George W. Bush

"A Fairer Verdict On Bush

Victor Davis Hanson, 01.20.09, 04:40 PM EST

A reassessment of the 43rd president has already begun.

Critics are tallying the Bush administration's pluses and minuses, and some consensus is emerging that in time George W. Bush, like Harry Truman, will be seen in a far more favorable light than his current low poll ratings reflect.

Three great crises marked the Bush administration: Iraq; the "war on terror" following 9/11; and the mid-September 2008 financial meltdown. Yet as critics debate his performance amid these ordeals, lost in the controversies are a number of other lasting achievements.

Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito have proved superior appointments--far more inspired than any made by Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush. The HIV-relief package of some $15 billion to Africa saved millions of lives and exceeded any AIDs effort by any past president,Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton included.

While Bush the caricatured cowboy remains unpopular abroad, the governments of most key allies and neutrals--Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany and India--remain pro-American and appreciate Bush's stance on free trade, collective security and multilateral efforts post-Iraq.

What then about Iraq, the war and the economy? Bush--in the uncertainty of a post-9/11 landscape--completed the earlier efforts of Bill Clinton to halt the Hussein Regime. He inherited no-fly zones and legislation calling for regime change, but then got a majority of the Congress to authorize the military removal of Saddam.

Most of Congress subsequently canonized him after the brilliant three-week victory over Saddam, abandoned him when the insurgency took more than 4,000 American lives, and ignored him when--against the advice of the Iraq Study Group, most of the joint chiefs and grandees of his own party--he gave the go-ahead to David Petraeus and the surge.

Millions in Iraq today enjoy the opportunity of consensual government unimaginable in the era of Saddam. Iraq, in short, is Bush's Korea: a messy and controversial war against authoritarian evil that in time will be vindicated by the growth of a constitutional society in place of a monstrosity.

There remain three great truths about Bush's so-called "war on terror." First, the American mainland has not been hit by a major terrorist attack in the last seven years, when almost every expert warned us that it most assuredly would be.

Second, our enemy, al-Qaida, is depleted and scattered, now largely isolated to the wild lands of Waziristan. Bin Laden's popularity and support for suicide bombings have plummeted throughout the Middle East.

Third, reforms in the CIA and FBI, changes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's wiretaps accords, and the Guantanamo detention facility were derided as a veritable shredding of the Constitution. That slur ceased with the election of Barack Obama, who apparently thinks such measures were efficacious rather than unconstitutional, and the media has reacted similarly, seeing such decisions as complex and problematic rather than fascistic.

And the debits? The Bush administration spent too much money during the first term, running up deficits and discrediting the revenue enhancements that accrued from his tax cuts. That said, Bush's instinctual worries about closer monitoring of Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) andFreddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) were right; their defenders in Congress were wrong.

His rapid federal infusions of capital to shore up tottering financial institutions probably helped stave off a general collapse. He was about as culpable for the American banking and stock crises as are the leaders in Europe for their own economies, presiding over even greater and more unforeseen economic disruption.

For all the talk of the dismal world that awaits Barack Obama, Iraq is quiet, a policy of containment of, and victory over, radical Islam is in play and federal intervention to restore financial credit and trust has already begun.

Why then such Bush vitriol? The contested election of 2000 for the first time in history required the Supreme Court to adjudicate the outcome, giving the victory to a candidate who did not receive the popular vote. In reaction, Bush was easily caricatured by our influential cultural elite as a bible-thumping, Texas-twanged, inarticulate incompetent. In the euphoria of brilliant victories in Afghanistan and over Saddam Hussein, he strutted and accentuated such stereotypes instead of, as was true later, nuancing them with reflection and humility.

Finally, Bush placed an inordinate amount of faith in less than competent loyalists. A Michael Brown or Scott McClellan would have been over their heads as small-town bureaucrats. Others such as Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Meyers and Karen Hughes were simply unable to overcome media charges that they were mediocrities.

Unmentioned has been Bush's character of both honesty and resoluteness. He ran one of the most corruption-free administrations in memory, something we are already beginning to appreciate as we compare the prior scandal-ridden Clintons and the Chicagoesque ambiguities that already swirl around Barack Obama and his cabinet appointments.

In time, historians will come to a fairer verdict of George W. Bush; in the meantime such a favorable reassessment has already begun.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University."

I like this.......

Emergent Church

Well i started writing this blog about an hour ago... i was writing it about the emerging/ emergent church. I was about half way through it, and i deleted it all. I don't think there is a need for me to ramble on about how it and it's leaders make me angry, there are more important issues out there.

