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I Blame Bush

By: scipio62 (Diary)  |  January 16th, 2011 at 09:53 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

But in a good way.

Remember that Stuxnet virus? Well, the New York Times has a long story on how it was a joint U.S./Israeli venture to undermine Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The key point is about a third of the way into the piece:

The project’s political origins can be found in the last months of the Bush administration. In January 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to undermine the electrical and computer systems around Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center.

Neat, huh? The piece notes that President Obama was briefed on it before taking office and accelerated the project.

We’ve heard endlessly from those on the Left about how Bush liked to kill Muslim children, loved war, enjoyed sending our men and women to die in fruitless wars. Then there was more hyper-partisan sniping about how Bush was going to attack Iran even though the U.S. intelligence community had publicly put to rest the notion of Iran being able to develop nuclear weapons in the next few years, at least that is what the Left would have us think (the reality is that there were those in the Bush administration intelligence apparatus who did what they could to deliberately undermine President Bush); this was thoroughly debunked over the last couple of years. Not one of the people who endlessly opined about how dumb Bush was would have fathomed he could do something like use a computer virus instead of military weaponry to mess up Iran, even though there is plenty of evidence showing that Bush is definitely a smart cookie.

James Lewis at the American Thinker wonders how the Times could actually go on and admit the Stuxnet program started under the former President:

It’s a confession from the New York Times, which is not prone to confessions. In fact, it was the New York Times that denied the Iranian nuclear threat for years and years during Bush’s tenure. It is the New York Times that published and promoted the plainly false National Intelligence Estimate of 2006, dumped by the intelligence bureaucracy to undermine George W. Bush.

There’s some other good stuff at Lewis’ piece, too. And do check out Jeff Dunetz at YID With LID, who has some fascinating details on this. Of course, do read the piece in the Times; they actually do what is called reporting in it.

President Obama ran for office as the anti-Bush. And yet, we just found another one of Bush’s policies that our current President is using. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.

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  • Scope

    and surely some of the blame for the problems with the Republican party during his years is justified with the spending that went on, there has long been an effort to consistently hit Bush on the head with everything, including the kitchen sink, and not only by the Progressives and Code Pink.

    I came across an interesting article from 2004, yes 2004 during Bushs’ reelection campaign, where the editor of Reason Magazine, Nick Gillespie, co-authored a piece titled Building the Perfect Candidate. This was the opening paragraph-

    “As devotees of free minds and free markets, we spend our nights pining for a major-party politician who not only looks dreamy while reading a Teleprompter but shows some passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness AND sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.”

    I don’t read Reason magazine or their blogspot, and have no idea what Gillespies ideas are today, but, I would have to say to Mr. Gillespie, be careful what you wish for because you might just get it. Unfortunately, so did the rest of us.

    As many mistakes as Bush made during his terms as President, I’d take him back today in a heartbeat. I’ll also stand tall with those you mock as the moral right, thank you very much.

    • Scope

      http://reason.com/archives/2004/04/01/building-the-perfect-candidate

  • aesthete

    The “differences” between Bush and Obama are largely cosmetic and/or ones of degree. Both believe in an expansive federal government, the large regulatory state, idealistic foreign policy, and neither attached a particularly high value to liberty as opposed to other factors. The only significant issue on which there was a significant difference of kind in policy and philosophy that I can think of off the top of my head was on abortion. It is rather amusing to see lectures defend Obama from what they attacked Bush on a scant two years ago.

    For that matter, Romney and Huckabee (among others in the GOP) share the same philosophy with Obama. What worries me in the future is that the Tea Party getting co-opted by the establishment in Washington, or by big-government Republicans.

    • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    • Scope

      with respect to your reference to their “idealistic foreign policy”? That one is a real stumper for me, as they are worlds apart on their respective views and accomplishments with respect foreign policy. I understand you have strong libertarian leanings, but, I would think that you would be more in line with Obama’s weak show of foreign policy. He, and Hillary have been running around the world trying to talk nice to dictators and tyrants, and have done nothing but to appease the worst of the foreign leaders. They talk nice to who they want to be our friends, ignore, or denigrate those that have historically been ours friends, and have made us a laughing stock of weakness. I know that libertarians want to “not poke our noses in other countries affairs, and, in some cases I can agree. If Britian wants to remove all Christian Holidays from their calendars, while keeping all of the Muslim Holidays listed, which they have, that is their own decision for their own demise. Other countries such as Germany and France recognize the danger and are trying to squelch those bad decisions. That’s not our affair to tell them what to do. It is the business of the US to fight an increasing Islamic Radicalist agenda where ever it rears it’s ugly head against the American infidels. I very much so agree with Bush, and so many others, that taking the fight to them, not on our soil is key. Any of us alive today have never had to live with the ugly war that exists in so many other countries, much of it brought on by an irrational jealousy of the free American way of life. We still possessed a tremendous amount of freedom while Bush was President, even with the Patriotic Act. If the O was not so hel! bent on destroying this nation, the Patriot Act may not even be necessary today.

