GEORGE W. BUSH IN RETROSPECT

I really can't be mad at George W. Bush because he never should have been president in the first place.  He was an unsuccessful business man who was repeatedly financially bailed out by someone, presumably a Saudi Prince.  The fault lies with us the electorate for electing him.  Wait, he wasn't elected by us, the Supreme Court chose him.  His opponent actually got more votes, but was done in by "hanging chads" and aggressiveness by Gays when Ohio was not ready for equality for them.

Granted there are lots of" landmines" in the way of a president becoming great.*  For example, in retrospect, Eisenhower looks pretty good.  He had positive cash flow twice in his presidential terms.  Only Clinton (Bill) has had more.  He made some fledgling moves on racial equality.   He got the interstate highway system.  Perhaps most important of all is that he showed us that sometimes the proper reaction to something is no action.

But then the Eisenhower negatives.  He overthrew a duly elected prime minister in Iran for wanting the same oil deal from BP (actually the forerunner of BP)  as Egypt got (half the profits).  Things have been downhill with Iran ever since.  And then there was the Hungarian uprising where we fomented them to revolt and then abandoned them.

But George W. Bush (Bush-43) had two absolute disasters that he plunged us into.  One was going to war in the Middle East, something we have been mired in ever since.  The other was the Great Recession  (It is not PC to use the word depression any more) because he believed that the financial industry is "self correcting" and didn't need regulation.  All of a sudden banks, as a result of the lack of regulation, stopped being staid conservative institutions and became go-go organizations.   It didn't help that he also got a tax cut during the war that was performed on the cuff. We are still mired in both disasters but have done much, much better on the recovering economy that should be called The Great Recovery.

Many pretend to see no difference between a recession and a depression.  Recessions are usually due to large buildup of inventories and recover when inventories work their way down whereas depressions are a collapse of a financial system and are self perpetuating unless something drastic is done.

There are those who say that the Great Depression was not overcome until WW-II with its enforced savings through rationing and lack of goods and a continued low birthrate.  In the Great Recession, there is no all consuming distraction such as a World War, which is a great tragedy and certainly not to be recommended.  Industry has to work its way out of the Great Recession with minor help by a congress (other than a small "stimulus program") that refused to have a major infrastructure program to help things along.

In fairness to Bush, once he recognized what he had done, he did start some action to save our financial system through the TARP Program, that Obama continued.   But a lot of damage had already been done.   Though saving the banks has been controversial, it was a key to the Great Recovery we have witnessed by President Obama.

Bush, of course did have some positives, perhaps the most important being Medicare-D (prescription drug coverage), though he left it up to the insurance industry to find a way to pay for it.  He did recognize the importance of Hispanics to our culture.  "Leave No child Behind" was well intended if much hated by the teaching community.

I will also give Bush credit for going to war in Afghanistan because we had to do something after the 9/11 (2001) attacks, even if it ended badly.  President Reagan on the other had "cut and run" from Lebanon after the Marine Barracks massacre and embassy bombings in Lebanon and Kuwait, emboldening the terrorists into believing that, if we were hit hard, we would just withdraw.

George W. Bush's two disasters, unfortunately, greatly outweigh everything else and make him a candidate for the worst president ever, certainly a big step worse than President Hoover.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/05/land-mines-in-way-of-becoming-great.html

ISIS POLICY BY AMERICA

My thought is that Obama is feeling for the minimum U.S. exposure to ISIS territory to accomplish its elimination.  He also insists that the locals participate in the erosion of ISIS.  I agree with this. ISIS seems to be steadily losing ground in Iraq with estimates of 20% loss in Syria.

He is also delaying a major move against Assad until some agreement is reached on a replacement for him.  We didn't do this in Libya with chaos resulting and two governments.  There are some encouraging signs of the two governments merging, however, and both dislike ISIS.  I am surprised that Republicans want to repeat the Libya experience in Syria where ISIS would almost certainly win in the short term.

With the recent election in Afghanistan, I think we got the best government one could hope for as both candidates have excellent credentials.  If they can't make it work, then I think there is really no hope.  Obama is raising the number of residual forces to be left in Afghanistan to help out, but again, the Afghans must do the heavy lifting.  Otherwise we are just another occupying force.

