Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [MLUG][Politics] State of the Union

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Jonathan King wrote:
> On 1/31/06, Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:

> > I think that this is a rather difficult accusation to make.  The problem
> > is to know whether the fault for mistakes can be laid at Bush's foot, or
> > whether they can be laid at others getting in the way, or whether the
> > problems are so difficult that mistakes are impossible to avoid and
> > no-one else could do much better.
>
>
> I'm not sure what to make of this.  Nobody asked Bush to do any of the
> following:
>
> 1) Declare war on Iraq without planning appropriately for the
> occupation.  Even if you thought this was a good idea, the lack of
> planning was atrocious.  In particular, the effect of this action on
> our military will be felt for years to come.

I think that this is a good example of a situation where one wonders if 
anyone else could have done any better.  By comparison with other wars, 
this one seems to have proceeded rather well.  Any war is going to have 
damaging effects on one group or another.  But is the damaging effect on 
the military going to be worse than, say, the Vietnam War?

Another issue that I think of these days is just the shear logistics of 
making good decisions.  Part of the problem is that to make a perfect 
decision in every arena, one has to have perfect expertise about every 
subject.  Typically people who show strength in one area are often weak 
in another area.  And remember, a perfect president not only has to have 
expertise so as to make right decisions all the time, but he also has to 
make perfect speeches, and also have a perfect sense of when it is right 
to act and when it isn't right to act.

Perhaps Bush didn't have the appropriate planning skills to pull off the 
perfect war.  But then perhaps someone who would have had these perfect 
skills wouldn't have had the singlemindedness of character to actually 
make war in the first place.  Perhaps Bush doesn't always follow the 
best advice he is given, but if one is not an expert in everything, how 
is one to know which voice out of the sea of voices one should listen to?

Certainly Bush has his weaknesses, but he also has his strengths.  I 
don't agree with every decision that he has made, but I don't think 
history is going to cast him as a complete looser.


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