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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   25852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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He managed the country without it dissolving or getting destroyed.

I disagree - I think he was part of the dissolving. Look at the profits accrued to Halliburton et al as a result of the Iraq war, a war which has had ruinous consequences for the rest of the world. Those private profits came about through the expenditure of the USA's blood and treasure.

He rallied America after 9/11. Getting the nation through that, and stoking feelings of patriotism and solace,

I also disagree here - he (if he actually had much power personally) exploited those feelings to drum up support for a terrible war that he and his friends personally profited from.

This truly sounds more academic than realistic. I think it's well easy to say what you might have done in a perfect hypothetical world, but actually leading the country, and leading the country through such an unprecedented, harrowing event is another thing

Perfect hypothetical world? Who needs that? I can absolutely do a better job that would have far more positive consequences for the future, and I can do it with a single policy statement: Don't start a war of aggression in the middle east so that my friends in business can juice their profit margins at the cost of thousands of lives, billions of dollars and creating not just a refugee crisis but the Islamic state terror group.

I have an intensely heartfelt and deep disagreement with your post and what it implies. There's nothing "academic" about simply not starting a war - there are several US Presidents who avoided starting wars of aggression or invading other countries. The only way I can make sense of your comment is if you're so deeply cynical you believe that the military industrial complex has so much power over the government that the role of President is largely ornamental, and making the decision to avoid the war would have just lead to me getting shot in the head in public so that my war-hungry VP could take the top job.

I definitely don't disagree that he should not have gone into Iraq, and probably not Afghanistan, too. Uhh, I was responding in the car and maybe I got your post mixed up with another one at a similar time, also about Bush and how he responded to 9/11, when I said it was more academic.

Uhh, I was responding in the car

This is actually illegal in my country - please keep your eyes on the road and drive safely!

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