Tom Cotton (U.S. Senator, Arkansas) feels that we should have jumped to the final solution.  He must mean a surge, a large invading force.  A problem with this is that locals aren't participating plus our military has been at war for 15 yrs with surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan (one by Obama).

I agreed with the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan no matter how it came out.   We had to do something after 9/11. Iraq was diffenent and it put us in a quagmire of nation building.  As H.R. Haldeman said (by memory), "When the toothpaste gets out of the tube, it is very difficult to put it back in again."  What a mess!

WAR

I have written before that , if I had to summarize my life in one word, it would be WAR.  We used to have a break between wars: WW-I to WW-II, WW-II and Korea, Korea and Vietnam, Vietnam and 9/11..  But now it seems to be a continuum where there is a short period of a lowered war effort (like now) only to shortly have a resurgence, and we seem to be seeing the early stages of escalation now from a president who vowed to end our wars.  Both Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham are proposing we need to go back to major war in the Middle East to defeat ISIS.  Actually this is an odd view where there is a split in the Republican Party because Rand Paul and Donald Trump are agin' it.  I wonder what historians will eventually say about this period?  Perhaps it will be called the 30 Years War or maybe 50 Years War.  I don't know.  So how long can we stay at war when only about 1% of the population does the fighting, but the costs of the war are done on borrowed money.  Will it eventually lead to the destruction of America as a Great Power?

SOME MYTHS HELD BY CONSERVATIVES

Perhaps the biggest myth held by conservatives is that denigrating  Muhammad was not the trigger for the diplomatic outpost attack in Benghazi even though there were demonstrations throughout Islamic nations.  We have had two 9/11s since Benghazi that appear to have been peaceful.  Where are the embassy attacks since Benghazi?  Besides, the sainted President Reagan had two embassy attacks, both worse than Benghazi and also had the Marine Barracks disaster to boot; yet conservatives forgive him for these.

Another myth is that if we had left 10,000 or 15,000 troops in Iraq everything would be fine there.  They are apparently unaware that President Bush did exactly that in Afghanistan when he pivoted to war in Iraq.  The Taliban had been pushed into Pakistan where they regrouped and came back stronger than ever.  Only a brutal dictator can keep Iraq together.

Then there is the Red Line in Syria over poison gas.  When Obama drew the Red Line in Syria if Assad didn't comply he would bomb Assad's retreat.  Assad offered to give up his poisons weapons in exchange for not bombing him and Obama accepted it.  If conservatives wanted to say that just getting rid of the poisonous gases was insufficient, they would have a valid point, but they feel that bombing Assad would gotten rid of him.  Though undoubtedly we could have destroyed many buildings, killing Assad was unlikely.  He undoubtedly would have been in a bunker  And if we did kill Assad, wouldn't ISIS take over?  We have the example in Libya of what happens if we aid a mob in helping take out a brutal dictator.  At best you have chaos and ISIS sympathizers seem to be taking over Libya.  President George H.W. Bush realized this when he had Saddam's troops on the run in Iraq in the Kuwait War and stopped the U.S. advance.

It could be that conservatives actually know all the above and are just using their arguments for political purposes, but I suspect many really believe these myths.

IS INEXPERIENCE A REQUIREMENT FOR THE PRESIDENCY?

As I hear criticism of Hillary and Jeb as being too "old school" or whatever the words, it seems that being president requires that the successful candidate be inexperienced.  Consider George W. Bush (Bush-43) and Barack Obama who really had very little experience in the various aspects of the presidency, especially foreign policy, before becoming president.  And Bush-43 managed to not only get us into the quagmire of Iraq but preside over the greatest economic collapse of the country since 1929.*

Now look at the Republican candidates for president.  A number of them won't even have survived a whole term as Senator by 2016 (Marco Rudio-elected 2011, Rand Paul-2011, Ted Cruz-2013).  None of these will have completed even one term as Senator by the time of the 2016 election.

And then there is Tom Cotton, though not a presidential candidate yet, who has been a Senator for barely more than 2 mo. who managed to stampede 46 of his colleagues into sending a letter to the Iranian Ayatollah and create an international incident.  Even senile John McCain now has reservations about doing this.

