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Please allow me to explode a few of them.
[The Tax Cut]: The tax cut is of dubious economic merit. It is well known, among economists, that tax cuts can spur economic growth by infusing the economy with more money. It's also well known, among politicians, that you pass your stimulus package in the third quarter of your Presidency. So much the better if it happens to coincide with an economic recovery. The recession itself lasted only nine months in 2001, by economic standards. The economy has been growing since early 2002. Why then did we need a tax cut in 2003? Wasn't it growing fast enough? There is a problem if the economy grows too fast. There is a concept that economists use called potential output, which is theoretically the optimal output of an economy. An economy can exceed potential output, but to do so it risks inflation and a subsequent corrective adjustement (read: another recession). With the economy already heating up when the tax cuts were passed, this is exactly that Alan Greenspan and the rest of the Fed warned us about. It's too much! It will push us over the edge, and we'll be back in this mess again in 2006. That is, if we recover at all. The economy, it seems, has deeper problems than simple GNP growth, like, for instance, the fact that while the economy is growing at 7-8%, no new jobs have been created. The bottom line is, the tax cuts haven't created any jobs. They have, however, created an enormous deficit, and have potentially overheated our economy, both of which could spell fiscal disaster later on.
[Defeat of Saddam]: Finally capturing Saddam was like putting an exclamation point on the end of the sentence, 'this is an illegal war'. It doesn't change the facts, but it gives us something to yell about.
[Putting Libya in its place]: Libya's recent actions have NOTHING to do with Bush or the illegal war in Iraq. Nothing. Libya has been trying to reconcile with the West since Clinton was the President. In the past, they've accepted responsibility for and made settlements with the Lockerbie and German nightclub bombing victims (or their families), and given over to international courts those suspected of planning those attacts. They kicked all the terrorists out, and they even supplied information to the CIA about al Qaida. Kadafi, in his old age, wants to leave behind a legacy of peace. He wants to be an example to the rest of the developing world. If anything, Libya is disarming DESPITE Bush's diplomacy.
[Getting Iran to talk]: Iran has also grown more moderate in the last 10 years. One of the most baffling things to me, after 9-11, was why Bush took a hard line with Iran. Certainly, there is much left to be desired about the way Iran operates, but they had been improving! And they had been increasingly making overatures to the United States! But then Bush calls them the Axis of Evil and lands armies on their eastern and western boarders and 'oh fuck, the Americans have completely lost their minds, again' (the real axis of evil, incidently, should probably be Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both of which are US Allies). Ten years of diplomacy down the drain. One can only hope that the Bam tragedy has calmed Bush down a little bit so he'll be willing to LISTEN to what Iran has been trying to SAY for the last 10 years.
[Shining the lights on North Korea]: Actually, as I recall, in October 1994 Clinton made a deal with the North Koreans to get them to stop their nuclear weapons program. It wasn't until Bush, again, cleverly, lumped North Korea in with the Axis of Evil that Kim Jong started the reactors back up. In fact, let's look at some important recent events in North Korea's history:
June 2000: The North and South Korean leaders hold a historic three day summit in Pyongyang. They sign a pact making a commitment towards reunification and allow reunions of families separated during the Korean War.
September 25, 2000: The defense ministers of South and North Korea meet for talks.
October 2000: U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright holds talks with Kim Jong Il in North Korea.
December 2000: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is presented with the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his efforts to establish relations with Communist North Korea.
March 2001: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung meets with US President George W. Bush. North Korea cancels ministerial talks with the South after Bush states the North poses a threat to the region and cannot be trusted to honor agreements. ***Whoop Whoop Whoop Alert!***
October 2001: North Korea postpones plans to hold reunions of families separated since the Korean War, citing a "warlike situation" in Seoul since the terrorist attacks in the United States.
January 2002: In President Bush's State of Union address he names Iran, Iraq and North Korea as states promoting terrorist activity, calling them "an axis of evil."
April 2002: North Korea says it will resume dialogue with the United States, but warns it will call off any future talks if Washington "slanders" the communist country again.
Did you notice where the North Korean situation seemed to magically turn to shit and how George Bush "shined light" on his own incompitency? It's really difficult to express in words how bad this President is at foreign policy.
[Toppled the Taliban] See Defeat of Saddam, above.
[Bolstered the Defense and created Homeland Security]: Bolstered defense, how, exactly? By starting two illegal wars, over-extending our military and bringing us to the brink of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula? And Homeland Security has done what for us? Besides unconsitutionally imprisoning hundreds of people and making air traffic so slow and inconvenient that terrorists would rather walk to their targets.
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