Do you approve of George W. Bush's job performance?

[Gabu]

Oh, and he's done a pretty decent job of preventing another terror attack.

That's just silly; you can credit the anti-terrorist rock in my pocket for that.  You can tell it's working because we haven't had a terrorist attack.

[Gabu]

Holy crap, it's now up to 7?!
What's wrong wit youse guys?

8, my friend, 8 -- History won't look on him too bad, imo.  I think they will look at him as one of the better wartime presidents we've had.

Uh, who are the wartime presidents that are worse than him?  I can't think of... I was going to say "many", but instead I'll say "any".

What is there to approve of?  Remember we're talking job approval, not personal approval.

[Gabu]

He handled 9/11 superbly, IMO, much better than Gore probably would have handled it.

What did he do, exactly, that Gore wouldn't have done?

He was right in taking out Saddam Hussein, who was a WMD himself and had the capability of connecting with Al-Qaeda, though there was no connection at the time.  He stopped a problem before a bigger problem arose.

But Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda weren't even close to being on speaking terms.  I'm fairly sure that Canada has the capability of connecting with al-Qaeda, too.

I think history will judge Bush's decision to go take out Saddam was a wise move, though he didn't plan for success so quickly and thus that success has been overshadowed by the chaos that has followed in the last 4 1/2 years.

Saddam Hussein was certainly a grade-A asshole, but there are an awful lot of those in the world.  That wasn't even the primary reason given for invading Iraq, anyway.  If you look up old speeches by Bush, he only mentions Saddam Hussein being a bad man way late in the game when it was becoming apparent that all of the other attempted justifications were false.

Other wartime presidents that I think were not as good as Bush were the Woodrow Wilson/Warren Harding administrations during World War I.  They didn't end the war like they were supposed to.  The war never stopped until September 1945 when Japan surrendered.  The Treaty of Versailles or the Armistice, as it was called, was, in effect, World War 1 1/2, because it riled Germany up even more and was part of the reason that propeled Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party into power in the early 1930s.

Okay, so you have one single president who was arguably worse than Bush in terms of foreign policy (I don't think nearly anyone considers Harding a wartime president...).  Given that I can think of at least six or seven presidents who were presidents during major military actions, I don't see how that shows that Bush is one of the better wartime presidents.

[Gabu]

Iraq is not lost.  The surge is working.  The Anbar province, once one of the worst places in Iraq, is now one of the safest.  Iraq can still be won.  We're not where we need to be, but we're definitely farther along than we were in May, 2003 when "Mission Accomplished" was declared and not just in the calendar, either.  Anbar is just one of a number of examples.  Fallujah is not as bad as it was.  Baghdad is even slowly starting to calm down.  McCain is right, the surge is working.  Petraeus is going to bring back a positive report, saying that we're doing good, we just need to keep it up.  Heck, even Bush is talking about possibly drawing down the troops within the next year pending the September surge report.

Okay... is that why, er, a report just came out saying that 11 of 18 benchmarks of success have not been achieved at all, and that an additional 4 have only partially been achieved?

Is 3 out of 18 (or 5 out of 18 if you count the 4 partially achieved benchmarks as a half) now considered success?

Oh yes, and this is coming from the GAO, not some liberal anti-war group.

[Gabu]

Do you look at the glass 3/4 empty or 1/4 full?  When I think of all the blessings that my God has given me, it serves me well not to dwell on what I don't have, but to praise Him for what I do have.  In the same way, we should not be disheartened by what we have not achieved, but we should be joyed by what we have achieved, while still working to achieve the remaining 10-15 benchmarks.

This also tells me that now's not the time to bring everybody home.  We can't leave a project unfinished.  Mike Huckabee was correct last night when he said [paraphrased] "whether it was right or not to go in is immaterial.  What is the fact, we broke it, therefore we must fix it.  We don't fix something by leaving it dismantled and fleeing the face of disaster.  I, as much as anybody, want the troops home as soon as we can, but as John McCain said, I want them to come home from a position of strength, not a position of retreat.  As Fred Thompson also said, we want to leave because of strength, not caught running away with our tail between our legs.

I'm not disputing the report at all, as it is from a non-liberal group, but I'm just looking at it from a different perspective.

How much longer do they need?  The White House directly said that people should wait until September to see how things are going.  Now it's September and a report has directly said that things are not going well.  The three things that have successfully been done are ensuring the protection of minority parties, establishing committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan, and establishing joint security stations in Baghdad.  That's it.  Benchmarks not achieved includes such minor and trivial things as "reduce sectarian violence", "ensure evenhanded enforcement of the law", and "ensure Iraq's political authorities are not undermining Iraqi security forces".  The report said that violence has not decreased and that key legislation has not been passed.

In other words, the three benchmarks that have been met are minor at best, and the big stuff that would really make an impact has just not happened one bit, nor is there any indication that it will happen in the near future.  If you want to look at that as significant progress, that's some rather rosy glasses you've got on there.

[Gabu]

Am I wrong for approving of the Bush Administration?  Am I wrong for approving of the reasons for going into Iraq?  Am I wrong for thinking we are making progress, when it is clear that WE ARE?

Yes, you really are wrong for thinking that progress is being made.  The three benchmarks that were achieved were minor and not very difficult at all to do.  There is no evidence that the actually important stuff will get done anytime soon, nor is there really any evidence that it will ever get done.  Like I said, the report said that violence had not gone down and that key legislation had not been passed.  What's taking so long, and what will even more time do?  There has been no progress towards the important goals.  None.  They're not almost there; they haven't even begun to get there.  At what point can we simply say that it isn't going to happen?

To say that the job is 1/4 done and act as if that shows that progress will continue steadily until it's completely done is - and I'm sorry to be blunt - totally false.  The benchmarks are unrelated.  Completing some does not mean that the others are coming.

Suppose you come up to a brick wall.  You want to move this brick wall, so you begin hitting it with your head.  After a while you find that this is doing nothing and that you're starting to get a headache.  Which is the better option: stop attempting this, or "stay the course" because you'd obviously be a coward to stop hitting your head against a brick wall?

And like I said, the reasons for going into Iraq that were given were that Iraq was a threat and had WMD.  They didn't, and it has come out that Bush even knew that they didn't.  The whole "Saddam Hussein is bad" only came out when it was becoming evident that the other reasons given were false.

Do you also approve of the United States invading every other country in the world led by a despot?  If not, why is Iraq a special case?