Though I feel Bobby Jindal has no chance to obtaining the Republican nomination, he seems to want to be a candidate and is somewhat more experienced than those mentioned above having served two terms in Congress and now as governor of Louisiana.

I don't know how good a president either of Hillary or Jeb will be (You won't know until they do it if elected.), but at least they have experience relevant to running things.

* Many assume that everything in Iraq would be all right if only Obama had left 10 or 15 thousand troops there (presumably under Sharia law).  We did leave 10-20 thousand troops in Afghanistan after running the Taliban into Pakistan, however, and they came back stronger than ever.  So I have my doubts.  We'll never know.

"GOOD OLD DAYS"

I sort of miss the "good old days" of Presidents Ford who ended U.S. occupation of Vietnam, Carter with only the American embassy hostages.  Called by Democrats a "Warmonger," President Reagan stubbornly refused to go to war over three major Embassy attacks (twice in Beirut and one in Kuwait) plus the Marine barracks disaster, and at least when he went to war, he at least picked someone we could beat - Granada. President Bush (41), of course, did have Desert Storm (Iraq I) and his "invasion" of Panama to capture Noriega, but the things calmed down again with President Clinton with his drive by shooting in Iraq from American military airplanes.  Clinton, who had several terrorist attacks, also is distinguished by winning the only war won without "boots on the ground" - Kosovo - won by air power alone.  Those are about the years closest to peace I have seen in my 83 years since Japan invaded China in 1937.

This comparatively "sleepy" period from 1974 through the 1990s was preceded by WW-II of President Roosevelt, Korea of President Truman, and Vietnam of Presidents Kennedy,Johnson, and Nixon and succeeded by the Afghanistan and Iraq II wars of President Bush (43).  Now we can add the Iraq III/Syria war of our "peace" President Obama.

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

There are those who feel that if we had left a residual force in Iraq that the Iraqi army and the Iraqi politics would have been much better.  Well, I am far from convinced even disregarding the fact that Milaki wanted us to leave.  After we beat Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, in Afghanistan we did leave a residual force that varied between 10,000 and 20,000 troops, and the Taliban came back stronger than ever, although Al Qaeda remained subdued in Afghanistan but grew elsewhere.  I suspect that President Obama is closer to the truth in saying that if we had left 20,000 troops there, there would just have been that many more Americans at risk.

It was really depressing that, after 8 years of training, that the first time the Iraqi army was tested, it just disbanded and turned over all the equipment to ISIS.  A woman reporter who interviewed a number of the troops that took tail said that all the deserters said they woke up in the morning and all the leaders were gone.  They feel that the officers and non-coms were bribed to disappear.  Some speculated that some of the leaders actually were given positions in ISIS.  Somehow this sort of corruption sounds realistic.  I also suspect that with time the Sunnis of Iraq will get tired of the ruthless Islamic religious right and start to rebel against them.

One hopes that the Iraqi army and militias can keep ISIS out of southern Iraq where most of the oil is.

As I have said elsewhere, I think we are trying to push something in Iraq that isn't there short of there being a ruthless dictator.*  Opinion seems to be gravitating towards supporting the Kurds to become independent of Iraq.  I presume this makes Turkey a bit nervous because there is a Kurdish part of Turkey contiguous with the Iraqi Kurds that might like to join them in a Kurdistan.

*http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/07/syria-vs-libya.html

AFGHANISTAN: GUARDED OPTIMISM

The resumes of the two candidates for President of Afghanistan are certainly impressive: Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah.  Now I have heard both candidates speak on the Charlie Rose Show.  I still remain impressive.  Both say they will sign the agreement on troops with the U.S.  both say they believe corruption in Afghanistan is a key issue.  Both say they will abide by the audit of the vote no matter who wins.  The "loser" will be the Prime Minister for two years, an advisory position but both say they abide by their agreement.  In the meantime they will make the system work.  They both will try to make some sort of accomodation with the "Religious right" (The Taliban) in their country.  Elsewhere I have read the religious right consititutes no more than 10 percent of the country.

So far so good, but breaking a system of corruption will not be easy and somehow absorbing the religious right will also be vary difficult.  But it looks like Afghanistan has two George Washingtons to run the country.  Unasked are questions about the "poppy trade," the main business of Afghanistan.  Ashraf Ghani does talk about the necessity of American aid in setting up business in the country.  This would seem to be an imperative.

