Failures of the Bush Administration*
            Is it just me or is this Bush Administration failing us on every major front? These failures all stem from arrogance and a complete lack of willingness to consider dissenting opinions.  Here is a short list of what I see as the major failures of this administration.  This is not an exhaustive list.   
            9-11 Failures.  Warnings were made.  There was no need to have, as the 9-11 Commission suggested, an active imagination in order to believe that planes could be used as weapons of terror.  All you had to do was read Tom Clancy or the CIA intelligence reports, which mention over twenty separate times that Al Qaeda said they wanted to use planes as weapons.  Better yet, just listen to the Italian authorities who warned us that Al Qaeda wanted to fly a plane into the White House to kill Bush in the summer of 2001.  The famous August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Brief clearly stated that Al Qaeda wanted to kill Americans inside the US.  But these and other warnings were ignored. 
            Al Qaeda.  One of the phrases that Bush tends to use to firm up support for the War in Iraq is “we have to hit them over there so that they will not hit us over here.”  This statement completely ignores what we already know about Al Qaeda from the August 6th daily briefing and from the 9-11 Commission report.  Both reports clearly tell us that al Qaeda members are already here in the US.  Why have there not been any significant arrests of Al Qaeda members in the US outside of that California jail ring? 
            Korea.  Shortly after Mr. Bush became President Bush, without consulting any of our allies, he declared that the government of North Korea is a bunch of liars.  President Bush said to a reporter in early 2001, “Part of the problem in dealing with North Korea, there's not very much transparency. We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements. And that's part of the issue that the President [of South Korea] and I discussed, is when you make an agreement with a country that is secretive, how do you -- how are you aware as to whether or not they're keeping the terms of the agreement.”  Apparently with no discussion outside of Bush’s inner circle of neo-cons, the President decided to pull out of all previously negotiated agreements with North Korea.  President Clinton had just spent the last four years of his presidency working with North Korea to warm up the chilly air.  If Clinton had not been completely engaged in trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a good chance that he would have traveled to North Korea to begin talks on how to open up North Korea’s economy.  Secretary of State Albright had been in North Korea to lay the primary groundwork for a possible Presidential visit.  All of this came to a halt when President Bush blew North Korea a large raspberry. 
            So, we started six party talks with Russia, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and China.  Bush’s rhetoric was particularly harsh.  North Korea fought back with a promise to begin building nuclear weapons. Bam!  They kicked out the nuclear inspectors.  They invited journalists to see the reactor start up.
            A couple of months ago after years of no progress, the Bush administration announced, on a slow-news Friday, that it had concluded a new agreement with North Korea.  The North Koreans would agree to stop making nuclear weapons, dismantle the nukes that they made, and let the inspectors back in.  We would agree not to attack North Korea and discuss a light water reactor.  Isn’t this the exact same agreement that President Clinton made back in 1994 with the exact same safe guards – none?  Didn’t Newt and the gang roast Clinton for making that agreement back in 1994?
            Iraq.  The ingredients of poor planning and not enough troops equals quagmire.  Holding elections under Marshall Law is not my idea of democracy.  Going to work and not having to worry about getting shot, kidnapped or blown up…now, that’s a start on democracy.
            Social Security.  Oh my, this was a spectacular failure.  President Bush, just after the election of 2004, stated he had a mandate and political capital that he thought he needed to spend.  His first agenda item was Social Security.  Our President wanted us to trade in Social Security for private accounts.  Private accounts that would be managed by Wall Street.  The American people weren't buying it.  So, President Bush decided to take his show on the road to convince the American people that he was right.  "60 stops in 60 days."  The more he talked, the more he tweaked the numbers, the less sense the plan made.  All the economic think tanks (except the conservative ones like Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute) stated that the President's plan would increase the deficit by trillions of dollars and decrease security for the poor.  In March of 2005 only 56% of Americans opposed private accounts.  By May of 2005 an ABC News --Washington Post poll showed that 64% of Americans opposed private accounts.  This bold new idea that President Bush proposed, which was first proposed in 1964 by Barry Goldwater, can now be categorized as officially dead.
            Katrina.  No matter how you slice this tragedy, the Bush Administration dropped the ball.  Since 9-11, we have spent tens of billions of dollars on disaster preparedness.  So where did all of that money go?  Learning from the problems in the New York the 9-11 commission made specific recommendations on communication equipment.  What was one of the first systems to fail in the gulf coast region?  Communications equipment.
            FEMA’s experts on disaster management simply did not execute a plan of which the American people could be proud. When we remember that FEMA evacuated over a million people with Hurricane Floyd in September 1999 without a major issue, the problem comes into focus.  Bush changed the agency.  He downgraded its cabinet level status.  He placed FEMA in the enormous, new Department of Homeland Security.  To add to the mess, money allotted to disaster management was diverted to homeland security.  Finally, the top directors at FEMA had no disaster management experience.  Stir this up and you get the disaster that is the Gulf Coast. 
            What is the purpose of government?  If the government is supposed to keep us safe from terrorists and help us in times of natural disaster, then our government has failed us.  This failure is one of leadership.  If, on the other hand, the government is supposed to look out for business (Wall Street) and keep an environment in which big business can have double digit growth every year, then the Bush administration is a huge success.
            What do you want from your government?


· with writing and editing assistance by Catherine Ross, PhD. 

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