Views From The Center: Objective Thinking

There is a certain sector of the population that cannot find enough bad things to say about the President. On the other side of the coin, there is another sector, where there are people that think he can do no wrong. Then, there is a sector that sees everything through reality-tinted glasses and sees that sometimes he is right and sometimes he is wrong.

The people that live in a reality-based world can see the mistakes he has made. But they also see that others before him have made mistakes, as well. Who among us is perfect? But those that hate him and consider him to be Satan-personified, have a very narrow focus and will stop at nothing to embarrass him, no matter what the subject matter may include, in any given discussion.

In my days, I have been called both a liberal and a neo-con. The left calls me a neo-con, because there are times when I do side with the President. The right calls me a liberal, because there times that I do not agree with everything he does or says. Neither are right in this case.

I am who I am. I take each issue separately and evaluate it based on my convictions. If the President happens to agree with it, great. If he doesn't, then that's great too. But through all of this, I cannot and will not allow myself to be painted into a corner. My thought processes are such that I can think for myself, without anyone telling me what to think. That is precisely why I do not belong to any political party and probably never will. That is precisely why I have been mad at both parties, at one time or another.

Right now, I see the left taking over the Democratic party. And what is fueling this move toward the left? George W. Bush. They have such a deep-seeded hatred for this one man, that they do not look past that hatred and see that he is not as far to the right as say, Ronald Reagan was.

Was Reagan hated as much as GWB is today? By some, yes.

I remember the beating he took in the press. Was some of it justified? Yes. He wasn't perfect, but that didn't matter to Americans. They elected and re-elected him, by large landslide margins. This was because, the Democrats nominated wishy-washy liberals that could not make a stand on anything of any importance.

Was Clinton villified unjustly? At times, yes.

I couldn't have cared any less about his tryst with Monica, although I thought he was an idiot for doing it, especially after he had so many other allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviors surface, before this.

Was it important in the overall picture? Maybe, maybe not.

But I will say that his business was just that, his business. What I did fault him for was the sale of technology to China that saved them years of research. This was technology that very well could be used against us, someday. That was rarely an issue, in the media.

Kenneth Starr was hired to find wrongdoing in Whitewater. But after being given the greenlight to expand the investigation into his sexual activities (when nothing of any consequence could be found in the original focus of that investigation), it turned into a circus that wasted millions of taxpayers dollars. And what did they establish? Consensual oral sex.

But he lied to a grand jury and lied on TV, you say? Yes he did. And he was an idiot for doing so, too. But, the thing should not have been an issue to start with. It should not have been expanded to allow for an investigation that revolved around the tryst with Monica, unless Monica made the claim that she was a) raped or b) sexually harassed into it.

It didn't warrant the attention it got, it certainly didn't warrant impeachment.

Now, let's look at today.

In my opinion, George Bush did the right thing in removing Saddam. The whole WMD thing doesn't matter as much as the left would like to make it sound. In his State of the Union address in 2003, there were a LOT of reasons Saddam had to go, the possibilities of him having large stockpiles of WMDs was one of them. There were many others that were true, but the left can only focus on the one issue that wasn't (at least as far as we know today). As for myself, I think it is better to know that he didn't have them, than to sit and wait for him to use them.

Did he do the right thing? Yes. Did he do it the right way? In my opinion, no.

There are a whole host of things I feel he could have done better. Here are just a few:

1. Better planning. I feel like he did rush us into this conflict. I think there should have been more time allowed for the study of what the unintended cosnsequences would be, for removing an oppressive dictator right next door to an equally oppressive regime, in Iran.

2. More restraint after Saddam was toppled. Getting on that aircraft carrier and saying mission accomplished was a big mistake. Those elite soldiers threw down their weapons and didn't even give us a reasonable fight. They just blended into the population and waited to create havoc, by guerilla warfare. They were successful, their mission has been accomplished.

3. Not allowing the military to be sucked into fighting a politically correct war. There is no such thing. When the terrorists were using Fallujah as a base, I would have nailed it without giving them time to vacate it with innocent civilians. Sorry about the civilians, but as they say, war is hell. I would have made the Sunni Triangle, the Sunni Canyon, long before they tried to get tough.

4. Disbanding the Iraqi Army. By doing this, a lot of angry people were created. Suddenly, the biggest entity of the entire nation was unemployed. Getting rid of the upper echelon of officers was the right thing to do, but the rank and file soldiers should have been kept, re-educated, and left in place. Instead they were all canned and it has been a nightmare, due to the fact that many of these former soldiers are now fighting with the Sunni forces against the U.S. and the Iraqi government.

5. Trying to keep Iraq unified. Iraq was only unified because of one tyrant that used force to do it. The Sunnis were in power, the Kurds and the Shiites were not a part of the equation. I would have set up three sectors and worked to see if any or all could work together, at least at first. If not, three separate nations would be needed, to keep sectarian violence from spiralling into an all-out civil war. (Contrary to what many already believe is happening, I do not think we are at that point, yet. But if things do not improve, that is what we can expect, when we pull out, someday.)

Well there you have some of my take on the situation.

Do I believe that George Bush is an evil man hellbent on destroying the world? No. Do I believe that he is responsible for everything bad that happens in it? No. Do I believe that he has screwed some things up, at times? Yes. But, that doesn't help the situation right now.

Right now we need solutions to problems. The people that cannot stop blaming any and every last little thing on Bush, do not have any. All they have is a litany of complaints. And the people that cannot stop praising Bush for every last little thing, don't have any solutions. Because they do not even see the problems.

But, I do.

So before you consider me a neo-con or a liberal, think about why you feel that I am, one or the other. Then, re-examine your own stances and belief system and see just where you fit into the grand scheme of the ideological world. Think about where you get your information and then think about how you process it. Do all of that without invoking the name of George W. Bush. There is where you can find a whole new world that is known as, self-discovery.