Biography

George W. Bush is a clear and present danger to the United States and the world on many levels. He has contempt for the environment, having refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming (or even make a counteroffer to it), reneged on his campaign promise to take action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, rolled back myriad environmental regulations in this country, and rewarded buyers of Hummers with huge tax deductions. Even scientists at the Pentagon warn of the risk of catastrophic global warming, but the Bush administration continues to ignore the problem.

 

Bush ignored the threat posed by al Qaeda until after the September 11 attacks, which might have been averted if he had acted responsibly. Bush did nothing even after receiving the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Briefing, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," which specifically warned that bin Laden wanted to follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America" and that the FBI reported "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks," including recent surveillance of buildings in New York. Incredibly, Bush spent the rest of August on vacation at his ranch in Texas (the longest presidential vacation in 32 years).

 

Bush lied to the American people, Congress, and the world about the reasons for waging war on Iraq. That preemptive war violated international law, has killed well over 100,000 people (including, among others, an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians, over 1,520 American soldiers and over 175 other coalition soldiers, and unknown (but huge) numbers of Iraqi soldiers), and has caused horrific injuries to many thousands more. The war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't have, has turned Iraq into a hellhole for its citizens and our occupying soldiers, has turned a country that posed no threat to us into a breeding ground for terrorists, and is swelling the ranks of al Qaeda.

 

We never had a plan to handle post-war Iraq, and have no exit strategy. Nor can the war be justified on humanitarian grounds. Saddam's successor, who reportedly summarily executed six accused prisoners himself shortly before taking office, also appears to be little if any better than Saddam. The war is an unbelievable disaster, with no good options left. Many experts on Iraq say the best that can be hoped for is "continued chaos that falls short of civil war."

 

The war has also diverted resources that could have been used to attend to the much greater threats posed by al Qaeda, North Korea, and Iran, and has dangerously overstretched our military. Incredibly, the Bush administration actually rejected three Pentagon proposals to destroy terrorist training camps in Northern Iraq (the region not controlled by Saddam Hussein) operated by  

leading al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi because doing so would have undermined the rationale for war with Iraq. Bush was much more interested in pursuing Saddam Hussein than an actual terrorist whom one expert says "is arguably more important than Osama bin Laden right now." Zarqawi has since killed hundreds, including reportedly beheading Nicholas Berg.

 

Terrorism around the world is increasing, not decreasing, in the wake of the Iraq war. The State Department found that terrorist incidents around the world reached a 21-year high in 2003. 2004 appears to be even worse: MSNBC reported on September 2, 2004 that terrorist "attacks are on the rise worldwide -- dramatically," and that of 2,929 terrorism-related deaths after September 11, 2001, 1,709 (58%) had occurred in the first eight months of 2004.

 

Bush, despite condemning other countries' interest in weapons of mass destruction, refuses to place any limits on our proliferation of such weapons. He repudiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He urges the development of new, "more useable" nuclear weapons, even though doing so will undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and encourage other countries to develop nuclear weapons. As noted above, his illegal, unjustified war in Iraq has resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people (far more than those murdered on September 11, 2001, and those killed by all of the murderers whose executions he presided over as governor of Texas, put together).

 

Bush has exhibited contempt for other nations, demanding that they kowtow to our country's wishes without question. In addition to the Kyoto Protocol, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty discussed above, he has repudiated or rejected the International Criminal Court, the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, the convention on banning landmines, the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the U.N. Convention on Small Arms. (For still more examples of treaties abrogated or rejected by the Bush administration, see here.)

 

Bush has turned a world that two years ago was almost universally sympathetic to us (the French newspaper Le Monde said on September 12, 2001, "we are all Americans") into one where many people despise us and consider our country, not unreasonably, as the greatest threat to world peace. Bush has no conception of diplomacy. His belligerent stupidity in pronouncing North Korea a member of the "Axis of Evil" may well have provoked Kim Jong Il to begin making nuclear weapons.

 

His is a cash-register presidency. He dutifully carries out the wishes of every constituency that fills the tables at his $2,000-a-plate dinners (the oil and gas industries, big corporations, the rich, the religious right, the NRA, the tobacco lobby), and of friends like the Saudis who have enriched the Bush family for decades, without regard for the public good.

 

His administration has subverted the Constitution: enacting into law the unconstitutional so-called "USA PATRIOT" Act and seeking the even more unconstitutional "Patriot II"; rounding up 1100 Arab and Muslim-Americans without probable cause to believe they have committed any crime and secretly holding them, incommunicado, for months on end; and having claimed the right to seize American citizens in the United States, declare them "enemy combatants," imprison them without bail, refuse them access to lawyers and the courts, and never file charges against them. This is not America.

 

The Bush Administration for over two years has held 650 people at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, again without access to attorneys or the courts, and without filing any criminal charges against them. The Administration has held children as young as 13 at Guantanamo. (It has also held children as young as 11 in its infamous Abu Ghraib prison.) Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has announced that he intends to hold these people until "the Global War on Terror" is over, which he says could be years or even decades from now. If the Bush administration ever deigns to file charges against any of these people, it claims the right to have them tried in secret by military tribunals, with U.S. military officers who are not lawyers as judges, with the government "reserving the right" to listen in on conversations between the accused and his attorney, with secret evidence being used against the accused, with the normal rules of evidence not applying to the proceeding, with an appeal lying only to President Bush, and with penalties (including the death sentence) being imposed and carried out in secret.

 

The CIA is also believed to be holding hundreds of people at secret detention centers around the world. The CIA also outsources torture, seizing people and transporting them to other countries, such as Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Jordan, to be tortured.

 

The Bush administration subverts democracy. It stole the 2000 election, and quite possibly the 2004 election as well. It has done everything possible to pretend that Democrats in Congress do not exist and need not be included in the process (despite Bush's claim in 2000 to be "a uniter, not a divider"). Bush and his people systematically misrepresent their policies, hoodwinking the public into supporting things that would never receive majority support if people knew the truth. Bush and his allies suggest that those who oppose any of Bush's policies are allies of terrorists. The Bush campaign even arrests and fires people who show up at campaign events carrying anti-Bush signs or wearing anti-Bush clothing.

 

The Bush administration has sought to institute the Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" program to spy on and gather information on every citizen. Yet the Bush administration has done everything possible to conduct its own affairs in secret: holding fewer press conferences than any president since Taft; refusing to disclose what Bush knew before September 11, what connection the Saudis had with September 11, or what Cheney's Energy Tax Force was doing; lying to us repeatedly about (among many other things) the reasons for waging war on Iraq; and refusing to tell us what the war and its aftermath would cost.

 

George W. Bush has acted with wanton irresponsibility toward our economy. During his presidency, 1.1 million jobs have been lost. He is the first president since Hoover to lose jobs during a term of office. He has enacted massive tax cuts primarily benefiting the rich, has waged the obscenely expensive and unnecessary war on Iraq, and has greatly increased even non-security related domestic spending. Bush has taken budget surpluses, achieved under President Clinton, and turned them into $400-billion-a-year deficits (exceeding the previous record $282 billion deficit "achieved" by his father) as far as the eye can see. In four years, he will have added about $1.5 trillion to the national debt. These wildly irresponsible actions gravely endanger the financial security of our country and indeed the world. Paul Volcker, the Republican former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, says that the United States faces a 75% chance of a financial crisis within five years.

 

For all of these reasons, it is my patriotic duty, and that of everyone who feels as I do, to oppose George W. Bush by every lawful means. This blog is one modest effort toward that end.

 

If you need still more reasons to oppose Bush, The Nation has 100 of them, and this site has 1,627 of them at this writing.