GUANTONIMO AND FRANZ KAFKA

Franz Kafka is known for his dark novels.  Of particular note here is Der Process or the Trial in which a man is arrested by some remote authority, but he is never told what he did.  It sounds a lot like what has happened to the  prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, some held for more the 12 years without ever being indicted for anything.  Some time in the future, I believe this period will be considered a dark period in American history rivaling the internment of Japanese Americans (and, lesser known, some German Americans) during WW-II.

Within the last few days, five "major" prisoners were released from Guantanamo Bay Prison for "house" arrest for a year in Qatar before being released.  John McCain who seems never to have seen a war he didn't like calls these men "the hardest of the hard core."  We Americans get kind of hysterical about our enemies and attribute to them some super human qualities, able to destroy America by themselves.  We were even afraid to put them into high security U.S. jails for certain they would escape and do much harm.  We didn't even trust them to American civilian courts for fear they wouldn't be convicted.

As has been pointed out, these five have been "out of commission" for a dozen years so are "way out of the loop."  Also they are members of the Taliban and not al Qaeda (though they are rumored to have al Qaeda connections) so it is not clear that their mission is to destroy America so much as rule Afghanistan.*  However, it wouldn't surprise me if they had worked up a great hate for being incarcerated for so long.

If we know so much about them, why haven't they been tried, much less indicted?  One is said to be wanted for war crimes (Mullah Muhammad Fazi) for the murder of thousands of Afghan Shiites in the 1990s, but why wasn't he released for trial?  They have just been held under the lame excuse that since they are not being held within the U.S., they are not protected by the U.S. Constitution.  But they were being held in a U.S. Naval base which for purposes of running for President of the United States is approved (McCain himself was born in the Panama Canal Zone in a U.S. military base and ran for President).

I have little to say about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was promoted to Sergeant while a prisoner of the Taliban.**  It seems he was a deserter and may well ultimately have exchanged one type of prison for another.  I wonder why he volunteered for the Army?  His father looks like he has become a Muslim with the free form beard and comments.  But I do feel sorry for Susan Rice who has fallen on her sword a second time for the President in describing Bergdahl as captured on the battlefield.  Well, I suppose you can describe the whole of Afghanistan as a battlefield.  Morning Joe Scarborough has said he wonders who in the White House hates her.

* http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-transferred-guantanamo-detainees
** http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-deserter-or-hero/index.html

AFGHANISTAN NEEDS MILITARY TRAINERS?

There is talk about keeping some military trainers in Afghanistan for two more years after we have been there for 13 years.  After 13 years of training, wouldn't you suppose that Afghanistan knows how to train troops?  After all, a child of 5 yrs when we first got there is now of military age - 18.  But the President says we will keep some military trainers there for another two years.  If the Afghans don't know how to train troops after 15 years, when will they?  Other troops will aid in helping Afghan troops against terrorists.  But it seems all military people feel we should have more troops there indefinitely and the number they seem to like is 13,500.  Supposedly, we will only leave some troops in Afghanistan to guard the American Embassy by the end of 2016.

Actually, I am guardedly optimistic about Afghanistan.  They just went through an election that, by-and-large, was peaceful and the next leader will not have the name of Karsai and, so far as I know, is not a relative of the Karsai's.*  I don't know how this will work out, but the next leader apparently will have an advanced degree (Abdullah Abdullah, about 54, is a Doctor of Opthamology;** Asraf Ghani, 65, has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology***) , even after the run-off.  In the history of the U.S. I think we have only one president who has had a Ph.D. - Wilson.  But will such a person be able to relate to the people?

