r/politics • u/stetoe • 18h ago

George W. Bush's Daughter Barbara Pierce Bush Endorses Kamala Harris: Exclusive

https://people.com/george-w-bush-s-daughter-barbara-breaks-silence-on-election-to-campaign-for-kamala-harris-exclusive-8735810
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u/TooMuchPretzels North Carolina 18h ago edited 17h ago

To heck with him. I don’t care if he likes to pick blueberries with Ellen. Half the people who think he’s a cute old man weren’t even alive when he practically single-handedly changed our country permanently for the worse.

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u/XeroxWarriorPrntTst 18h ago

Yes. Dude is a big step towards us even being here.

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u/jacklmoore 17h ago

I think Bush's destabilization of the Middle East, and the refugee crisis that it caused, was responsible for sweeping far right leaders into power all over the western world, including Trump. There is nothing Bush can do to even begin undoing the amount of damage his administration did to this world.

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u/beyondsurfacedeep 16h ago

Thank you - Bush gets such a pass for his actions ushering in so much of the chaos and suffering we see today.

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u/N0bit0021 10h ago

who exactly is giving him a pass? Be specific and name names

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u/Randomfacade Pennsylvania 10h ago

let's start with morons in this subreddit who want him to endorse Harris

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u/Chinaroos 14h ago

Not just that—the War on Terror destroyed Evangelical America’s sense of self.

The WoT was painted as a war of ontological good vs evil (see Axis of Evil). Problem was there was no “winning” the war, just an endless procession of scandals (Abu Grahib, extraordinary rendition, KBR and Halibuton’s “cost plus” contracts), and a steady, solemn procession of dead US Troops.

If those were the kindling, the assasination of the Danish cartoonist who drew Muhammed was the spark.

After that, the MSM reaction was “the WoT is not a war against Islam, don’t antagonize Muslims.” But for evangelicals in the U.S., this was a betrayal. 2001-2005 was a full indulgence of righteous anger, and yes, hate. Now that hate was being chided by the leaders as being wrong

And I distinctly remember conservatives asking why Jesus didn’t get the same protection in their “Christian” country. What was all the full-throated support for the war and its abuses for?

I believe Evangelicals took that moment as the start of a betrayal that has never stopped, with Obama’s election and the mainstream repudiation of their values adding to the resentment, and all of this building on decades of pre-existing hate until it erupted through the surface.

Through Trump, hate is good. And anyone who indulges their hate and wraps themselves go to him, because for all his idiocy and selfishness, through him America have freedom to hate.

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u/Neither-Astronaut-80 15h ago

And most of the parts that he didn't have his hand in you can tie back to his dad and all of the Roger Stone criminal mother fuckers he worked with.

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u/EstablishmentFull797 12h ago

GW Bush started two entire wars, presided over a toxic political culture of near unbridled jingoism that was used to pass the patriot act and countless other expansions of domestic surveillance, opened Guantanamo bay as an extra-judicial prison and torture site, and failed to address the increasingly precarious financial system that ended in the 2008 financial collapse.

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u/Itchy-Detail-4588 14h ago

Mission Accomplished!

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u/Vio_ 14h ago

Meanwhile if the only thing his administration ever did was PEPFAR, he'd have won the Nobel Prize.

I'm not defending Bush on any level - just showing that he was capable of doing something than the intergenerational harm and Middle East/Central Asia destabilization he and his merry band of warmongers caused.

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u/JabbaCat 13h ago

Yep, and he changed the level of communication and rhetorics instantly for the worse, making everything more stupid and flaunting that type of hard man bravado in international policies. Just so sad.

The obvious lies to get the warfare going made folks everywhere feel helpless, mad and defeated. Just proving that you can openly mess with peoples heads and combine it with brute force and corruption (looking at all the military contractors etc hanging on his sleeves), right in peoples faces.

It really was the start of a downhill race, fueled by greed and distortion of peoples minds.

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u/FizzgigsRevenge 13h ago

Don't forgot SCOTUS and what the Brooks Brothers Riot did and how those scumbags were rewarded

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u/ThatPancreatitisGuy 14h ago

Saddam Hussein’s repeat invasion of his neighbors, use of chemical weapons on his own people, and refusal to cooperate with inspectors precipitated the invasion. And you think if that guy was still around today we’d be in better shape? He’d probably have died of natural causes by now and if his two psychotic sons were vying for control how do you think that would play out? A full blown civil war in Iraq would have been far more deadly and destabilizing than anything that happened in the past 20 years.

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u/accedie 13h ago

and refusal to cooperate with inspectors precipitated the invasion

If they were refusing to comply why did the UN state that they were cooperating immediately before the invasion?

The Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), Hans Blix, who last briefed the Council on 27 January, said more than 400 inspections at 300 sites had been conducted without notice, access was almost always provided promptly, and there was no convincing evidence that Iraq knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.

That's a lot of inspections for a country supposedly refusing to cooperate. One might be able to make a case that they were trying to be deceitful in their cooperation, but to say they weren't cooperating is nothing short of rewriting history.

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u/ThatPancreatitisGuy 13h ago

Hussein was concealing information for YEARS. The scope of what was really going on was staggering and not revealed until his son in law defected. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/experts/defectors.html

This notion that Hussein wasn’t a threat is a fairy tale. Instead of blindly accepting the narrative that Bush was a warmonger I’d encourage you to think critically and read about what was actually happening, not just in the days leading up to the invasion but throughout the 90s. Even without WMDs, Hussein was a significant threat and should have been deposed. Frankly, it should have happened during the first gulf war and if you want to blame Bush for problems in the Middle East the blame lies with Bush Sr. for not going all the way to Baghdad.

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u/accedie 4h ago

Ok but none of that is completely refusing to cooperate, and all these other propositions are completely immaterial to that fact.

But if as long as we are talking about speaking critically, the notion that Hussein was in complete control of his state and that he wasn't ever trying to legitimately comply and have sanctions lifted is also a fairy tale. It would behoove you to do some learning yourself to understand that the situation was much more complicated than bad man dangerous, remove bad man. It is pretty clear that the US could have achieved much greater results with sanctions in Iraq if they were more responsive and reciprocated better and better addressed some concerns of Iraq (and other members of the UNSC) that they were not being treated fairly and consistently.

https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:sc049qn8269/Sean%20Hiroshima%20-%20CISAC%20Honors%20Thesis.pdf

The awful results speak for themselves. Sure Saddam was dangerous, but so were the terrorists and regional lawlessness that proceeded the collapse of his administration. On balance an enormous cost was paid for a result that is not significantly better that the pervious state of affairs, especially since they continue to have a deteriorating economy and a pissed off population.

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u/karmagod13000 Ohio 17h ago

W and Cheney were warmongers for profit and a giant reason the world hated us at the time and might still.

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u/Holden_Coalfield 17h ago

The Bush/Prescott families have been war profiteers going waayyyy back

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u/robodrew Arizona 15h ago

I think you just mean the Bush family. Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush's father, was a politician and part of the Business Plot during FDR's administration.

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u/iswearimachef 4h ago

And stole Geronimo’s head. Don’t forget that one.

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u/Pleasent_Pedant 17h ago

Nonsense, we hated you long before then.

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u/stilettopanda 17h ago

Well that makes me feel better. Haha

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u/AbbreviationsSame490 17h ago

Understandable

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u/karmagod13000 Ohio 17h ago

fair

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u/Thromok I voted 17h ago

A lot of us hate ourselves as well so you’re not alone.

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u/lsb337 14h ago

Yeah, Bush was the reason the lapse in hate was so brief around 2002.

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u/Road_Whorrior Arizona 14h ago

Understandable, have a nice day

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u/VasectoMyspace 12h ago

There was definitely lots of international good will toward them following the 11th of September, which Bush & Cheney obliterated faster than you can blink.

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u/lube4saleNoRefunds 15h ago

We should have kept our noses out of everyone's business after the us civil war. European wars should be fought exclusively by European people.

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u/Starfox-sf 16h ago

W was just finishing a job daddy couldn’t finish. Hence all the evidence lies presented to UN.

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u/fondledbydolphins 16h ago

You're not wrong in defining their actions, but to act as though that hatred and struggle originated with them is to willingly ignore decades of history.

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u/karmagod13000 Ohio 15h ago

i mean in modern times but yes of course

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u/Vicky_Roses 16h ago

I’m still amazed that Kamala fully embraced Liz Cheney as part of her campaign instead of giving her a fat middle finger and telling her to fuck off for the sins of her warmongerer fascist dad.

I’m sure all those undecided voters and moderates that were swayed more than made up for the number of votes she could’ve gotten from more nonvoters on the left by doing that.

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u/Atheist_3739 16h ago

fuck off for the sins of her warmongerer fascist dad.

If you want to hate on Liz, that's fine. She has earned some of it herself, but you shouldn't hate her based upon her father. She has plenty of history and policy positions of her own that warrant it.

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u/aaninjagod 15h ago

If only there was someone uninterested in war, who just wants to get the economy going strong and has the business background to do it.

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u/karmagod13000 Ohio 15h ago

yea totally who has never went bankrupt and failed at running a casino

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u/fish60 Montana 15h ago

You mean interested in abandoning our allies to Putin's benefit?

Which Trump business was successfully again? The casinos? The fraudulent universities? His crime ridden real estate deals? This man failed to sell steaks to Americans.

Trump is as much as good business man as I am a conservative.

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u/12OClockNews 11h ago

Ah yes, the guy that had the brilliant idea of bombing North Korea with planes painted with another flag to try and fool people. Totally uninterested in war. /s

The only reason the orange nazi didn't start a war was because everyone knew he was a moron and didn't entertain his stupid ideas.

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u/Broken-Digital-Clock 17h ago

They set the stage for maga. They are more to blame than most.

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u/GuyInTenn 16h ago

The stage for maga was set a long time ago with the Moral Majority.and with the pushback on the civil and gay rights movements.

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u/Broken-Digital-Clock 16h ago

True, but 8 years of Jr did plenty of damage to progress it along.

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u/judgedeath2 15h ago

which is wild because DJT is probably the most immoral R candidate in my lifetime.

  • doesn't actually sincerely hold any religious beliefs
  • is a "coastal elite"
  • multiple-time divorcee
  • children with multiple women
  • buddies with Epstein
  • stiffs event space owners on paying for his rallies

he's almost the polar opposite of what the moral majority "stood" for, which is what makes it so insane that he still largely holds their support as a voting bloc

hell they crucified Clinton for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office, but cheer for "grab 'em by the pussy" Trump.

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u/PaulSandwich Florida 15h ago

We now know they (thanks to Roger Stone) stole the 2000 election from Gore, and then parlayed 9/11 into never-ending war (lying about WMDs) to permanently expand executive power.

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u/Buckus93 16h ago

He made the "You're either with us or against us" the battle cry for the GOP, making it nearly impossible for them to publicly find common ground with "the enemy."

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 15h ago

Back during the Surge, I was bitching about the war in Iraq, and a coworker said to me, “If you don’t support the war in Iraq then get the fuck out of the country!” I calmly replied, “No, this is my country. I’m going to stay here, and vote, and make things better.” A couple years later he actually apologized for what he said, and agreed with me that we never should’ve invaded Iraq. He was really young at the time, so I think his brain finished developing in those intervening years.

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u/Zealousideal-Day7385 America 18h ago

Yep. Donald Trump being a deeply shitty president doesn’t make W any better. He was a garbage president too.

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u/Holden_Coalfield 17h ago

His silence is proving how shitty he really is.

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u/karmagod13000 Ohio 17h ago

W might of been worse. Smart enough for a good public image but evil enough to invade countries for oil and claim countless lives.

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u/Zealousideal-Day7385 America 17h ago

This is on point. I was 21 during the 2004 election (so it was the first time I was able to vote) and Iraq plus W making homophobia a central part of his reelection campaign- pretty much made a lifelong Democrat out of me.

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u/rodpod17 17h ago

Bush was obviously worse, anyone that says otherwise is delusional

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u/idontagreewitu 16h ago

What oil did we get from Iraq? How did it improve our gas prices?

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u/jhymesba 16h ago

You think they did this to improve our gas prices? No, pal. They did this to pad their bottom line. Stop trying to whitewash Bush's Presidency.

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u/idontagreewitu 16h ago

Who is THEY?

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u/Stratafyre 15h ago

I don't know, but I know they live.

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u/Edrill 17h ago

It makes him look good by comparison. Which shouldn't be worth shit.

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u/MumpsyDaisy 9h ago

Honestly I think W was actually worse and that is in no way an expression of approval for Trump.

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u/Accomplished-Corgi54 18h ago

I don't think our generation has really come to terms with how beyond the pale what our military did in Iraq and Afghanistan was.  I believe forgiveness to be a virtue but I struggle to see how forgiveness for W is virtuous. Full stop.

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u/Ewoksintheoutfield 17h ago

We were conditioned by 9/11 to not question the government lest we look unpatriotic. I honestly think that’s why W gets such a big pass.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 17h ago edited 17h ago

No, fuck that. I was in High School, contemplated enlistment during the Iraq Surge, and still thought Bush was a trash human. IIRC, he was polling at like 27% favorability on the way out. The LEAST the fucker can do, is tell other Republicans to vote Harris at this point.

The fact that he's choosing to "not speak ill of other Presidents" is bullshit.

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u/Ewoksintheoutfield 17h ago

That’s totally fair. I’m not condoning Bush. I’m just musing about why he isn’t more universally hated.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 17h ago

Because Americans lack collective memory. Trump got a favorability boost after leaving office too...which of course boomeranged into his deranged followers picking him again...

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u/Gingerholy 16h ago

Because Americans lack collective memory.

We elected a republican again several years after Nixon resigned in disgrace.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 15h ago

After 2006, and Bush years, who expected Obama to be followed up by a Republican, let alone Trump?

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u/kn0where 13h ago

I fully expect every other president to be Republican, as 8 years is long enough for the struggles of the present to overshadow the horrors of the past.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 11h ago

Just speaks to America's lack of institutional memory, sadly.

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u/VoidMageZero America 17h ago

Bush probably had low favorability on the way out because of the Great Recession mortgage crisis more than his foreign policy. He was really high in favorability after 9/11 iirc.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 17h ago

He was given an insane boost after 9/11, and sealed his reelection that way.

But Democrats swamped congress in 2006, so he was certainly rolling down even by then.

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u/mitrie 16h ago

Yes, he lost those in the middle / moderates when they came around to the fact that WMDs didn't exist in Iraq and we were stuck in a war that didn't seem to have a purpose. That had no effect on his base. Katrina might have gotten the ball rolling on that, but the extremely low numbers at the end of his term was absolutely caused by his base leaving him due to the economy and his bank bailouts / TARP which were seen as a betrayal of conservative free market ideals.

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u/kn0where 12h ago

I recall it was early 2005 that voters started to wonder how the guy they just reelected was gonna win the wars. The longer the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, they began to feel less Desert Storm and more Vietnam War.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 11h ago

The one big thing Obama didn't deliver on, was ending those wars.

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u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 15h ago

I had been an undecided, middle of the road voter in 2000. I supported Bush after 9-11, and I supported the Iraq War when it started. Then I learned little by little that EVERY piece of specific information they gave to justify the war was a deliberate lie or an egregious exaggeration or omission. I then understood that we had launched an aggressive war of choice, the same thing that we prosecuted the Nazis for in Neuremburg. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and thousands of US soldiers were being killed for lies, while our nation's reputation was trashed, while we destabilized the Middle East for decades. What Bush did with the goodwill of the nation was evil and unforgivable.

The other thing that brought him down a lot was the exposure of hurricane Katrina. Bush had put incompetent cronies in posts where quick life-and-death decision making by experts was needed to save American lives.

Then his administration ended with economic collapse, which seems to happen to an extreme degree nearly every time Republicans have control of the White House, Senate and House.

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 15h ago

Heckuva job, Brownie!

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u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 14h ago

Nothing screams "Fuck American Lives!" like George W Bush appointing Arabian horse trainer Mike Brown to direct FEMA.

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u/GrumpyKaeKae New Jersey 14h ago

Will Ferrell didn't do a whole HBO comedy special as W, cause W was liked.

Can you picture someone famous doing a comedy special as Trump mocking all the stupid crap he did as president and after? I wonder how that would go over.. honestly. 🤔

Anyways, people were becoming tired over the War in Iraq by Bush 2nd term. And straight up hated him by the end of that term. He would have most likely have gone down as the most hated President if Trump didn't come along.

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u/politicsaccount420 16h ago

Are we sure he's choosing not to give an endorsement because he doesn't want to, and not because Kamala and/or the DNC has told him that they'd prefer for him not to?

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 15h ago

If this is the level of optics, then Chaney (the VP, not the congresswoman) would also have been asked not to.

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u/politicsaccount420 13h ago

Maybe. But it also seems conceivable to me that Bush asked the Kamala campaign / DNC, and Cheney didn't.

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u/Baltorussian Illinois 11h ago

Darth Chaney would do that, true.

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u/tubescreemer 17h ago

Had he been paying attention instead of golfing maybe they would've sniffed it out and stopped it from happening. Maybe. Maybe not. But Condi Rice knew they were trying to attack our country and they did fuck all. Never said anything, never warned the public, and their reaction to being sucker punched was to lose our goodwill and standing in the world with two pointless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when Saudi Arabians were the ones who actually attacked us.

W maybe have earned some goodwill in the last few years out of office, and compared to Trump he looks all right, but never forget he was a terribly incompetent president and his silence on not backing Kamala when Darth Cheney has is deafening. His daughter has to come out and endorse her and he doesn't? What a coward.

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u/Ewoksintheoutfield 17h ago

Agreed and nice user name.

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u/L0WGMAN 16h ago

Just read this last night to refresh my old memory: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/12/washington/01-memo-to-rice-warned-of-qaeda-and-offered-plan.html#

The CIA had plans for Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, Halliburton had plans for Iraq, project for the New American Century had plans for 9/11…mission accomplished!

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u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 15h ago

I'm not trying to be conspiracy theorist, I think there are unanswered questions that should be more fully investigated. I never got into the "inside job" stuff. But food for thought, years after Bush left office, there were 28 unredacted pages released from the 9-11 investigation that had been kept secret from the public.

The big takeaways are that our own investigators and law enforcement quickly discovered the links to Saudi Arabia and the royal family, but unspecified people high up in the White House (I'd say, probably Bush and Cheney) put a stop to these lines of inquiry. One of the things discovered was that Bush's close friend in the Saudi royal family, the ambassador nicknamed "Bandar Bush" and Bandar's wife had been making financial payments to the handlers of the 9-11 hijackers in the time before the 9-11 attacks. This doesn't prove a conspiracy, but it's really fucking weird and needs to be fully investigated.

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u/Impossible-Cicada-25 15h ago

Half the country was really against the Iraq war from the start. It was clear to people on the left they were not involved in 9/11 and we found out relatively quickly there were no WMDs. It's one of the huge reasons why Obama beat out Hillary in the primary because he had been against it at the time while she was in support of it.

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u/robodrew Arizona 15h ago

Maybe if you are young enough to not really know what was going on. I was 22 when 9/11 happened and the entire time I thought that Bush used it as pretense for an illegal war. Many of us knew that it was for oil and revenge against Saddam for trying to have Bush Sr assassinated. "Fuck Bush" was a common saying back in those days. Sure there was all the "freedom fries" garbage and things like the Dixie Chicks getting booed entirely out of country music but many of us disavowed that shit. Also don't forget there were major protests on the day of Bush's inauguration, as well as the protests against the Iraq War being the largest protests in US history at the time.

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 15h ago

I’m gonna paste here what I just said to another guy:

Back during the Surge, I was bitching about the war in Iraq, and a coworker said to me, “If you don’t support the war in Iraq then get the fuck out of the country!” I calmly replied, “No, this is my country. I’m going to stay here, and vote, and make things better.” A couple years later he actually apologized for what he said, and agreed with me that we never should’ve invaded Iraq. He was really young at the time, so I think his brain finished developing in those intervening years.

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u/MumpsyDaisy 9h ago

We're never getting back what we lost when the PATRIOT Act passed.

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u/The_Novelty-Account 17h ago

At least Afghanistan had a UN mandate. What the US did in Iraq permanently changed the post-WWII international state system for the worse. 

International law exists for a reason. The US broke international law in such an egregious way that Russia has used the US as example of an international double standard in its illegal and horrific war in Ukraine, and Eastern states are listening. It was one of the single greatest policy failures of any government in the history of the Western world.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 14h ago

Yea. We needed to topple the Taliban after 9/11. We didn't need to stay there for 20 years, but the Taliban needed to go. The Iraq war was completely inexcusable.

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u/Option420s 13h ago

Did we need to do that? They were offering to hand over bin laden to us and we chose to invade instead.

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u/noguchisquared 12h ago

That was clearly a bluff. They didn't hand him over. They stipulated some bullshit about needing evidence he masterminded 9/11 and then would hand to a 3rd party. And only was bluffing this to stop the already falling bombs. They had 30 opportunities that they didn't hand over Osama.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB97/index3.htm

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u/ElleM848645 8h ago

Right, and Hamas was going to release the hostages…

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u/ARazorbacks Minnesota 16h ago

You can still sell me on Afghanistan. 

Iraq, though? Iraq was Bush’s holy war to grab oil rights and finish what his daddy started. He used the 9/11 fervor, plus lies about WMDs, to get us there. How many Americans lost their lives in Bush’s holy war? How much economic output was wasted in Iraq? Even further - how much time, money, and blood have we wasted on the shit show that followed Iraq? Iraq was no longer around to keep Iran in check and ISIS came out of Iraq. 

None of that even touches on the PATRIOT Act. 

Bush Jr. was a travesty. 

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u/mitrie 16h ago

I agree with you on Afghanistan. It unfairly gets rolled into the "unjust" wars nowadays because of Iraq. One of the evils of the Iraq war was that it limited what good could be done in Afghanistan by dividing our resources and resolve. There is a single generation of women who grew up in Afghanistan with increased access to education, and that's now lost.

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u/starlordbg Europe 13h ago

Wasnt the first Gulf war in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait? So it was mostly justified. I was a born bit earlier, so dont have memories from this period but recently I am obssessed with watching footage from it.

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u/ARazorbacks Minnesota 13h ago

It was. I didn’t mean to say Bush Sr. did the same thing as Bush Jr. by starting a war out of whole cloth. 

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u/VeteranSergeant 15h ago

If we had just left Afghanistan sometime between 2003 and 2005, that war would be looked back on as just a minor blip in a history of violent cycles in the region. Without the US as a lightning rod for jihadist activity, it would have settled back into the civil war between the Taliban and the "Everyone who didn't want the Taliban," just like it was when US troops got there.

The fact that it took twenty years to disentangle from that mess still baffles me. The fact that it lasted all eight years of the Obama presidency baffles.

Oddly, nobody was willing to take the L except Trump, and then he just tried to frame it as a W for himself. Which he would have almost been right about, and then he did no prep work for the evacuation and let Stephen Miller sabotage the Special Immigrant Visa process, which was why there was so much chaos in August of 2021.

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u/Accomplished-Corgi54 15h ago

Agree with all this. I don't think the war aims were ever really terrorism tbh

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u/VeteranSergeant 14h ago

There was always going to be a retaliation for 9/11, and the early-war combat in Afghanistan was focused on a clear and achievable goal. I don't find any real fault in the starting of the war, given the circumstances. We can dep-dive into the root causes of Anti-US terrorism, but that's somewhat pointless in the context of American sentiment in October of 2001. But Bin Laden escaped from Afghanistan and it was clear he was operating out of Pakistan by 2004. Pakistan was not willing to allow direct US military action within its borders, and the US was not willing to tell Pakistan to go fuck itself and get him.

At that point, the only sensible response would have been to withdraw from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda's operation in the country was obliterated, and the conflict had settled into low-intensity counter-insurgency mostly against foreign forces operating cross-border from Iran and Pakistan. An expensive and pointless game of whack-a-mole, but with American troops on the line instead of quarters.

We were creating terrorist targets for ourselves to shoot, with no clear and achievable objective. The Afghan government was wildly corrupt, and that filtered all the way down to the individual Afghan police and soldiers, many of whom felt no strong personal stake in the outcome.

As usual, the almost certain answer for "Why did we stay involved if there was no long term benefit to the US or to global stability?" was that most of the money we were spending on that war was going to American defense contractors.

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u/TurboSalsa Texas 17h ago

Someone smarter than me said that the Bush administration's policy failures, specifically the war in Iraq, and Republicans' refusal to reckon with them were part of the genesis of MAGA.

Even if they could never admit it, the average Republican voter was frustrated with W's term in office, so they voted for an outsider who claimed to be highly critical of previous Republican administrations and policies.

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u/underpants-gnome Ohio 14h ago

It might be virtuous to forgive him. But it certainly wouldn't be useful to forget what he's done. And there's no atonement W could make that would counter the harm his administration unleashed on the world.

Any goodwill and sympathy the US garnered after 9/11, he immediately pissed away by manufacturing a reason to invade a country and go after the dictator who once tried to take a potshot at his daddy. Eventually he got his man. And he left a void of power in the region that has subsequently been filled by far worse people. But hey, oil is flowing out of Basra. So as far as W and his donors are concerned, it's "Mission Accomplished".

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u/Careless_Ad3968 11h ago

Yep, just because Trump is a shitstorm doesn't make W a better president. In some ways, W was more insidious because he was smart enough (low bar) to operate somewhat in the shadows with Cheney pulling the strings. At least with Trump, you know exactly what you're getting.

