History will judge President Bush on his "administration," his
appointments; and it will be that he and they were incompetent and
unethical. The war in Iraq will not be more important than that issue. And
there is nothing now he can do to change it. His is a failed presidency
and he has failed not
only the majority of American citizens, but even those few radical
right-wingers who supported him. He has in the end given them nothing, as
has been true of all previous presidents. I believe that is true even in
regard to the U. S. Supreme Court appointments.
What we have is a president who has tried to protect our nation from a
danger, the threat of right-wing religious nuts of the Muslim faith,
trying to take over our nation and making it an Islamic theocracy, by
going to war, rightly so, in Afghanistan, and questionably in Iraq; and it
isn't going to matter to history if the reasons given for invading Iraq
were valid, the danger to us is clear.
But he and his administration have been a part of the danger to our nation
from right-wing religious nuts of the Christian faith, trying to take over
our nation and making it a Christian theocracy. And the method has been as
dangerous as the threat from the Islamic Taliban. He has put people in
places of power who either used laws to push a religious agenda or
violated laws, as has been shown in the Justice Department, etc. His
"Monica" is a greater threat to our nation than Clinton's "Monica" ever
was. There is no possible justification for loading a department with
hundreds of graduates of one religious-oriented law school (Pat
Robertson's Regent University) and then have that department fire
competent and ethical people who did not follow their political agenda.
And that is not even to consider the incompetence of Alberto Gonzalez.
If Bush is truly religious, then he must be judged as a failure, since
under his stewardship our nation has been made a less safe nation to live
in, and he has threatened our civil liberties unnecessarily, which it was
clear he would do when he was willing to threaten the civil liberties of
homosexual citizens to gain political favor with bigots in order to win
elections.
It is ironic that his administration has violated the military's policy on
homosexual personnel ("don't ask, don't tell") and kicked out valuable
people needed to fight the war in Iraq, and so we have, in theory, only
heterosexual men and women fighting a war that is important to homosexual
people, since if we lose the "war" the Muslims will follow their "book"
and laws and kill us.
In addition to his own sins that history will judge him for, his party has
so much sleaze and hypocrisy that that alone would lead "history" to say
his time in office was a terrible time. As many people have said, no work
of fiction would be believed if it covered the many acts of hypocrisy that
has come from Republicans, who claimed they would lead our nation back to
dignity and morality. How do you explain that the very people who tried to
pass laws against sex acts have been convicted of seeking and performing
those very acts? How do you explain former Republicans now in jail for
stealing from the taxpayers? How do you explain law enforcement agents who
violated the laws they were hired to enforce, going into a hospital and
trying to coerce an attorney general to allow them to violate the law?
When they were willing to violate the rights of one minority (homosexual,)
that should have been a warning to intelligent Americans that they would
be willing to violate any and all citizens' rights if it benefited their
agenda. And if a term said it was wrong, they would change the term, as
Karl Rove was so good at doing.
At the end of his time, we are worse off in every way than when he came
into power, and that includes the radical right-wingers he let dictate to
the rest of us. They did get special rights, as did corporations, and the
rich, as they falsely accused homosexuals and others of seeking, as
science has shown, when someone accuses you of something, you can be sure
it is they who are guilty of it.
The next election will tell us whether or not Americans have learned to
judge a party and person by their actions, not their sermons. We will know
if they have learned what is really important for our government to be
doing to and for us, whether it is keeping homosexuals from marrying and
from fighting for the country in the Armed Forces or keeping religious
bigots from dictating what we have to believe. Do we want to fight a war
based on what some people think their Bible, or Koran says about how the
world will end or when a "savior" will return, using another nation's
existence as a TOOL?
History will judge American citizens too, as will future generations, if
they are still free.
Ed. - Readers are encouraged to offer their
opinions on this and other topics of interest. Simply send your letters to
publisher (at) equalityherald.com.
