Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Eight facts that burnish Bush's record
National Post ^ | November 29 2008 | David Frum

Posted on 11/29/2008 6:53:30 AM PST by knighthawk

With the U.S. economy in crisis, George W. Bush’s already slumping popularity levels have sagged even deeper. This summer, his own political party kept him away from its national convention in St. Paul. The President himself has been reduced to wistful hopes that history will somehow justify him.

At this low point, some counterbalance:

1) Even as you read this, Indian commandos are waging a deadly urban battle against Islamic terrorists. Those soldiers have almost certainly trained with U.S. Rangers or Marines — part of an intensifying U.S.-India security partnership that has been one of the most signal foreign policy successes of the Bush years. Otto von Bismark is supposed to have said that the most important geopolitical fact of the 20th century would be that the United States and Great Britain spoke the same language. Bush’s strategic entente with India may well prove the most important geopolitical fact of the 21st.

(Excerpt) Read more at network.nationalpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: bailout; bush; bush43; bushbailout; bushlegacy; bushsellout; frum; giveaway; gwb; sellout; trillion; wallstreet
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-82 next last
To: Savage Beast; rbg81

Dittos. How some Freepers can still drink from the Bush/Rove kool-aid jug and ignore the utter disaster to Reagan Conservatism Bush-43 is leaving behind is appalling.


21 posted on 11/29/2008 7:50:33 AM PST by DTogo (I haven't left the GOP, the GOP left me.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Hawthorn

“Did you actually read the article? Frum isn’t writing for you or me or his lib friends. He’s writing for history”

You are apparently not aware that Frum is persona non gratis due to his opportunistic trashing of Sarah Palin during the campaign.

I read the article. As usual, his insights are pedestrian.

Did you know Frum is Canadian?


22 posted on 11/29/2008 7:50:37 AM PST by y6162 (ater)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: RetiredArmy; rbg81

So you think we should go into Afghanistan and straighten things out? What a great idea. I wonder when we’ll think of that?
What’s that you say? We’re already there? In fact we went there long before Iraq? What a concept.
/s


23 posted on 11/29/2008 7:53:20 AM PST by Past Your Eyes (All points of view tolerated...as long as they agree with mine.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Between the Lines
Next to protecting the country after 9/11 it was the best thing he has done.

Tell that to the thousands of Americans victimized by illegal alien crime and violence each year after 9/11.

24 posted on 11/29/2008 7:54:36 AM PST by DTogo (I haven't left the GOP, the GOP left me.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: rbg81
So, I left an “e” off the end of a word. Big deal. Didn’t your momma tell you that nitpicking is the sign of a pissant?

That's the only one you spotted?
25 posted on 11/29/2008 7:54:38 AM PST by aruanan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: rbg81

” I think Iraq was unnecessary”

Iraq was Bush I’s problem to solve. Your vote for Perot gave that job to Clinton. Clinton refused to do anything because he was beholden to Soros who apparently had an inside straight to Sadaam’s oil money. This was in spite of Iraqs involvment in the first World Trade Center bombing.

Then, please recall, the stationing of our troups in Saudi was the primary reason that Bin Laden gave for 9/11.

If the regime change had not been done, pressure from Germany, France, Russia, our leftests, etc would have ended sanctions & Sadaam would likely have the bomb now. Fortunately for us most of his atomic weapons program has likely joined any number of unknown antiquities in the Iraqi desert.


26 posted on 11/29/2008 7:57:15 AM PST by Western Phil
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: griswold3

Right you are. Never have I seen any one person so venemously attacked, so hated for no reason as this man.

As soon as I saw who his foaming-at-the-mouth enemies were, I knew he was doing something right. I read a fair bit about him and came to admire him greatly.

Even if I am the last person on earth saying it, he is a good and decent man and deserves much respect.


27 posted on 11/29/2008 7:57:19 AM PST by JudyinCanada
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: JudyinCanada

Thank you, Judy. You are very much correct and I agree.


28 posted on 11/29/2008 7:59:10 AM PST by Past Your Eyes (All points of view tolerated...as long as they agree with mine.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: aruanan
"That's the only one you spotted?"

LMAO! That is the stragy, I suppose.

29 posted on 11/29/2008 8:03:05 AM PST by Past Your Eyes (All points of view tolerated...as long as they agree with mine.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Bushbacker1
...but coincidentally, it happened during a democrat controlled, do-nothing Congress.

Do nothing?
They did plenty.
Too much IMHO.

30 posted on 11/29/2008 8:03:51 AM PST by XR7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: JudyinCanada
I believe they have such ferine hatred for Bush because early on he mentioned Jesus....from then on it was guilt by association.
31 posted on 11/29/2008 8:04:05 AM PST by tioga
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: aruanan

But you must admit, he did ruined the Republican Party.
/s


32 posted on 11/29/2008 8:05:12 AM PST by Past Your Eyes (All points of view tolerated...as long as they agree with mine.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Ditter

Bush has fought the so-called War On Terror on the one hand, while on the other he’s tried mightily to erect yet another islamist state...in Israel no less.

