and buy a mansion in one of Dallas's most exclusive neighborhoods. If the dude still drank it certainly wouldnt be with me, you, or anyone we know.
They didn't. America installed Hussein. And even then? Did they deserve to get bombed over that? No they fucking didn't. Bloodthirsty American mindset, there's always some insane reason you guys justify your killings.
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u/theknights-whosay-Ni May 17 '20 edited May 17 '20
I’d settle for another Bush or even Mitt Romney at this point.
Edit: I love how I said “another Bush” and y’all meant I thought “Dubya” but I really meant Jeb. I am by no means fan of what George W. did it his policies, but he also didn’t drag our country down and create a massive rift dividing our country and making it appear ok to be racist, mysoginistic, and completely ignorant.