Blameless Administration
I was in physics today, when politics came up. Now, normally politics aren't discussed in physics (at least, not daily), so I spoke my mind and said "like our president?" refering to a statement that someone had said that "you don't want stupid people firing missiles". I still defend my statement.
What surprised me, was that someone then said "well atleast he had the guts to do it". Now this certain someone is quite good at physics, and probably has a high B or a low A in the class. However, his statement caused my respect for him as a person, to fall quite far and quite fast.
Lets say that it is true. He did, of course, have the guts to do it. He had the guts to 1.) lie to all the american people, and have all his friends lie to the american people about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the threat that Saddam posed (which has been shown to have been very, very, very, very, very, very little to the U.S., and the rest of the world). The other thing that he had the guts to do, was to 2.) declare war on a country that had not done ANYTHING to threaten the American people. I'm really glad that our president has "the guts to do it".
But something comes to mind, that makes me retract the view that he has guts.
Lets make an analagy real quick, shall we? Lets say, you're in college or high school, and have to write a paper. You're one of the few people to start on it immediately. So you go out, and talk to someone who knows what it is that your topic is about. After your long conversation, you believe you have enough to write your paper. So you write it, and feel very good about, and you show it to some of your friends to proof read it. They are shocked with some of the information, but you convince them that it is completely accurate (mostly by repeating of course, what you have said in the paper).
The day comes to turn in your paper, and you do. And your teacher grades it.
A few days later, you get it back. To your surprise, you've gotten a D on that paper. You can't believe it. No way could you have gotten a D on a paper. That NEVER happened. Not to you. So after class, you go up to the teacher, and hold up the paper. You explain your points very intelligently and try to convince him that you have written a paper that is above worthyness of a D. Perhaps he just thought you had copied it and was testing you, you may have thought.
He takes it, and looks at it. He acknowledges your wonderful use of the english language to support your point, and the data that you have put into this paper. "However," he says to you, "being able to express what you believe isn't always what's important. Your facts," he says, turning to your works cited page, "although quite interesting, were not completely accurate." He goes on to cite numerous problems with it, small minor details that you overlooked or incorrectly took down from your conversation that you had with the expert. Those don't really bother you that much, what bothers you is that he makes the point that your entire paper is backwards because of all the data you have collected. Although you were assigned to write an objective paper, you only took one source, and one view, that made it a lot easier to get the paper that you had wanted.
Sound familiar? I should hope so, because it's almost exactly the same thing that George W. Bush did in order to convince the country that going to war with Iraq was necissary to protect the world and the American people. Now that we know that there was no real threat, and we know that he lied, repeatedly, I have only one question.
Who is to blame?
I'm sure some of you believe that no one is to blame, that it was just a matter of bad information, or missinterpreted data, or some such thing. I'd like you to find the parent of a soldier that has died in Iraq, and walk up to them, and tell them that because of a few minor details that weren't really accurate, that your son or daughter is now never going to live their lives again. Thanks to a few small people who OBVIOUSLY had NO idea what they were talking about, that will not be blamed for the small errors, that is the reason that their child is dead.
I would like for anyone who is reading this, to remember back to some other presidents. Lets start from the beginning.
George Washington, who was leading the army back in the revolutionary war didn't really make all that many military decisions by himself. Nor did he rely on some small figure in the background to tell him what to do.
He wrote to congress, which at that time was barely a congress at all, and gave them what information he had, and then followed what they ordered.
I doubt that anyone would say that George Washington didn't have guts, he became president of a very young nation that was just being born, and helped to set the basis of our country. Yet he didn't act irrationally, or make up his own split decisions.
Another very famous, and also very repeatedly mentioned president was Abraham Lincoln. He was in a very important part of our history, the fight between the industrial North, and the agricultural South. I HOPE everyone knows what the Emancipation Proclamation is. If not, then for the love of God, search for it and read it online! Americans these days know far too little of the short history that has lead us to where we are today.
But anyway, Abraham Lincoln had a very difficult time. He had to make sure that it was written just correctly, and released just at the right time. It was written so that the slaves in the ceceeded states were to be freed, but ommitted those in the Union who had slaves, or territories already taken by the Union. In that way, one could argue it was weak, however had he not included that part then the states that were part of the Union and contained slaves, although few, would have left to join the confederacy, and the union would have lost many of it's soldiers. The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed Blacks to join the Union army, which allowed the freed to free more people.
Abraham Lincoln's major goal of the civil war was not to free slaves. It was to reunite the Union. Slavery, it appeared, just happened to be one of the many issues of the Civil War, and is often refered to as being the main reason for Lincoln's trying to defeat the South. It was not. Lincoln wanted to reunite the Union as soon as possible, and didn't wish to punish the South anymore than they had already been punished after they had lost the war.
However, John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln. Lincoln, who was probably the only Northern left who still cared about the South and the problems it would soon face. This allowed ths South to be taxed and for corruption to spread through out the country, and the North and South views of each other to stay almost exactly the same as they had been before the war.
Lincoln was decisive in the decisions he made, yet he didn't rush into things without first deciding what action to take. I doubt that anyone would say that Lincoln didn't have guts, and be serious and have an intelligent point to make.
Now one common theme between these two men, is they they both were fairly common people, and they were very intelligent, and thought about what it was they wanted to do. They were also part of some military action before their presidency. Bush's only military action, was to not be present whenever roll happened to be taken. I need not mention the military record of Kerry, except to say that he (unlike Bush) actually WAS in a war, and knew what it was like. Purple Hearts aside, he fought in a war for our country. Bush avoided war for his country.
Now that we have looked at these presidents, I have the same question that I've asked before. Who is to blame?
With the paper analagy, it was the writer of the paper (or in real life, it would be the President) who would be to blame for not collecting enough data before writing his or her paper (again in real life, it was the President who rushed into things "crying wolf", and then decided that it didn't matter that his information was wrong).
If the President, who is supposed to be the representative of the people of the United States of America, isn't to blame for a war that has often been refered to as "Bush's War", then WHO exactly, IS to blame?
Numerous people could be blamed, but I do believe that it was the President, our current President, who is to be blamed for the thousands of American lives that have been lost during, and after the war on Iraq was "won".
But that, of course, is just my two cents.
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