Posted By:
Scott
As a Bush supporter I would agree that there are three very large mistakes which have hurt the USA.
The first mistake was to not properly fight in Afghanistan. By making politics part of the war planning, the administration seemed to avoid casualties at all cost. Instead of American Marines sweeping through the country we paid "warlords" to do it for us. I don't want any US soldier to die, but lets face the fact that the US army had the motivation to totally destroyed Bin Laden and his crew instead of paid ex-Taliban supporters letting him get away at Tora Bora.
The second mistake was the invasion of Iraq. Yes Sadam was a really bad guy, but there are about 20 other really bad guys leading nations. I personally believe that Bush both listened to some very bad advice (from the group of "neo-cons") and had personal leanings against Sadam due to the assassination attempt on his father. The cost of this Iraq war will hurt us economically and within the world community for another 5-10 years. And lets not forget that the intelligence community failed in a big way, and this is a community that aside from a few political appointments is a "career civil servant" organization - its broken and needs to be fixed.
The third mistake is our reaction to 9/11. We should have clamped down hard on certain country's citizens coming to the US - but not Japan, Korea, UK, Italy, Czech Republic, Spain, Russia, etc, etc. Single out Saudia Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt etc - and for whomever cried that its discriminitory against Muslims too damn bad. Allow students to come and study just like we always did. Think of how much we could have done with all the money wasted in Iraq - both in the US and around the world. Allowing increased immigration from Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Japan, Korea, Russia, New Zealand while cutting it off from most Arab countries would have been the right move. Additionally, I agree that the constitution and the freedoms it enspouses are extremely important and that we (USA) should strive to set the example for others - some of the programs and stances currently taken don't do that and they need to be changed.
Finally, I'd just add that its always much easier to make decisions after the fact. I believe that Bush had made some very bad decisions, listened to the wrong people. He is the president and he is responsible. But lets not pretend that removing him will cure all ills...the breakdown in our intelligence happened over many years...the reduction in our Armed Forces happened over many years...the building of our budget deficit and current account deficit happened over many years....and it will all take many years of hard work to get us back to where we all want to be.