President Deserves More Credit,...

[SEATJERKER]

President deserves more credit

By GEOFFREY MILLER
First published: Monday, August 11, 2008

Each day, I check the opinion pages to read the occasional letter stating what a huge blunder the Iraq war was and how horrible President Bush is, the latest of which appeared Thursday from an admitted draft dodger.

As a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, I have a different perspective on why the Iraq war wasn't entirely wrong despite the cost in life and treasure, and why electing Barack Obama could be catastrophic to our national security.

There were six terrorist attacks against American interests during the Clinton administration. Unfortunately, President Clinton did little more than quote the usual platitudes about bringing those responsible to justice.

When he did take action against al-Qaida, it was merely a token act of lobbing a long-range missile into an abandoned tent in Afghanistan or into an aspirin factory in the Sudan, the purpose of which was to divert public attention from the scandal-du-jour.

I agree that President Bush has made his share of bad mistakes. However, he has achieved some positive results: 1) The United States homeland has not been attacked in seven years. 2) Brutally oppressive regimes have been dismantled in Iraq and Afghanistan, liberating 50 million people. 3) The world is now certain there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The worn-out assertion that President Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq is ridiculous. The entire world knew Saddam Hussein had such weapons because he used them against Iraq's Kurds in 1988. Throughout the five years prior to the Iraq war, many Democrats expressed grave concerns about the likelihood of WMDs in Iraq. They emphatically stated that Saddam must be disarmed with military force if he didn't comply with U.N. resolutions.

Nobody except Saddam himself knew for certain what he had because he gave the U.N. inspectors the runaround for years. Let's suppose, for a minute, that President Bush had not gone into Iraq and that Saddam actually had a WMD. Now, let's suppose this weapon was used against the United States. The very same people who now say Bush lied would then have been screaming that he should have done more to protect our homeland.

So, we went into Iraq, brought down Saddam's regime, but found no WMDs. Well, at least now we're certain about WMDs in Iraq.

Had Bill Clinton prosecuted this war in exactly the same fashion with exactly the same outcome, the liberals and the mainstream media who say this war is lost would praise the Iraq war as a resounding success. Bill Clinton would be hailed as FDR or Harry Truman reincarnated.

By the way, where were the anti-war protesters in 1999 when Bill Clinton authorized the bombing of Serbia for 79 consecutive days? Serbia neither posed a threat to nor attacked the United States. The truth is the anti-war crowd couldn't care less about dead Iraqi civilians, the troops, the monetary cost or anything resembling patriotism. They have only two objectives: To undermine the U.S. military and to destroy the presidency of George W. Bush.

On July 26, a letter to the editor titled "Candidates unworthy to be next president" stated "no administration in our more than 200-year history has done this country more harm," referring to the Bush administration. The author of this letter obviously slept through the late 1970s when inflation and interest rates were out of control and 52 Americans were taken hostage in Iran for 444 days. President Carter was an incompetent coward and the Iranian "students" who stormed our embassy in Tehran knew it and exploited it. They also knew President Reagan would repatriate our citizens with devastating force, which is why they released the hostages an hour before his inauguration.
Barack Obama is a political duplicate of Jimmy Carter, and our adversaries know this. They're counting on it. If Obama is elected, al-Qaida will operate with impunity as it did throughout the Clinton administration. Barack Obama is afraid to appear on TV with Bill O'Reilly. What will happen if he goes toe-to-toe with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez?

The answer is he will appease, accommodate, acquiesce, and be their new best friend in the misguided hope that they'll reciprocate, which they will exploit thoroughly.

Sorry, Barack, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but people like these are not interested in America's friendship.

Geoffrey Miller lives in Ballston Spa.

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2008,

[Nightwing01]

look forget the war or the fact that we have not had a homeland attack that is all well and good. When people keep fighting all the time and we lose jobs because there is no money here, or the fact that some of our brave fight men and woman have been over there 4 times now. I dont care that we feel safe that is a false security since soon we wont have the millitary power to fight anyone! and we have no money of our own now we just are borowing it from other nations.