It's funny how the same people that always complained that Bush-bashing was unpatriotic or anti-American are already laying into President Obama and he hasn't even done anything.
For the record, I was very pro-Bush during the 2000 election and was elated when he got into office. I thought he was the man! (I also considered myself a conservative at the time)
I kept this opinion of him until right around the time of the Iraq invasion- why? Aside from the arguments for or against the validity of the invasion, it made absolutely no sense.
It made no sense that the U.S would essentially give up it's hunt for Bin Laden and AQ to focus on Iraq. And the proof is in the results- they never did get Bin Laden and AQ is still a functional organization today.
It made no sense for Bush put on a big show about how he was going to get 'em dead or alive, then launches an extremely tiny military campaign in Afghanistan mostly fought by paid locals, they never got the guy responsible for the worst terror attack on American soil (isn't this the war on terror?) and only succeeded in temporarily reducing some of AQ's headcount (and actually this had the undesirable side effect of causing AQ to spread to many more countries than they were in before, making it much more difficult than when they were mostly concentrated in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area)
Then, suddenly, Iraq was the biggest threat in the world and we had to invade RIGHT NOW!!!!
Bush and Colin Powell make several speeches arguing that Iraq is developing WMD's to wipe us all out (this was a lie) and we can't wait for definitive proof from UN weapons inspectors (I believed Powell's speech to the UN in which he shows satellite photography of the supposed chemical weapon bunkers and missile launchers) 300,000 soldiers are sent overseas with several aircraft carrier groups and they invade and occupy a nation of 26 million, never letting up in their hunt to get Saddam.
About 9 months later after exhaustive searches conducted with resources multiple times larger than what was dedicated to Afghanistan they finally capture Saddam.
If such a large number of resources were expended to get Saddam, who had never carried out an attack against America even remotely comparable to 9/11, then why couldn't the same resources be expended to get Bin Laden, who is a much bigger threat?
Anywho. It was at this point that I started looking at Bush with a much more critical eye and his following actions onward revealed that he was utterly incompetent and that he was definitely not a president for the people, but a president for special interests.
- He put an incompetent buffon named Paul Bremer in charge of Iraq, who succeeded in creating the conditions for a MASSIVE insurgency that could have been easily avoided entirely, which cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis and U.S troops
- He was utterly incompetent in his handling of hurricane Katrina
- He succeeded in alienating Russia (who was willing to play ball as an ally) and broke promises made by previous administrations at the end of the cold war
- He was completely clueless about the economic sh** storm that developed on his watch and his only answer to everything was to lower taxes and sit back and let the free market work itself out (a hardcore Milton Friedman position that he only reversed when he was told to by the likes of Paulson and Bernanke after Bear Stearns fell apart in late summer of 2007)
So, blah blah blah, lots of words.
My point to this whole thing is never count your chickens until your eggs have hatched.
I am neither pro or anti- Obama, and am waiting to see what he does in office. Day 2 of his presidency is just a little too early to form any opinions if you ask me!