For all his successes, such monumental idiocy deflects most of his achievment.


33 posted on 11/29/2008 8:06:42 AM PST by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: RetiredArmy

Disagree with the personal aspect of US targets in the Middle East. Saddam was the biggest out of control player. And the word in the Administration was who says he’s the last.

That was early on when we were making despots worry and Kadafi himself was shaking in Libya thinking that he was next on the target list.

In that regard, Libya was nothing to Saddam who had bribed the international league of immoral nations and was beginning the campaign to have sanctions lifted entirely.

Kay has completed his report and acknowledged that Saddam had all the components of his WMD program in place and would need very little time to kick it in gear.

The world would have looked very different in 2004 or 2005 if Saddam had remained in power. People tend to overlook that. The US had no support as the French and the Germans were sufficiently in the tank to allow Saddam to reconstitute his arms. Russia and China would have been happy as well with shipments ready to go for the petrol dollars.

The whole Bush Administration wanted Saddam out as they saw him as the biggest destabilizing influence in the region. There was not even the knowledge at that time of the ties to Al Qaeda that went back to the early 90s.

And need I remind you that here in New York, Iraq was the only nation that refused to lower their flags to half mast after 9-11.


34 posted on 11/29/2008 8:09:32 AM PST by romanesq
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: tioga

Yes - that’s what it’s all about.

You can have, say, a president-elect call himself a Christian (except when he accidentally refers to his Muslim faith) and nobody is bothered. Why is that? Could it be that they know full-well he isn’t?

Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. Obama says very clearly how non-Christian he is by his pro-abortion position. The left knows full well that there are certain things he must say to get elected, and being “Christian” is one of them. He is, however, one of theirs - talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.

President Bush was a Christian by actions and that is what they hated him for.


35 posted on 11/29/2008 8:11:37 AM PST by JudyinCanada
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: Past Your Eyes

“you think we should go into Afghanistan and straighten things out?”

I have spoken with several people who have been there. I haven’t, but know its reputation is the ‘death of empires.’

I am increasingly content with how we have handled Afghanistan, as the Alq types ride in and run away like fighters in Monty Python movies, or they hide in those hills. If OBL is holed up in some cave or hut somewhere on the border, or moves around with his dialysis equipment, he is contained. That we don’t see him at all tells us something, now, doesn’t it.

The old tradition of the last Abbasid caliph going down to the basement and never coming back up, or of the hidden imam, or of the mystical martyr, Hussein (in the religion, not Saddam), goes way back in this culture. OBL’s value going forward is now part of that myth and love of legend, sort of like the myth of the ‘Palestine’ as an actual lineage and birthright—when the word was coined on a map by Hadrian (?) as an insult to Judea and the Jews.


36 posted on 11/29/2008 8:16:52 AM PST by combat_boots ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."Aldous Huxley)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

by this culture, I meant ME culture.


37 posted on 11/29/2008 8:19:24 AM PST by combat_boots ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."Aldous Huxley)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: rbg81; pissant
The only thing that Bush got a bad wrap for is Hurrican Katrina.

So, I left an “e” off the end of a word. Big deal. Didn’t your momma tell you that nitpicking is the sign of a pissant?

The missing "e" was just a typo or a minor misspelling. The use of the language problem was the use of "wrap" instead of "rap." I'm not sure if that's nitpicking - I decided to consult the true pissant to have an expert make the call.

I would say I'm mostly in agreement with your list. I would add that he signed McCain-Feingold and trusted the court to find it unconstitutional instead of vetoing like he should have. (You might have considered that covered by #5.)

I do believe Iraq was necessary, but we were to determined to play nice and rebuild before we were done breaking things. Bush likes to claim he brought freedom to millions, but the new Iraq is even less tolerant of religious minorities than the old Iraq. (Democracy isn't freedom, it's the tyranny or the majority.) We should have insisted on a constitutional republic that respected religious minorities. We also should have been taking reimbursement for our efforts out of their oil money.

38 posted on 11/29/2008 8:26:40 AM PST by Gil4
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: KC Burke; knighthawk

Bump to the top.


39 posted on 11/29/2008 8:29:45 AM PST by Liberty Valance (Keep a simple manner for a happy life ;o)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: combat_boots
I did a quick Google search and you are quite correct, it was indeed Hadrian who applied the moniker, after the Bar Kochba revolt of 132-135 AD.
40 posted on 11/29/2008 8:32:36 AM PST by SoCal Pubbie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-82 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson