18 July 2007

How Did We Get Here?

Maureen Dowd, on the resurgance of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda:
Oh, as it turns out, they’re not on the run.

And, oh yeah, they can fight us here even if we fight them there.

And oh, one more thing, after spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever.

And, um, you know that Dead-or-Alive stuff? We may be the ones who end up dead.
Andrew Sullivan on the same subject:
On its core foreign policy responsibility since 9/11, destroying al Qaeda, the Bush administration has gone backwards for the past two or three years, bringing us full circle back to the summer of 2001. The war in Iraq has clearly, demonstrably, made us and the entire world less safe.

...[al Qaeda in Iraq] only exists at the strength it does because of the Bush administration's bungling of the Iraq occupation. So we have failed to restrain old al Qaeda and we have empowered new al Qaeda by the Iraq occupation. We have thrown away our moral high ground; and we have lost the military low-ground.
Ok, now...imagine if Al Gore or Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter had been president for the last 6 years. And imagine if they had let Osama bin Laden go uncaptured for so long following 9/11. And imagine if they had been called out for mismanaging a war to the extent that the key terrorist group responsible for that horrible day had been revitalized and strengthened.

Do you think for a second that they would have been re-elected in 2004? And on the off chance that they were, do you think for a second that the Congress would have held off on impeachment?

I didn't think so.

Say it with me: The. Worst. President. Ever.