Hating Bush Is Unhealthy

Hating Bush Is Unhealthy

This is now a good time for us to question why so many of our leading opinion makers are preoccupied by what they consider to be the errors and folly of the President Bush with the war on terror and military ventures in general. There has never been a president so maligned as is George W. Bush. Such irrational behaviour is a disturbing manifestation of a growing anti-American psychosis spreading across the country. That it is championed by the left wing media and leading daily newspapers should be a matter of grave concern. Even more disturbing is the absence of any serious attempt to explain why we Americans should despise President Bush or why he is considered to be so much worse than his immediate predecessor, former president Bill Clinton. Few seem to recall that it was during the Clinton presidency that the United States began in a systematic way to use its military power unilaterally and to turn its back on multilateralism and the United Nations.
It was president Clinton who first initiated the concept of missile defence and who violated the anti-ballistic treaty with Russia. It was Madeline Albright, president Clinton's Secretary of State, who chastised Colin Powell for not making use of the awesome military power at his disposal to resolve international issues. It was president Clinton who invaded Haiti in 1994, who launched missile strikes in 1998 against suspected Taliban targets in Afghanistan, whose cruise missiles in the same year destroyed an innocent pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.
It was president Clinton who in 1998 bombed Iraq for violations of the no-fly zone and did so without United Nations authorization. His secretary of state, Madeline Albright, urged that economic sanctions against Iraq not be lifted until Saddam Hussein was removed. This was the woman who answered, "Yes" when asked if the bombing justified the killing of Iraqi babies.
It was president Clinton who intervened in the Bosnian civil war and who violated the arms embargo by providing modern military equipment to the Croatian and Muslim forces. He also arranged for hundreds of Mujahedeen fighters to be transported into Bosnia to fight against the Serbs.
It was under president Clinton's leadership in the spring of 1999 that NATO bombed Yugoslavia for reasons we now know were misleading. The bombing was conducted without United Nations authority.
President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol but it was a hollow gesture since he didn't bother to refer it to the Senate for ratification.
It was president Clinton who demanded that the United States military be immune from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Despite the record of the two presidents, it is Clinton who is revered and respected and Bush who is reviled and ridiculed. How can this be explained?
Part of the answer is that the liberal left identify former president Clinton as one of their own. They would have us believe that he, unlike President Bush, only invaded countries or bombed people to spread democracy or to stop human rights abuses. But it seems clear that the current wave of almost paranoid hatred of President Bush goes beyond personalities.
This is not a healthy situation and it bodes ill for the future of our country. It is time for these critics to grow up!