My Response To A “Bush Is Great” Email

By Daniel Miessler on September 12th, 2006: Tagged as Culture | Politics

On Sep 11, 2006, at 11:42 PM, David wrote:

I’m still believing that Bush is giving us the best response of the recent and present presidential choices in this matter, and feel he’s done more to thwart attacks on the USA and promote some semblance of stability in the mideast than any of his opponents would have done.

Unfortunately, David, what Bush has tried to do, or what he has “intended” to do, has nothing to do with the reality he has created. I happen to believe that he’s fundamentally a “good” person in that I believe he thinks he’s doing the right thing. So I don’t think he’s evil or hateful or anything like that.

But that doesn’t matter. The fact is that the world hates this country intensely because of his actions, and this fact has put is in far more danger than we’ve ever been before. See, the thing you and other conservatives are not realizing is that terrorists need something in order to operate: they need the world to agree with them, or at least a large part of it.

If terrorism lacks support, it dies. And I’m not talking about finacial support — I mean popular support. What Bush has done is create a massive upsurge in support for terrorism across the entire planet. Nobody likes us anymore directly as a result of him. Not even our allies have any sympathy for us. At this point we could be bombed on our own soil again and the world would basically agree that we deserved it.

That’s what you’re not seeing. It’s not about being militarily tough on terrorists. That doesn’t work if you’re creating hate at the same time. You have to act in a way that makes the entire world sympathize with you, thus removing the power from the terrorists. If you are “tough” on terror, but go around making the entire world hate you then you’ve done the country a huge disservice.

Here’s a mathematical way of looking at it: imagine you have two elements — protection and animosity. For every point of protection we lower our risk by 1 point, and for every point of animosity against us we gain 10 points of risk.

So if you’re trying to lower risk (which is what he’s trying to do), you can’t launch a campaign that raises our protection by 15 points while simultaneously raising the animosity against us by 100. If you do the math you’ll see what this does to our country’s actual danger level, and pointing to how much protection that 15 points got us is utterly meaningless.

This is precisely the world we’re living in now. We’re being told that the military gains we’ve made are winning the “war on terror”, when in fact we’ve done nothing but make it more acceptable to attack us due to our behavior. I ask you to consider this and rethink your opinion.

Sincerely,

– Daniel Miessler E: daniel@dmiessler.com W: http://dmiessler.com G: 0xD158D5A3

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Dewayne Mikkelson 2 years ago 1 point
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Excellent, Well reasoned post, which has helped me rethink my position. I am still not sure I can stop despising bush but at least I will stop hating him after the thoughts you have shared here.

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Carl M 2 years ago 1 point
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I try not to think about the fact that after the attacks of 9/11, the entire world sympathized with us and was behind us in our attacks on the Taliban & al-Quaida. But when Bush made his axis of evil remarks and then attacked Iraq (arguably the LEAST problematic of the three countries in his axis of evil), he turned the world against us. This was inexcusable. His administration keeps asking the question: Is the world better off with Saddam Hussein out of power? And they seem to be honestly puzzled that everyone doesn't rush to answer "YES!!!!" The fact is that this is not a fair question. It is not a meaningful question. It has no context. The world (and in particular the US) is NOT safer now than it was before 9/11. I don't believe that one gets safer by creating enemies and alienating friends.

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Lonnie Webb 2 years ago 1 point
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I can't agree with the post. The initial premise is that the world hates us because of Bush. The world has hated us for a very long time. The Bush presidency is historically arbitrary. Bush had nothing to do with events such as the first WTC bombing, the USS Cole, foreign embassy bombings in the 90s, the Iran hostage crisis, and so on back thru time.

The world is simply more vocal.

Radical Islam has reached a critical mass.

Bush just happened to be president when it became an issue (and a very serious one) here, in the States.

Now, I don't defend Bush or the GOP's way of offhandedly turning on the people who voted for them. But then again, that is a whole 'nuther matter...

As for the US being safer, no beheadings on my street this week. No major bombings, either. Crime rate is up and down, but not so bad.

Now, why did we (Bush, Senate, Congress, other governments) think that Iraq was a viable target? Saddam said he was. He claimed he was going to strike the US. North Korea and Iran are now beating that drum. And I guess I haven't learned my lesson since those guys worry me, too.

So, for clarity's sake, let me ask the question How do you know what you know? Assuming you don't get your news from the Daily show--and I really assume you don't--I want to be as informed as you are.

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Carl M 2 years ago 1 point
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It is not true that the _world_ has hated us for a long time. The events you list (L.W.) are not representative of a wide range of countries. And, though some of our allies have disliked the attitude of "the world revolves around the United States of America" that has been espoused by many of our leaders (Democrats and Republicans alike), it has always been my impression that they did not really dislike the US and in fact respected our freedoms, etc. But, Bush has managed to change all that. As I said in my original post, the world was behind us after 9/11. Had Bush appropriately used their support to deal with the terrorists and not used 9/11 as an excuse to pursue other agendas, the respect of the world might still be with us. Had Bush understood that to diminish our freedoms is to let the terrorists win, the support of the US citizens might still be with him. Had Bush come down HARD on those in the military who did respect the Geneva Conventions and basic human rights, then the world might not wonder what has happened to our once proud country. Now even our strongest allies (who will stand with us a while longer .. some because they think that they have something to gain by being our friends, and others because they remember who we were) have begun to lose some of their respect for us. I'm not sure that they hate us (the United States), but some of them sure seem to hate our president. And, I cannot see how to defend him. I am saddened by some of the things that some of my countrymen have done under the cloak of "fighting terrorists," and I hope that the world can forgive us.

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Carl M 2 years ago 1 point
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PS I do not blame Bush for the attacks of 9/11. I (mostly) agree that he just happened to be president when that attack took place. I blame him for what he has done (and not done) since.

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