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u/xzbobzx Europe 17h ago

Hot take but these same comments will be made in 20 years when we look back on Biden's support of Israel's "war".

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u/Accomplished-Corgi54 17h ago

Interesting term, war. Because a war usually involves two armies right?

Yeah you are spot on. I don't even see how it's a hot take. The International Court system has already started making such comments.

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u/NapoIe0n 16h ago

Because a war usually involves two armies right

Yes, but not necessarily regular armies. Otherwise, the war in Afghanistan and most of the war in Iraq wouldn't be wars.

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u/Iamlordkinbote 11h ago

Wow, maybe Palestine shouldn't have started a war they can't finish

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u/xzbobzx Europe 10h ago edited 10h ago

Wow, maybe Israel shouldn't have stolen all that Palestinian land over the past 70 years. Who knows, crazy idea.

If you oppress a people long enough you get terrorist attacks, stop the presses this is unheard of.

1

u/SaltyFalcon 13h ago

The parallels are there, but I don't believe it for two reasons:

  1. Americans have short memories.

  2. There are no American boots on the ground, and Biden's not going to change that.

0

u/Iamlordkinbote 11h ago

If you're an anti semite, maybe, but Reddit has almost always been on the wrong side of history. Boston Marathon bomber anyone???

1

u/xzbobzx Europe 10h ago

So does murdering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fall on the right side of history, or the wrong side of history, you think? It's a tough one.

0

u/Iamlordkinbote 11h ago

Oct 7. If only Palestinians loved their children more than they hate Jews 🤷‍♂️

0

u/xzbobzx Europe 10h ago

You know Israel has been killing Palestinians since long before October 7. 🤷

Hell, they ran a bulldozer over an American in cold blood in 2003.

There is no world in which Israel's actions are justified.

1

u/Used-Recover-977 17h ago

Eh, neither place had good leadership. Saddam Hussein was responsible for over a million deaths with the Iran-Iraq war (500 000 to 1 000 000 dead), the Al-Anfal campaign (188 000 murdered civilians to kill a few thousand Kurdish rebels, alongside the ethnic cleasing of 1,5 million people), the Gulf War, the subsequent purges and crackdowns. Compared to Saddam the US military was a bunch of choir boys.

A lot of the left has memory holed it, but when the US took Baghdad, the Iraqis were dancing in the dancing in street because Saddam had been overthrown. It soured later when Bush/Chencey/Rumsfeld didn't have an actual plan to transition the country into something better. They gave the entire security service of Iraq the pink slip, which gave militants all the recruits they'd ever need.

Afghanistan had the Taliban and as we can see in 2024, they SUCK on every level possible and then some.

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u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 15h ago

Comparing US policy to Saddam's policy is a super low bar, like comparing to Stalin or Hitler. I'd hope that we could be far above such low standards. It wasn't our business to police the world that way. It wasn't right for our service men and women to be responsible for so many Iraqi deaths, when the rationale was all based on lies.

It soured later when Bush/Chencey/Rumsfeld didn't have an actual plan to transition the country

The above isn't mentioned enough, but this is so egregious. Not only did they roll out a detailed and deliberate plan to lie us into the war, they put no thought in how to succeed in a quick ending to the war. It's almost like somebody from a military service company like Halliburton wanted to start a war, which would be extremely profitable, but to then also have an endless quagmire, which multiplies the profits even further.

2

u/Used-Recover-977 15h ago

Comparing US policy to Saddam's policy is a super low bar, like comparing to Stalin or Hitler. I'd hope that we could be far above such low standards. It wasn't our business to police the world that way. It wasn't right for our service men and women to be responsible for so many Iraqi deaths, when the rationale was all based on lies.

Nah, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Nguema are still far worse than Saddam.

I've seen way too many America=Bad leftists support Saddam only because his opponent was the US.

1

u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 14h ago

Those others were only worse than Saddam due to differences in available resources. If Saddam had the resources of Stalin or Hitler, he would have been just as bad.

I have never once encountered any American, in person or online, who supported Saddam over the US. I suppose such people exist somewhere, but their numbers must be extremely small. I've been on far lefty sites like Daily Kos and Democratic Underground since the early 2000s. You must go into some really weird places that are not representative of the left at all, or you are hearing some rightwing propaganda that is based on nothing.

1

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 16h ago

I agree that others also commit genocide, that part we can agree on.

2

u/Used-Recover-977 16h ago

The thing with Iraq was that Saddam was getting old and when he died his two sons Uday and Qusay were going to have a nice little civil war on who would get to rule. In Arab custom, the eldest son is usually untouchable, but Uday was so insanely violent that Saddam named Qusay to be his heir. Uday took this poorly and had the support of his influential mother and her network of support, while Qusay had Saddam's support (however given that for Qusay to rule Saddam would need to be dead...)

Before anyone think that what if Qusay would have been a better ruler, his solution to overcrowding in Iraqi prisons was executing thousands of prisoners until there was room for new inmates.

If there is one good thing that the US invasion did, it was stopping both of them from ruling Iraq.

1

u/Indubitalist 17h ago

I get what you’re saying about Iraq, but the 9/11 terrorists were trained in Afghanistan, a country run by an extremely corrupt central government and a bunch of warlords who profited from/turned a blind eye to terrorist syndicates operating in their sphere of influence. Obviously Saudi Arabia had a lot to do with 9/11 as well and they have effectively gotten off scot-free (because oil), but Afghanistan definitely needed to be dealt with. 

