>I promised myself I wouldn’t do it, I said it was fruitless, it doesn’t do any good, but I couldn’t help myself. Tonight at work I got drawn into a political discussion at work. A coworker was going on about what a horrible President George Bush has been and how she can’t wait for the change that Obama will bring. I commented how interesting it was that Obama says there is going to be change, and yet all of the people he’s picking for posts are Clinton people (including Hillary). She said it can’t be worse than what we’ve had under Bush, and how he’s the worst President we’ve ever had. I asked her why she felt this way. She responded by saying that under the Clintons, her wallet “was fat and happy,” and now it is really bad.
I asked her how exactly this was George Bush’s fault. She said, “It’s this stupid war he got us into under false pretenses.” And (to quote a joke I read recently) that’s when the fight started. I made the following points:
1. Wars do not cause economic downturns, they promote growth. Granted, this is something that has been debated over and over again. Of course, she took the opposite view: wars cause a burden of debt on the economy.
2. Millions of Iraqi’s would disagree with you that this war was stupid or useless. They now have freedom. “And who’s paying for their freedom,” she rhetorically asked me. “Why should we have to pay for their freedom? Shouldn’t they at least give us some free oil or something?” This is an idea that I am not totally opposed to. But if we take one drop of oil from Iraq, the liberals (excuse me, progressives) will shout, “SEE! The war was for oil!!”
3. George Bush didn’t cause the current economic crisis, it was caused by Fannie and Freddie. She then asked why Bush didn’t say anything about it. I informed her that he had. She claimed to listen to his weekly radio addresses faithfully, and she has “never heard it.” In 20 seconds I found a list on the internet of all the times the White House has warned people about the instability and need for reform regarding these sub prime mortgages in general, and the problems with Fannie and Freddie specifically. She retorted with, “Well he didn’t warn about that until may of this year.” She totally ignored the twenty-some other warnings dating back to 2002.
We ended the conversation with her comment of “Bush is the worst president ever.” I then said, “you won’t listen to reason, so we’ve come to this: no he’s not.” And she said, “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Ironic.
Words of Truth 
>1. She’s correct. Wars do NOT improve the economy. They take resources that would otherwise improve the lives of the people and destroy them – it’s a sink-hole for both productive citizens and resources. One of the bvest examples of this is the myth that “it took WW II to get us out of the Great Depression.” (GD) The recovery from the GD bevgan in 1934, stalled in 1937 ewhen RDR’s socialist policies took effect, resumed and sped up in 1938 when the Supreme Court’s declaration of those policies as unconstitutional showed effects, and continued up to and through the war. WW II removed several million men from productive work, killed millions of other workers, and destroyed the industrial base of Europe and Asia. and this contributed to the world economy HOW?2. The issue of the freedom of the Iraqi people is still up in the air since the political situation is still unsettled. As to the oil – yes, it actually IS about oil. A little known fact is that Iraq has the second largest known oil reserves in the world – it’s just mostly undeveloped. There are HUGE quantities of the stuff there that have never seen a well shaft. And IIRC, before the war, development concessions had been granted to countries like France, Russia, and China, and the US was completely cut out. Under the current “government” in Iraq, US and Western European interests have near exclusivity in the rights to develop these resources.3. Bush is respo9nsible for the economic mess simply because he did know about it and did nothing about it… a sin of omission, as it were. the actual responsibility for the regulatory train wreck that led us into our current mess actually began under Ronald Reagan (Dem House, Rep Senate, and Reagan), and just got worse with each successive presidency. They all had a hand in the creation of the monster. (for a more complete description of the process, see my blog http://grndexter.livejournal.com/ And although I’m a republican, I’m a Goldwater Conservative, not a Neo-Con. I agree with her that Bush will probably be judged by history as the worst president ever – but not for the reasons she’d use. He is the worst because with the exception of A. Lincoln, who was fighting an organized revolution, no president in history has undermined, attacked, and destroyed more of the US Constitution than Mr Bush. He committed human rights violations, war crimes, totally ignored his oath of office, usurped authority, and he couldn’t dance either.