Worst legacy of the Bush years (Molly Ivins)

[struggle4progress]

November 3, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas -- While it's still an open contest for Worst Legacy of the Bush Years, the destruction of goodwill for America around the world is definitely a contender. <snip>

The colossal ineptitude of Bush's diplomacy, if it can be called that, leading up to the Iraq war was somewhere between ludicrous and nuts. Bullying, bribing, threatening -- and these were our allies. The insanity of our approach to Turkey, one of America's oldest democratic allies in the Middle East, is textbook -- to be studied in international relations schools for years. In the name of bringing democracy to Iraq (actually, at the time we never mentioned that as a reason), we threatened to end it in Turkey. Good grief. <snip>

So, a lot of cleanup is needed. Cards and letters (well, OK, e-mails) have rolled in from the Beloved Readers. We are getting gems daily. People are full of dandy ideas about how to fix this mess -- any and all parts of this mess -- but the foreign policy suggestions are especially interesting.

What the people seem to grasp that the Bush administration doesn't is the link between the Middle East, energy policy, defense policy, the environment and the economy. Again and again, readers point out that oil is at the root of the knot of problems and we can give ourselves much more flexibility to deal with the Middle East if we are not so dependent on it for oil. Ergo, we need an energy policy that emphasizes conservation and alternative energy sources. <snip>

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2005/1249

[Erika]

1. Excellent read

Feeding the corrupt ME governments by our not conserving, developing alternatives, is feeding terrorism.

Cheney scoffed early on at the suggestion we should conserve.

[enigma000]

2. Pissing off Middle Eastern dictators

is not a poor legacy. That might be one of Bush's few pluses.

[struggle4progress]

3. You think W has made the Saudis mad? Iraq production is down,

so the world price of oil is up. Meanwhile, W and his cronies have been torturing enough people to take the Saudis and their kind off the hook ...

[Catfight]

4. Molly the best. nt