* This is different from Iraq where the recent election, though peaceful (many Sunnis did not participate, however), showed the frontrunner to be, ta ta, Nuri al Miliki, sound familiar?  Yes, it is that Miliki who is the current prime minister.  In fact he won bigger than the first time around, getting three more seats in parliament than the first time.  Of course, he will have to form a coalition government because he did not get a majority of the delegates.  Recall that that the city of Falluja has been in the hands of al Qaeda since early this year and parts of Ramadi are in insurgents hands. (http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/05/iraqs-election)
** I must say he has an impressive resume (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Abdullah)
***  I must say that he has a particularly impressive resume (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Ghani_Ahmadzai)

THE DRONES OF WAR

The U.S. is actually involved in a world war against terrorists, but since there are few 'boots on the ground" there is little notice.  The effort has been going on in Africa for many years,   Our principal military base is in a small country in Africa called Djibouti.  Though our main effort has concentrated particularly on Somalia from Ethiopia and within Yemen,* the war effort is greater than that.  Apparently in 2014, we are getting ready to build a new drone base in Niger to provide reconnaissance support for the French in Mali and it is admitted that this base could also be used for attack drones.**  As the war effort in Afghanistan winds down, the war in Africa is still heating up.

The use of drone attacks has been controversial in that they have been used to kill American citizen terrorists in Yemen and there has been significant "collateral" deaths and injuries of citizens.  It is said that these drone attacks are leading to recruitment of people by the terrorist groups.  As I have said elsewhere, however, would American helicopter gunships or boots on the ground be received better and wouldn't there be collateral deaths and injuries as well?***

In the past, airpower was not decisive in wars and many boots on the ground were needed to finish off an enemy.  In some cases even hundreds of thousands of troops were not successful, as in Vietnam.

The drone attacks on terrorist groups may be having a significant effect in that on 9/11/2013, there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions (There was no inflammatory video against Islam either to stir up the extremists.).  This does not mean that there may not be planning underway by terrorist groups to do something spectacular in 2016 to disrupt the American presidential election just as the American Embassy hostages captured by Iran disrupted the 1980 Presidential election and led to the overthrow of President Carter by Ronald Reagan.  Curiously, shortly after that election, the Iranians released the hostages.  I've never understood why the Iranians preferred Reagan over Carter.

I don't know that Boko Haran in Nigeria is a terrorist group, but seems to be more of a political insurgency bent on taking over the country and converting it to an Islamic sharia law state, isolated from the West.  Thus is Boko Haram a terrorist group or is what is happening in Nigeria a civil war?  Think of Syria?  Are the rebels terrorist groups or is it a civil war going on to displace the current President Assam?  Some of the Syrian rebels are Islamic extremists, maybe with ties to Al Qaeda.  Though their former leader of Boko Haram says some weird things. In a 2009 BBC interview, Mohammed Yusuf, then leader of the group, stated his belief that the fact of a spherical Earth is contrary to Islamic teaching and should be rejected^[50], along with Darwinian evolution and the fact of rain originating from water evaporated by the sun.^[51] Before his death, Yusuf reiterated the group's objective of changing the current education system and rejecting democracy.^[52] Nigerian academic Hussain Zakaria told BBC News that the controversial cleric had a graduate education and spoke proficient English.****  But is this any more weird than some American politicians claiming that women do not get pregnant from rape or if they do, it is God's will.  And I suspect that being against Darwinian evolution is as much accepted by many American Christians as it is by some Islamic groups.

* http://www.wired.com/2012/08/somalia-drones/all/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen
** http://tune.pk/video/2704833/us-to-build-new-drone-bases-in-africa
***
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram

IN MEMORY OF SERGEANTS KILLED IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ON 9/11/2013

With two more sergeants (and not others) killed last week, I repeat here a short poem I wrote honoring all the sergeants killed in Iraq and Afghanistan (December 11, 2011).  I find it strange that there have been far more sergeants killed than corporals or privates (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/12/sergeants-poem.html).  Iraq and Afghanistan have been a different sort of war.

THE SERGEANTS (Poem)

Who are these sergeants, mostly men,

Dying in such numbers in far off lands?

Iraq, Afghanistan.

More than corporals,

More than privates.

Our top heavy military?

Some sergeants in their 50s.

More in their 40s.

Many in their 30s.

They must have been surprised

To be called at such ages

Into a savage war.

You might be interested in seeing: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf or http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol23/2/23-2.pdf.  I am unable to find up to date figures.

OSAMA BIN LADEN

It turns out that all the time we thought Osama bin Laden was running around from cave to cave on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, he was actually just screwing around with his five wives in some luxury in Pakistan and fathering four children.