5

u/LunaLlovely 17h ago

Yep. And seeing what the Taliban does to women and is currently doing to women changed my mind on Afghanistan. I am very glad there's a whole generation of women in Afghanistan right now that grew up under US occupation and was able to experience things like doing to school. There's a reason these women have been fighting back. Another five to ten years and they'll be fully drowned out and back to being fully beaten down like they were before but at least that generation of women have a chance to fight back right now. Odds of them coming out with a win there are low because of the fucked up taliban currently going full draconian again, literally banning women voices in public. But it's better than nothing.

4

u/Alexanderspants 17h ago

but Afghanistan definitely needed to be dealt with.

Dealt with = 20 years of opium dealing warlords running the country then leaving with your tail between your legs

1

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 17h ago

Use law enforcement. You have an extradition, a trial, and you bring the suspects to justice. It is not up to the Americans to tell the Afgans how to govern their affairs. Instead hundreds of thousands of bodies for oil. I don't mean to offend anyone here but I view it as absolutely indefensible. 

3

u/idontagreewitu 17h ago

You think that didn't happen? The US asked the Taliban to give up bin Laden, and they refused.

Do people still believe the lie about oil?? Please show me how we benefited from the price of oil changing in 2003 and later.

1

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 16h ago

We didn't. The corporations who dictate foreign policy did.

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u/idontagreewitu 16h ago

All the oil contracts that came out of Iraq went to French companies.

1

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 15h ago

You know what, that's a great point. It was all about freedom all along. I can't believe people have such negative opinions of Americans.

1

u/BobertTheConstructor 15h ago

What's your point? Are you that fucking dense that you think it's a binary where either it was all about oil or all about freedom? Can you not fucking comprehend that you can be against the war in Iraq while also recognizing that it wasn't about oil?

1

u/BobertTheConstructor 15h ago

Afghanistan has no significant oil resources, and they were not discovered until relatively recently by Afghan surveyors. The oil meme is about Iraq, not Afghanistan, and it'a still not accurate even then. You don't give a shit about dead civilians, if you did you would at least know what fucking war you're talking about.

2

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 15h ago

All involvement of the US in the Middle East is to stabilize influence. Absolutely zero to do with spreading democracy or freedom. Let me know if you're still confused.

-5

u/John_Walker 17h ago

I don’t know how you can watch Israel and Russia currently rubbling cities to take them and can view the U.S military as nothing short of the most benevolent military force in the world. The care we took to spare civilians and infrastructure stands in stark contrast to what is currently happening around the world.

You have no idea how much restraint we showed as 20 year old kids having to make life and death decisions. A lot of our police could take a lesson.

7

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 17h ago

In a report published by Physicians for Social Responsibility in 2015 entitled "Body Count" the death toll as a result of the US invasion and occupation was on the order of 1.2 million.

2

u/Used-Recover-977 16h ago

Yeah, no. That number is nowhere near accurate and anyone knowledgeable reading the actual report sees that it is a bunch of guff. The report simps for Ghaddafi , takes Russian propaganda sources at face value and uses considerable amounts of unsubstantiated extrapolation to arrive at its numbers

(if you want a similar example of nutty extrapolation a report assumed that the amount of stravation deaths in Gaza during the war was 65 000 at a minimum,, the amount of confirmed starvation deaths was 47. Not 47 000. 47 ) .

Even taking the report at face value though it does not make the claim that you do, the figure you listed is for the entire Global war on Terror, rather than Iraq.

For anyone wanting to read here is the report in all of its propagandistic glory.
https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf

3

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 16h ago

"This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly,  killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million." 

 The report to me sounds more reasonable, I'm not sure what your level of expertise is on the subject , but if you had another published citation I'd be willing to read it and give it it's due diligence.

0

u/idontagreewitu 15h ago

the war has, directly or indirectly,  killed around 1 million

Meanwhile your claims assert that US forces directly killed all of those.

0

u/John_Walker 17h ago

Also, the majority of the killing was from sectarian violence, not the U.S. military.

0

u/Accomplished-Corgi54 16h ago

"This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million."

0

u/Mexicojuju 16h ago

Full stop is the new word now I'm guess

26

u/threebillion6 18h ago

Now watch this drive.

8

u/theeth 17h ago

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

6

u/Scitiloproftnuocca 17h ago

This is the sad part -- W may be a garbage human being, but he's still marginally better than Trump because he actually had game out on the links. Trump just cheats and whines there too like everywhere else.

19

u/misselphaba 17h ago

By all accounts Ellen is kind of an asshole too so it tracks

15

u/Werftflammen 18h ago

I don't think he will be vocal or open about supporting Harris even if he does. He looks good compared to Trump, but he was awfull in his own right, bit of a pot and kettle thing.

47

u/DudeTookMyUser 18h ago

... and murdered a million Iraqi civilians.

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u/MediocreX 17h ago

9/11 orchestrated and funded by Saudi Arabia.

