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The man at the top is always in charge, or is
supposed to be. The Head
Man In Charge deserves the credit when things go right.
He deserves the blame when things go wrong. That follows true whether the boss is running
the corner garage with one mechanic helper, or if he’s running a
business with a staff of a dozen, or Wal-Mart with thousands.
That man at the top is responsible for anything and everything
that goes on with the people below him.
If there’s a profit in business, he has succeeded. If a loss comes in, he has failed. George W. Bush was elected president by a
minority of voters and a majority of the Supreme Court.
He took office during a peak of American prosperity.
The government had eliminated deficits and we had a surplus
unprecedented in recent memory. The world was not completely at peace. Violence was contained in Bosnia. Israelis and Palestinians were fighting, but all out warfare
was capped in the region. America
was strong with the friendship of NATO nation and respect in the United
Nations. Most Arab nations
muffled their dislike and were friendly to our face. Bill Clinton was a sharp politician during his
presidency. Facing a
Republican controlled Congress, he abandoned the extreme liberals in the
Democratic Party and shifted to the center to work with moderates of
both parties. Those were a
good eight years, ones we may never see again.
Democrats and Republicans worked together.
But Clinton was the man in the top spot and got the credit for
the good things, blame for the bad.
Fortunately for America, it was mostly good. President Bush came in with Republicans in
control of both houses of Congress, and strong ties to the extreme right
of the party. What happened to change things? The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalated and the Bush administration stood
aside without even attempting to find a truce or peaceful solution.
The fanatics of the Islamic community linked America with Israel
and blamed this country as surely as if it had been American tanks in
the Gaza Strip. The attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11
brought back the horrible memory of World War II and Pearl Harbor.
On that December 7 in 1941, the nation of Japan declared war on
America with the sneak attack. More people died in the Twin Towers than at Pearl Harbor.
And it was not accomplished by a powerful foreign nation.
It was the work of a handful of fanatics recruited by a religious
maniac named Osama bin Laden. He accomplished chaos beyond his wildest dreams.
His plan was to provoke a religious war between Islamics and the
free world. His goal was to
make the world look over the should wondering when and where the next
attack would occur. Airline
flights are cancelled at the slightest provocation.
Paranoia is so extreme that a lawyer in Oregon was locked up for
two weeks by the FBI because they misread a fingerprint from the Madrid,
Spain, train bombing. Instead of focusing on dissolving the roots of
terror and hatred of America, instead on concentrating on finding the
elusive bin Laden, President Bush soaked up obviously flawed
intelligence that Saddam Hussein had the so-called Weapons of Mass
Destruction. He decided
Saddam was a danger to the world and had to be removed. The United Nations and even America’s NATO
allies thought him wrong. So,
he decided the UN was outdated and irrelevant and he plunged America
with a few smaller nations, except for Great Britain, into an invasion
of Iraq. Only the simple minded believed the Iraqi people
would throw rose petals at the feed of a conquering foreign army.
The invasion succeeded in disrupting the Middle East.
No one wants to see a democracy there, not even the Iraqi
religious leaders. They
want another Iran. When Saddam’s statue was toppled, the
president declared the major fighting was over.
Over 700 Americas have lost their lives, not to mention the
thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians caught in the crossfire.
He announced we were winning the war on terror, and then admitted
the worst was yet to come. Tally it up.
Economically, we have gone from a national budget surplus to a
$7-trillion deficit. Iraq
will continue to be a financial drain with billions going into
rebuilding the damage in bombing and loss of human resources.
The rhetoric and cause for the invasion went from eliminating WMD
to freeing Iraq. Saddam was
bad, but was it America’s destiny to remove him?
His Arab neighbors could have united and done it. “Our friends” in the Arab world show their
feelings on the invasion of Iraq by gouging us with higher gas prices.
Only the oil moguls and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton is coming out
a winner financially. God help us if our country has decided to fill
the void once filled by Spain and later by England to rule the world.
It would be a shameful day if America has decided to dictate to
all the other nations, saying they have to live by our standards and
adhere to our rules—because we have the strongest military. This brings us back to the boss, the man at the
top. He could not have
brought us to the quicksand we’re in without cooperation from both
parties in congress, in the media and in grass root support of the
programs President Bush sold. Now,
he has to find a way out of it. George
W. Bush is the man at the top. Give
him the credit and the blame.
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