I think what i would like to talk about today instead is something that i heard Piper say in a sermon the other day. He was talking about how believed that we should not be teaching our children to love God, but that first we should be teaching them to trust him. He said this was important because we cannot love unconditionally. We will screw up and fall down, and there will be a time where we don't love God. So if we are taught from a young age that the most important thing we do is just to love God, what happens when we don't? 

We as humans tend to not feel loved when we aren't loving others. If I stop loving you, i feel like you have stopped loving me. If we let our kids grow up thinking that all they need to do is love God, and never teach them to trust God first, then as soon as they are having a bad day, and just aren't thinking about the things of God... It can all come crashing down. Learning to trust God first allows them to know that He is there, and that all things happen for good for those who are called according to his purpose (romans 8:28).  They may not understand why they don't feel loved, or why they feel like the world is against them, but if they trust in the Lord they will know that He is still there.

I thought that was a pretty super dooper statement, I don't have any kids obviously, (cept for my cat) but i'm glad i learned this now, because that is what i will teach my kids.

Can't think of a good title...

So the other day i was at Tyis' house, and Jim brought up a very good point while i was there. Shayna said she needed to go get her toothpaste, and Jim said "why is it called toothpaste if you brush all of your teeth with it? Shouldn't it be called teethpaste?" I basically decided then and there that from now on i am calling toothpaste, teethpaste.  

Thats the only intro that i could think of for todays blog...

Today during church i was realizing how when i was a kid, sitting through a sermon used to be a chore, unless Mr. Storrer was preaching because he gets pretty excited. But it used to seem like they would take hours, and i would never be able to sit still because i was so bored. 

Now I am finding myself wishing that sermons would go on longer (even Mr. Shrout's) and they seems as if they go by within 10 mins. I try to listen to as many sermons as i can during the week, but I am running out of the ones that i like to listen to.  But today is sunday! and that means another Piper sermon will be on itunes today. So i have 50 mins of some point this next week taken care of.

Well tomorrow Grace School of Theology opens back up, and tuesday class starts. Hopefully my application will go through, otherwise it looks like i will be spending the next quarter working, sleeping, and playing golf.... that would be terrible. 

I can't really think of anything profound to say today so i think i'm just going to leave it at that.

Live long and prosper

Wes

First Post

Hello and welcome to my blog. My name is Wes, today is January 1st and the first day of resolutions. 

I have many resolutions, some i'll talk about, and some that won't be talked about. 

First as of a few weeks ago i made the decision to switch my major to Biblical studies rather than medicine, and i wanted a place that i could ramble on about things of God. I needed a place more mature than myspace or facebook, a place where i make the page look how i want it to look, and I do the posting on my page, and others can (if they choose) respond appropriately. So here I am.

Ok so onto resolutions, other than the typical get in shape, run, be healthy, be a better person stuff that everyone does. I'm going to list my other resolutions.

1. I am going to read through my Bible at least once this year, Im trying for two times, but i don't know that i'll make it, so for now its just once, but the plan is to be done at least by august. This means about 7-8 chapters a night, and of course splitting psalm 119 up.. that would be crazy to include that as a chapter. If i keep this rate up i can do it twice in a year, if i slow it down a little i should be done by august.

2. A's in all my classes... I got 3 C's last semester. I think because i am working full time, had a full time class schedule, and really just didn't like the subject/ teachers anymore. It just got boring.

3. I don't know that this would necessarily be counted as a resolution or not... but its going here anyway. ITS MY BLOG! In my entire golf career (6 months) I have hit one birdie, not just any birdie mind you however, This birdie was amazing, par 4, drove it about 250 and then 7 iron landed 6 inches from the pin. Anyway onto the resolution... I would LOVE to hit an eagle this year, but if that doesnt happen, I'm going for 5 birdies. Now if i were to try and fit this goal into a math equation i should be able to do this. I figure 1 birdie in 6 months, that makes 2 within the next 6 and then 4 the next (if it were an exponential function) so i guess we'll see if all of my calculus was worthwhile.

4. I'd also like to read say like 4 books a month. Thats roughly 52 books a year, you know one a week i think thats doable. 

5. This one is a good one.. i'm trying to keep a minimum of 300 dollars in my checking account at all times this year (unless i need something big (like a car..)) this means dumping everything else into savings. If i can keep this up by the end up the year i will have a happy bank account.

6. TITHE!!

I think that is a pretty good list for right now. I don't know how often i will be able to post in here. Hopefully alot. I have alot to talk about, so we'll see where this takes me. 

Oh and soon, dont know how soon. but soon, maybe i'll start posting some mini sermons in here. practice. practice. practice. I have some ideas for some topics, but some of them will require alot of work so we'll see how long it takes me to get it in here.

Wes Wade