      • aesthete

        on libertarian foreign policy: that I find quite absurd. I believe the statement to be true because, by and large, Bush switched from being an isolationist to more Tony Blair-like policies on the foreign front (which are center-left). The Bush administration was strongly supportive of “nation-building”, foreign aid (particularly in Africa), and other boondoggles largely preferred by the left. Barack Obama is a fool (and perhaps in his heart of hearts he is a peacenik), but his actions convey support of an even more idealistic variant of Bush foreign policy: the Obama administration has doubled down on COIN/nation-building in Afghanistan, and abandoned the positive aspects of Bush’s foreign policy. The Obama administration’s cuts to the military, policy vis a vis Iraq, N Korean policy, and virtually all major foreign policy besides Iranian and Afghan/Pakistan policy (the latter was dramatically changed and upscaled, largely for political reasons) was based on the policies set forth by the Bush administration. Love it or hate it (I have a mixed opinion), most of Obama’s policy (though not his rhetoric) is a continuation (or even expansion) of established Bush administration policy. (I will note that the few areas that I know of where Obama has deviated have been utter disasters, such as European engagement.)

        • aesthete

          I agree with you on much that you write above: engaging the enemy on foreign soil is important, recognizing the threat of radical Islam, etc, I just don’t think that the way that we have engaged that threat under Bush and Obama (assuming that poverty and ignorance spawn terrorism, rather than belief and intent, among other things) has been as fruitful as other methods would be (my preference would be to stomp them abroad and not to pass freedom-restricting bills like the PATRIOT Act).

        • Scope

          that Bush was at any time an “isolationist”? Quite the contrary, Bush was in a battle against the isolationists through his entire presidency. Remember, Bush was only president for a short time before 9/11, and, his response to the attacks was anything but isolationist. Come on guy, you can’t be serious. In fact, Bush was seen by most on the left, and many libertarians, as a war monger. Code Pink, and especially Cindy Sheehan as the most eveil man alive, because of his foreign policy. Geeez.

          • JSobieski

            that was explicitly against nation building. W specifically used the word “humble” in the 2nd Presidential debate with Gore to contrast his policies with Clinton’s, whose policies lacked “humility” in W’s eyes.

            Just as Bush 41′s “kinder gentler” comment can rightfully be intertpretted as a contrast between Bush 41 and Reagan, Bush 43′s “humble” comment in the presidential debates can rightfully be construed as a criticism of Clinton being too interventionist. I.e. W was campaigning to be more humble and less interventionist than Clinton was.

            Pre 9/11, W was probably the closest we have had to an isolationist President in the post WWII era. His aspirations clearly lay elsewhere until 9/11 “changed everything”. I think W wanted to be Calvin Coolidge, but history had other plans.

            I for one wonder what his domestic policies would have looked like if 9/11 had never happened. Would W have been more of a fiscal conservative without a 9/11?

          • aesthete

            9/11 profoundly changed Bush’s foreign policy views (which were probably not strongly-held in the first place). In particular, Bush’s relationship with Tony Blair, and the presence of many Clintonians in te State Department, facilitated a move towards Blair- and Clinton- like foreign policy preferences, in many respects. Recall that Bush strongly criticized McCain’s seemingly interventionist foreign policy in the 2000 primary.

  • bobmontgomery

    ..you would like to take this golden opportunity to disparage and compare to a a Marxian Black Liberationist?

    • bobmontgomery
      • aesthete

        Has absolutely nothing to do with intentions or aspersions on the character of others. I simply agree with Bill Buckley that Bush was not particularly conservative on foreign or domestic issues, and that the difference between Obama and Bush on major issues is largely one of degree.

