Yeah, Bush has the power to exert influence, but the president has enough power to start the ball rolling, or sign it into law. So, when we have a bunch of bickering fat cat do-nothings in the House and Senate, the things the president wants to get done are usually nullified. It's sad too when the idiots in both houses of Congress stop a bill that's sponsored by the president, the president is the one who gets blamed for said bill not getting passed.
I blame the house and senate for the war, and the Patriot Act too, but the one person with the power to veto it proposed one and
strongly supported the other. Bush had a Republican majority in the Senate and House for much of his presidency so most of the things passed in the Senate were supported by him.
Dart said:
So? First off, the supposed damage is not nor will ever will be irreparable. It's an obvious impossibility. Besides, what makes the U.S unique is we don't care much about what others think about us. If that's bad, then oh well.
Well then we should start caring because anti-U.S. sentiments is a major reason why we didn't go into Iraq with U.N. backing. France and Germany, two European countries on the security council (or Germany was at the time, at least) whose populace was largely alienated by Bush, voted against the war. They would have been far more likely to vote for the war if the call for war was being lead by someone who didn't come off as an aggressive war-monger.
But oh please, can we count them? Reason being, my rights haven't changed much. I still legally possess guns (they are only weapons of mass destruction in the eyes of furry woodland creatures), I can come and go as I please, and generally have little contact with government entities. So I'd like to see the list of "countless freedoms" that have been altered.
On a side note, the good thing about being libertarian is I get to support both people carrying guns, and other personal freedoms that are usually supported by democrats.
As for the rights that were taken away, the Patriot Act removed every right related to privacy. It gave the government the right to spy on every one of its citizens in almost every aspect of their lives (any one that could be easily listened to that is). Next, I'll have a telescreen in my living room. It also gave the government the right to search and seizure of someone's property without a warrant or their knowledge. In addition, it allowed for immediate and permanent deportation of any immigrant, regardless of how long they have lived here.
He has also overseen a large increase in extraordinary rendition, wherein a prisoner is shipped abroad and is not allowed to undergo due process. They essentially disappear and the government can do as they please with them.
The biggest problem with these things is that there is a noticeable lack of oversight or checks and balances. The deportation of immigrants is not allowed to come under judicial review, searches and seizures are reported to the victim after a waiting period that is not pre-determined (it is a "flexible standard" according to the FBI), wiretapping has literally no limitation to it, and rendition, by definition, is without
any oversight. It's as though they set up the system to be abused.
I digress. I cannot tell how bad it is. All I know is personally, my income has not been jeopardized. And being that I am a married middle-class homeowner with three kids, my world can be rocked by the slightest intrusion of the federal government within my wallet.
It is the fact that this debt must eventually be gotten rid of. Bush had an unbelievably fiscally irresponsible policy and the debt it created will one day have to be paid back by the American taxpayer. He threw the budget so unbelievably far out of balance.
Revolutionary War casualties: 25,000. War of 1812: 20,000. Mexican-American War: 13,283. Civil War: 625,000. WWI: 116,516. WWII: 405,399. Korean War: 36,516. Vietnam: 58,209. Iraq: 4,197.
The two most common wars, Vietnam and Iraq, don't even come close in casualties. Vietnam was bloody. Iraq, in terms of casualties, is not. In fact, the Philippine-American War had 4,196 casualties, and it's not listed as common knowledge.
It was actually the Spanish-American War, though there was a rebellion in the Philippines soon after they realized that the U.S. wanted them as a colony.
Anyways, I was referring more to the 100,000 or so Iraqi casualties, which is comprised mostly of innocent civilians. Without the destabilization of the country caused by the war, they would not have died. Incidentally, this is also where reckless comes into play. Bush didn't consider just how chaotic and destabilized the country would be upon U.S. occupation, when a glance at Vietnam should have shown him the kind of guerrilla resistance that comes about when a foreign power enters a divided region.
Pointless, maybe. But then again, if it were truly pointless, then not everyone deserves to be free.
Regardless, it is not our job to impose our form of government upon the rest of the world. That is the very thing we criticized and often fought wars with the Soviets over. In Iran, for example, they have the sharia in place, but it has popular support. While I
definitely don't agree with that kind of theocratic government, it is not our job to tell Iranians what type of government they want and what type of government they should have.
