"Propaganda & Persuasion" (this is the correct title of your class right Bob?)

Here it is New Year’s day 2009.  We are about to start a new year and in a few days we will see the end of the eight years of the Bush administration.  So, I think it is reasonable to take a look at what these last eight years brought us. 

            First, let me say that I personally believe that when all is said and done, and historians have had their say, President George W. Bush will top the list as the worst president in our history.  Here’s some of the reasons why I believe this will be the case.

            The first major event of George W. Bush’s presidency was the horrendous attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.  Of course, the failure of our intelligence that allowed this attack to go forward was not solely a failure of the Bush administration.  Indeed, more blame for that failure should fall on the Clinton administration than on Bush.  Nevertheless, Bush and his people did ignore intelligence (as did Clinton’s people) that if followed up might have prevented that awful event of 9-11. 

            As a reaction to the 9-11 attack the Bush administration, began to infringe on the civil rights of Americans and the citizens of other nations.  Without approval from congress or our courts, people were arrested and held for years without charges, phone messages were spied upon, and torture was authorized as an interrogation method.  Before Bush, America had been looked up to around the world as a tower of morality and decent behavior toward all people, now it will take years of a new administration to overcome the damage Bush and his people have done to American honor and prestige.

            Bush led us into a war in Afghanistan to capture and punish the people who masterminded the 9-11 attack.  That was the right a just thing to do. 

Just when we were set to capture bin Laden and his top lieutenants, the President switched gears in order to push us into a war that we had no reason or need to fight.  In order to convince Americans to support his new war, the President and his people lied, manipulated data, ignored intelligence, and participated in a propaganda campaign the likes of which Americans had not seen since WWII.  The result is over 4,000 of America’s best people killed, the expenditure of untold billions, the 9-11 attackers still at large, and another hit on American prestige.  The fact that the Iraq war is drawing down now and our troops will soon be coming home, does not justify the loss of life and resources, we were duped into supporting. 

             Also in the Middle East, President Bush led America to strong support of Israel while practically ignoring the real needs and dire plight of the Palestinian people.  The result of this has been a substantial increase in the violence in Gaza and the West bank areas, a poorly executed and extremely destructive war in Lebanon and several intifadas.   This has produced another blow to American prestige and leadership in world affairs.   

            Throughout his administration, the President and his people pushed for deregulation of our financial and other industries.  The result was a feeding frenzy of greed among the captains of our industry and finances.  The result of that unregulated, unmonitored, and uninhibited greed was finally the greatest collapse of our economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

           And while Bush's people were ravishing our economy, they were mishandling, in the extreme,  the aftermath and cleanup from hurricane Katrina.  Now the president cannot personally oversee everything his administration does, but the president must appoint competent and motivated people to do the work that needs to be done.  In the case of Katrina, the people he appointed were unmotivated and worst incompetent.  That was the failure of the Bush administration.  

Of course, President Bush did not intend to be America’s worst president.  I do believe he tried to do what he thought was best for America.  I think President Bush and the people with which he surrounded himself in the first years of his administration were simply incompetent.  They came to office in the 21 century with thinking that might have been appropriate in the 1960s and 70s, but the world changed in the 1980s and 90s and it seems Bush and his people never noticed.

            In just a few days, we will have a new administration taking office.  Unfortunately, the first thing that administration will have to do is clean up the mess left by the America’s worst president.