        • bobmontgomery

          The disparagement was in lumping three men who are known to be unashamed of their faith and their traditional American capitalist values with Obama…but on “major issues” like, oh, say, “redistributive justice”, you think Obama and Bush are only separated by degree? On the promotion of democracy, in some form, in totalitarian precincts in the MidEast, you think Bush and Obama read from the same book, just in different chapters? On the use of God-given natural resources for the benefit of mankind, especially American mankind, you think Obama is a mini-Bush? Bush took the Arabian’s hand and assisted him. Obama bowed to him. There is a colossal difference, and it may go to character but I specifically referenced Marxian Black liberationism vis-a-vis traditional faith-based American capitalism as evoked by Bush, Huckabee and Romney. We are not arguing degrees of conservatism here.

          • aesthete

            It doesn’t matter what Bush believed, it matters what he did: if I, as a conservative (or a Christian), signed into law a bill that called for persecuting Christians who criticize the government, it is no less damnable than if a godless communist did the same. If I, as a libertarian conservative, sponsored bills that massively increased the burden of government on the citizenry, I would be no better than a liberal who did so for selfish or craven reasons. If I did any of those things, it would not matter what I called myself or even what I personally believed in my heart of hearts: the relevant piece of information would be the policies that I pursued. Likewise, the policies that President Bush pursued while in office deserve a measure of condemnation from conservatives: they dramatically increased the burden of government for businesses and individuals, stripped us of Constitutional rights (McCain-Feingold; PATRIOT Act) and tasked our army with the Sisyphean task of creating and maintaining an ostensibly “free” democracy in Afghanistan wholly out of cloth.

            When Bush’s basic human decency and faith is long forgotten (and Bush had an impressive amount of both), the effects of his policies will endure. It won’t matter to those feeling the burden imposed by those decisions whether these policies were motivated by sincerity or wickedness.

            This resultant damage is not mitigated by his personal views on capitalism or Christianity, any more than Obama’s are by his personal biography: on the important issues, both men failed to meet the conservative standard (Obama to a far, far greater extent), both in many of the same ways. We can either mince words (and risk having the same thing happen again in the future), or we can call it like it is and work towards finding ways to prevent history from repeating itself.

          • JSobieski

            The PATRIOT Act is not on my list of liberal policies. The Act is frequently condemned, but never specifically. I don’t think powers under the act were misused, and assymetrical war does bring its own batch of challenges.

            That said, the prescription drug benefit was a huge mistake. There is a small nugget of conservativism in their (HSAs), but overall its a liberal policy a new entitlement that we can’t afford. Similar to no child left behind in that its 90% what the dems want, and 10% conservative.

            Not a particularly great ratio of good stuff to bad stuff. Kind of like the recent Obama tax compromise—only NCLB and the drug entitlement were passed under a “conservative” President.

            The big problem with W’s legacy is that people thought he was conservative, so he in many ways discredited conservatism.

            Bush was probably the second most conservative President in my lifetime, but the gap between 1st and 2nd is huge. Moreover, he did more to discredit conservatism than any US President in my lifetime.

            All of that being said, he was and is an incredibly decent man. However, I agree with you that the pudding of the Bush Presidency is a lot of slop.

          • aesthete

            as a center-left policy for a couple of reasons:

            1) It was conceptualized and supported by Clinton’s DoJ, and in fact the Clinton administration was very supportive of the policy (and had a benign version of it in place already).

            2) There were grave Constitutional concerns (specifically, with the 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments).

            You are correct that it would not have been (and was not) favored by the far left, but IMO, the qualities mentioned above establish it as center-left policy. I would also note that the powers under the PATRIOT Act were not only misused, but that the capacity for misuse by less altruistic administrations than Bush’s is a far more relevant criterion by which to evaluate policy.

            President Bush would have been excellent as a southern Democratic president: the Republican party would have dragged him to the right, as they did with Clinton (if only because of partisan sentiment) and his pro-life preferences would have been useful. As a Republican President with full control of the government, he was the worst President since LBJ, IMO: the few domestic agenda items that he was interested in all increased the burden of government, the welfare state, or the regulatory state: sometimes all three. Even the best part of the Bush domestic agenda (the tax cuts) were a mixed bag, given that it increased the number of persons eligible for tax credits (who didn’t pay taxes) increase from ~35 to ~49% (IIRC, sorry I don’t have the article to confirm).

