Bush

One thing I can't understand is why George W. Bush is hated by so many Americans. Luckily, these jerks aren't in the majority, or at least, weren't in the majority at the last election. I mean, what has he done or not done that is so horrible?

One criticism I hear is that Bush "lied" to the American people to get the country into a war with Iraq. This is absurd, and yet it has become gospel among a certain segment of the American populace. The president didn't lie about WMDs. For one thing, American soldiers have discovered warehouses with bombs in them. Bombs are WMDs. Granted, these aren't the nuclear, biological or chemical weapons intelligence indicated were stockpiled in Iraq, but they are WMDs nonetheless.

But Bush didn't even lie about the big WMDs. Everybody thought there were WMDs in Iraq, based partly on international intelligence and partly on American intelligence collected during the Clinton presidency. It appears now that this intelligence was wrong, but the fact that Bush made a decision based upon faulty intelligence doesn't constitute a lie.

People say that Bush has flip-flopped by changing his story on the reasons for the Iraq war. The line goes that originally, the attack on Iraq was to find and neutralize Iraq's WMDs, then to further the war on terrorism, then to help end the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. This is untrue as well. All three of these reasons for the war were given from the get go. Based on what we knew before the invasion, all three seemed valid, justifiable reasons for the attack. Now it seems that one of those reasons, the WMDs, is faulty. That does not change the fact that Iraq is a sanctuary for terrorists, nor does it change the fact that Iraq suffered under a brutal, murderous dictator. There has been no flip-flop. At the most, the administration has highlighted the latter two reasons for the war since the WMD intelligence has been discredited.

I think the thing that has most people riled up about Bush is the simple fact that he's not polished or well-spoken. True, Bush doesn't have the public speaking skills that Clinton or Reagan had. People are worried that Bush is not suave enough to represent the American people on the world stage. They worry that foreigners will look at Bush and get the idea that all Americans are hicks and rednecks. These are the same people that preach tolerance and understanding of world cultures. Where's the tolerance for the southern white man? Despite what some people may want to believe, Bush is no idiot. He's quite intelligent, in fact. The intelligence doesn't come packaged in a hip, academic wrapper, is all.

These same people are the ones that have a problem with John Bolton as UN ambassador. What they're really scared of is the fact that Bush and Bolton have more in common with ordinary Americans than Clinton ever did.

I heard Bill Maher ranting about Bush the other day, and one of his criticisms was that, when Bush was told about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, he continued reading to a group of schoolchildren rather than immediately jump up and do something. My question: What was he supposed to do? Bush read to those children for seven minutes (according to Maher) after he was told of the attacks. Flat out, there is nothing Bush could have done in those seven minutes that would have made one whit of difference about the attacks. He did the only thing he could have during those minutes that made any difference at all: He stayed calm, kept one group of children calm, trusted in his delegated authority, and, when appropriate, went to handle the situation. After the attacks, people made much of continuing with daily routines to "not let the terrorists win." The only way to defeat terrorists is to refuse to give in to terror. That's the spirit behind those seven minutes.