DBWI: Bush's Second Term

What do you all think of Bush. I think he is one of the best presidents to ever have been in office as:

1. He helped stabilise somalia.

2. he sent Marines into Bosnia and Rwanda, especially after the fiascos with UN peacekeepers failing to protect the civilians in Kigali and Srebrenica.

3. He ended the recession

4. The War on drugs was prosecuted far more effectively.
 
What do you all think of Bush. I think he is one of the best presidents to ever have been in office as:

1. He helped stabilise somalia.

2. he sent Marines into Bosnia and Rwanda, especially after the fiascos with UN peacekeepers failing to protect the civilians in Kigali and Srebrenica.

3. He ended the recession

4. The War on drugs was prosecuted far more effectively.

OOC: which bush?
 
Although it was a minor accomplishment I also congratulate President Bush for the commando mission that killed Osama Bin Laden after his lackeys bombed the WTC in '93. I'm feel we got rid of some hard business concerning Bin Laden that would have happened if we hadn't gotten him then.
 
Let's not forget the pictures of Marines surrounding Karadzic in a spider hole.

Which were just that - pictures. Surely, this triumph should have gone to the Bosnian Croat forces and Serbian pro-Bosnian militia that located him, not the US troops that were sent along to secure his arrest.

In all seriousness, Bush was good, but it is ridiculous to elevate him to greatness. His foreign policy was decent to excellent. Rwanda was a good call, Somalia probably not so much - his policy against the Islamic groups may come back to haunt him. The Balkans was an excellent move, and both in Serbia and Iraq the most important thing IMO is that he showed he knew where to stop. But looking at his stance on Russia and his shameful policy against Japan, you can't rightly call him a genius.

Also, it was a very good move to de-emphasize economic policy. Even if Clinton had been a serious contender on that front, Bush's strength is foreign policy. You really can't say he beat the recession as much as that he ignored it until it went away. His aptitude showed through when he listened to experts who told him that it would go away. Imagine the kind of inadvertent damage a more activist policy could have caused.
 
Anyone remember the glaring failures of the UN in Bosnia and Rwanda?

Many say had U.S soldiers not intervened, up to 1 million tutsis and moderte hutus would have been slaughtered compared to the 400000 that died.

And the Srebrenica massacre was awful, Talk about shaking hands with the devil. Romeo dallaire rightly criticised the UN for this massive failure (twice in 2 years). UN bureaucracy means that the inquiry is ongoing, making it into the most expensive inquiry in history (no guesses on who benefits). For goodness sake, the CIA caught it all on satellite.
 
Anyone remember the glaring failures of the UN in Bosnia and Rwanda?

What did you expect them to do? I realise that after the fall of the Berlin WAll, everyone got delusions of power, but the UN was so thoroughly emasculated during the Cold War that no reasonable person could possibly have expected any military force projection. It's a nasty thing to say, ultimately, but the purpose of UN troops is nasty guy detectors - if they end up dead, we have a nasty guy. You can't really fault them for refusing. Good thing we have the Eagleburger Doctrine (please no more name jokes, PLEASE!).
 
so wat are your thoughts on Bush's successor?

Cuomo, hell I think that he was a great man. Come on, NHIP (OoC: National Health Insurance Plan) is of course his shining achievement. Remember his political battle in Congress, touring the country with photo-ops with the elderly, college students, children, and homeless veterans. I mean you really could not beat that.

Everyone says that vice-president Gore "invented the Internet", of course he didn't but he did make accessible to not just rich people in the suburbs but to people in the mountains of West Virginia or to those in East LA. I mean I wouldn't be here on these forums without that push.

Foreign policy, I mean he did put actual boots on the ground on Kosovo, not that half-assed bombing run that Quayle, Buchannan, and the other Republicans wanted. I mean that really prepared the military for Afghanistan. Remember 9/11, how America and the world was united against Al-Qaeda and Zawahiri. I mean we captured that man in the caves, put him on trial in New York, he is in a prison somewhere in Colorado now. I mean in Afghanistan people are not forced to go to those madrassahs. Women can go to school, and they are not forced to wear the burka, I mean they wear hijab but I have friends that wear it too so it doesn't matter. Speaking of Muslim friends, remember how on September 12th he spoke at a DC mosque condemning collective blame. He said that "Islam is a religion of peace". Still, Afghanistan is actually a free and stable nation in the Middle East and that's something we should be proud of.

Remember the sanctions battle in the UN for Iraq and North Korea. They're both headed by tinpot dictators but at least the threats that they pose are minimal at best and when Kim Jong-il and Saddam die, there will be democracy there.

I mean Cuomo was amazing, Gore was a great man in 2004. I remember how Gore met with George Bush, the son, Dubya, after he won his Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary an Inconvenient Truth, the movie about the treatment of political prisoners, Christians, and those in the Falun Gong in China. It was a real eye-opener.

Think about touring the nation to promote that movie and being MLB commissioner. It's a lot of work, especially the Academy Awards, the screenings at Cannes, speaking at universities and town halls, and the Grammy for the audiobook as well. Bush did a lot of action against steroids in his actual job which is just commendable.

It is sad that Gore lost in '08. I mean there was the whole recession and all but I really hope that President McCain and Vice-President Guiliani really try to fix this economy up, though.
 
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4. The War on drugs was prosecuted far more effectively.
Hunh!

You mean he put even more Blacks and Hispanics in jail than any predecessor? I think it has been established that the drop in cocaine consumption his administration touts had far more to do with a shift to 'meth' as fashionable drug than any enforcement effort.

OOC: the biggest effect 'the war on drugs' has had OTL is to raise prices and violence. I'm not sure I advocate legalization, but the current system (especially in the US) really, really doesn't work. The US incarceration rate is the highest in the world already. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration
 
What do you all think of Bush. I think he is one of the best presidents to ever have been in office as:

1. He helped stabilise somalia.

2. he sent Marines into Bosnia and Rwanda, especially after the fiascos with UN peacekeepers failing to protect the civilians in Kigali and Srebrenica.

3. He ended the recession

4. The War on drugs was prosecuted far more effectively.

Gotta disagree with you there. Bush was a mediocre domestic president at best. He had a pretty good foreign policy, and had more than his fare share of luck in that arena, which I suppose is why you consider him a great president. But his second term was dogged by an ailing economy which he never really fixed. For all his international successes, his approval ratings never approached 50% for his second term, and it got to the point where one had the impression of a president flailing around, looking for some way to distract the populace from his domestic failures. Maybe he could have been better if he hadnt had to spend most of his later years in a power struggle with the right wing of the party, but who knows. All I can say is that everything h tried to fix only got worse (statements of his administration aside, the War on drugs is actually a case in point).
 
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