          • bobmontgomery

            …are still the same, huh? Doesn’t matter what Bush believes because he really put a crimp in your style with that Patriot Act, didn’t he? Notwithstanding the fact that you have carried on here at some length about him. Yes, Bush was, and is, and always will be an existential threat to your liberty, won’t he? And that tax cut? The one that helped him maintain the economic stability of the United States? That was a heavy burden of government on you too, wasn’t it? And where did this “signed a bill into law that called for persecuting Christians” come from?
            Look, Bush wasn’t a ‘perfect’ conservative. Everybody knows that. But whatever he was, if you cannot factor in the most devastating attack on the continental United States in history, and the resultant economic chaos and uncertainty, and the need to stand up against the threat of militant Islamic terrorism and go after it wherever it is, and you cannot criticize his Presidency without reducing him to the level of an avowed Socialist one-worlder, just of a different degree, then your selfishness shows itself and in the long run your arguments lead to color blindness and an ‘all social order is bad’ dialectic which will result in less liberty, not in the maintenance of what you have now, and certainly not more.

          • JSobieski

            Aesthete isn’t saying Bush is a liberal, what he is saying is that the aggregate Bush record in a lot of ways is that of a moderate Southern Democrat who unlike Clinton, did not have a Congress pulling him rightward.

            Nobody is calling Bush a socialist one worlder. Just acknowledging that the forces of Big Government were, generally speaking, expanding during the Bush years and that such expansion accelerated in the Obama administration.

            I personally believe that W decided to be far more conciliatiory (read less conservative) on domestic policies as a result of 9/11 and that he would have been more conservative but for the can of worms that 9/11 opened up.

            Bush was good on judges and his tax cuts were nice. What else in his domestic agenda was conservative?

            Obama just extended the same tax cuts. Bush passed TARP, and lent money to GM over Christmas 2008 that wasn’t authorized by Congress.

            I don’t doubt that W wants capitalism to succeed, and that Obama doesn’t, but in terms of their actually policies, its not crazy to say that the differences in fiscal policy are based more on intentions/goals that what was actually implemented.

          • aesthete
          • concap

            What is your personal definition of a Socialist?

            Is it someone who is a true believer and follower in the ideal of socialism?

            Is it only someone who places his/her own beliefs of social issues as paramount?

            I say No. He was not a Socialist.

            He, like most of the people who voted for him, is a Fiscal/Social Conservative who?s own Social beliefs took presidents over his need to be fiscal?

            During his eight years in office, President Bush oversaw a large increase in government spending. In fact, President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ. In his last term in office, President Bush increased discretionary outlays by an estimated 48.6 percent.

            During his eight years in office, President Bush spent almost twice as much as his predecessor, President Clinton. Adjusted for inflation, in eight years, President Clinton increased the federal budget by 11 percent. In eight years, President Bush increased it by a whopping 104 percent.
            http://mercatus.org/publication/spending-under-president-george-w-bush

            You must ask why, and was it justified? Then you will have your answer.

            Is Bush a socialist? He’s spending like one
            http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article570387.ece

            George Bush Becomes a Socialist
            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/george-bush-becomes-a-soc_b_127006.html

            George Bush, Secret Socialist
            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-curry/george-bush-secret-social_b_67943.html

            George Bush’s Move to the Left
            And How Clinton Shifted the Center of American Politics.
            http://www.scholarscorner.com/didache/socialism.htm

            Hugo Chavez celebrates ‘comrade’ George W Bush’s conversion to socialism following financial crisis
            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/3207978/Hugo-Chavez-celebrates-comrade-George-W-Bushs-conversion-to-socialism-following-financial-crisis.html

            Barack Obama: George W. Bush is a socialist
            http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/9123157/Barack_Obama_George_W_Bush_is_a_socialist/

          • bobmontgomery

            Gues I’ll declare a truce.

          • concap

            precdence

        • Scope

          The Buckley interview that you are probably referencing took place 3 1/2 years into the Iraq war. Not many would disagree that the war was not going well, because of Rumsfield’s desire to do war on the cheap. In that interview with Buckley, by Katie Couric, he said that Bush was not a Conservative with his big spending policies. Again, not many disagree with that, and, the fact that many Republicans in Congress were on a spending spree. Bush did turn the war around with his appointment of Petraeus, and the surge, I believe in 2007.

          Yes, Bush depended on the wrong people for the early years in the war, but, he corrected that path. I personally would have liked to see a real shock and awe, that did the job in much less time. Problem is, we have gotten into protecting the collateral damage more so than we protect or are concerned with our troops, or the ability to call victory both in Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess I would be considered a killer and murderer in saying, go in, do the job, and come home. I really do believe that many of those seen as the collaterals stay where they are, just to protect the insurgents. Heck, we have women and children strapping on the explosive belts themselves nowadays. In fact, we had kids and women killing our soldiers in Vietnam.

          • Scope

            if we had true strength as the superpower we once were, those living in areas that are threatening us, would see a poste haste exit from those that would be considered collateral damage, or, they would rise up against those threatening us.

          • aesthete

            relatively early on (about 10ish months into the Iraq war): it was something of a scandal leading up to 2004, where some conservatives (mostly the fake “moderate” ones like D Brooks and D Frum) accused him of being a quisling. As a measured article written by him in 2004 put it, “If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.” This was a position that he maintained until his unfortunate demise, along with a critique of “conservative sloth” on the issue of the Iraq war. I do wonder if he would have changed his mind if he had lived long enough to see the surge’s success, though. (IIRC, he was interested in seeing if the surge would work, and was said to have supported letting the surge continue its course by NR editors.) However, you are correct that the general critique of Bush that I referenced was made sometime in 06-07.

            “I personally would have liked to see a real shock and awe, that did the job in much less time. Problem is, we have gotten into protecting the collateral damage more so than we protect or are concerned with our troops, or the ability to call victory both in Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess I would be considered a killer and murderer in saying, go in, do the job, and come home.”

            I completely agree that that (or something like it) was the correct way to go. I’ll even give Bush credit by admitting that it was much less silly to assume that an educated, literate, prosperous and relatively pro-America citizenry would take to newly-formed democratic systems than it is to believe the same of a much poorer and less supportive country, as the Obama administration is pretending to in Afghanistan.

    • Scope

      aesthete is a self described libertarian conservative, so I can understand why his positions are as they are, mostly. To say that Bush was only cosmetically or to some degrees different than Obama is a bridge to far. I respect aesthete as a person, and his right to hold his own ideas and opinions for himself, however, some of his views are the exact reason why the libertarians have always had such low numbers and approvals, and they will remain there for a long time to come. The libertarians have some good positions, and many agree with little parts of those positions. Most people I know want the most freedom possible for everyone, in the world in which we live in 2011. Ron Paul, I believe has single handidly (sp) destroyed any hopes for the libertarians, and, for me personally I see that as a good thing. We just have to keep a close eye on the Paulers.

      • Scope

        aesthete is a Pauler by any stretch.

        • aesthete
  • renny

    problem as early as 2003, an intractable problem o and the Dems. didn’t even address in the fin. law, and a problem that promises more instability in housing as the laws Fred and Fan operate under have not been altered, Bush spent much of 2004 after the election, campaigning to restructure Social Security–almost no one paid any attention, and his domestic policies produced a 4.36 unemployment for three years, none of which Obama could ever support or lay claim to.

    I did not like the NCLB, a rotten Kennedy concoction, that Bush thought would make him the “education president” but it just made him even more hated by unionized teachers because, for one thing, it required every district designate “highly qualified teachers,” and the unions were loath to laud anyone in the classroom. And, Bush did double the budget of the Dept of Ed., which should be abolished, another liberal activity better left to the nitwit Dems. and progressives.

    I also thought he should have left something like the Medicare D prescription program to Dems., but I think that was a “compassionate Cons.” idea.

    O would never have invaded Afghanistan to rid the nation of the Taliban and future plans to attack us, and O can barely abide our presence in Iraq, and would have found Saddam Hussein another Arab to apologize to.,

    To claim Bush and o are merely interchangeable except for degree is facile and errant, and is blind to o’s real agenda which is total conversion of US society, the bankruptcy of the middle class, depriving it of jobs and energy, and the institution of dictatorial powers through twisting the executive into the only DC power. Surely, no one thinks Bush considered those goals.

    • JSobieski

      Obama wanted to take over GM. Bush reluctantly loaned them money out of TARP funds.

      Bush set certain tax rates because he wanted capitalism to succeed. Obama agreed to keep those rates out of political expediency.

      Both created new health care entitlements. One was less expensive, but that is a matter of degree.

      Bush signed McCain Feingold. NCLB. Steel tarriffs in an attempt to buy votes in Pennsylvania.

      Nobody said interchangeable. Some have said that as a matter of DOMESTIC policy, its a question of intentions, magnitude, and speed.