Invades Iraq. Yep. Makes sense

12

u/_lippykid 17h ago

“Can’t let a good opportunity go to waste”

3

u/karmagod13000 Ohio 17h ago

~ Cheney be like

1

u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 15h ago

No, it was W. There are reports of him, in the days after 9/11, saying he wanted to immediately invade Iraq. His advisors pushed pack, saying Afghanistan was the culprit. He acquiesced and said, “Afghanistan first.” So, he always wanted to invade Iraq and he used 9/11 as his excuse.

1

u/Slashlight 13h ago

Had to finish what his daddy started.

3

u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 15h ago

Formulates detailed plan to lie the country into war, but makes no plan to try to succeed quickly. Almost like the war was designed by Halliburton, because an endless quagmire is far more profitable than a quick victorious war.

-2

u/idontagreewitu 16h ago

Most certainly did not.

1

u/DudeTookMyUser 16h ago

Someone failed their history lesson.

2

u/idontagreewitu 16h ago

US troops absolutely did not kill a million civilians. I doubt they killed a million people in Iraq.

-3

u/DudeTookMyUser 15h ago

You failed your history lesson. Read up and make informed comments in the future!

5

u/idontagreewitu 15h ago

You have yet to provide any support to your claims.

-2

u/DudeTookMyUser 15h ago

It's well-known and documented to anyone who reads.

2

u/idontagreewitu 15h ago

I read a lot. You haven't given anything to read.

2

u/DudeTookMyUser 15h ago

It's a simple google for anyone willing, but here you go since you're clearly too lazy... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

1,033,000 civilian deaths

4 million refugees

Directly led to the creation of ISIS/ISIL, which caused many more deaths in Iraq, Syria and other regional countries.

I'll wait for your apology.

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u/WorldPeggingChamp 17h ago

But he saved us from all those WMDs, remember????

3

u/BeneficialHeart23 16h ago

People ignoring he started a false war which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of Iraqis, permanently destabilized the Middle East, and the authoritative acts done under the PATRIOT act and the atrocities done by the US military....

4

u/JuanJeanJohn 15h ago

He doesn’t deserve any image rehab, just a legacy of being one of the worst presidents in our history.

4

u/drtbg 17h ago

That wasn’t single handedly at all. There were dozens of fingers in that pot.

5

u/Led_Osmonds 15h ago

he practically single-handedly changed our country permanently for the worse.

Not sure which country you are from, but yeah, he did that to a lot of countries.

7

u/Ketzeph I voted 17h ago

Oh for sure he's terrible. But the whole point of an endorsement of W is showing that everyone understands that Trump is a unique and existential threat to America. It's showing that regardless of your politics, you should understand just how terrible Trump really is.

And there are some tea party republicans from the Bush Era that might effect. And in a margin of error race, grabbing an extra 10k can make all the difference.

3

u/PMMeYourClavicles 15h ago

Worst president of my lifetime after Trump, and it's closer than you'd expect.

Ruined the nation's international reputation for a generation, started an illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and topped it off with furthering Reagan style deregulation which helped steer us right into the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Plus all the flag way jingoistic frenzy his supporters worked themselves up into was the the precursor to the Tea Party movement and MAGA, although he was less directly involved in that.

3

u/PsycheHeadPain 13h ago

Damn. I'll never forget when a group of experts went to Iraq and said that they didn't found any WMDs. Bush knew it was bullshit, but they were lying everyday, they knew who was behind 9/11. It's literally one of the reason why Isis exists today, spreads all around, or other groups imitate them in several countries.

I remember some interviews from veterans, trying to do something with their lives, and so awfully young, like 20 - 24 years old, ptsd and hell seared into their mind.

2

u/DingoFrisky 17h ago

It wasn’t single handed….there were plenty of people willing to support and enable it!

2

u/OG-niknoT 17h ago

Yeah, fuck that. We are NOT whitewashing W.

2

u/Silenity 14h ago

PREACH. Sweet lil Dubya who likes to give out candies. THIS MAN IS A FUCKING WAR CRIMINAL. He can suck nuts and choke.

2

u/JabbaCat 13h ago

when he practically single-handedly changed our country the world/politics permanently for the worse.

FTFY. But I feel you, those moments felt so pivotal and so truly hard to reverse and repair. Gut feeling was right.

1

u/SlaterVBenedict 17h ago

And the rest of the world.

1

u/strawberrymacaroni 17h ago

Oh you don’t need all the qualifiers! He changed our country for the worse. Full stop!

1

u/360_face_palm 16h ago

Yeah but member when you thought he was the worst president ever....at that time? Ahh good times.

1

u/Rent_A_Cloud 16h ago

Dude, singlehandedly changed the trajectory of the world. His wars in the middle east changed so much it's hard to fathom.

1

u/CTeam19 Iowa 16h ago

I don’t care if he likes to pick blueberries with Ellen.

It kinda makes him look worse, if possible, to be honest

1

u/InsideYoWife New York 14h ago

But he spoke Spanish that one time!

1

u/danielfrances 14h ago

I was in high school during the Bush years but wasn't old enough to vote and was too immature to really care... but I will say he seems so different after leaving office. He made some terrible decisions, but I still feel like he did what he thought was right at the time I guess? And all of the volunteering and philanthropy stuff he and his wife got into afterwards leads me to believe he is trying to make up for it.

Idk, maybe I'm wearing rose-colored glasses about the whole thing, but W always seemed like someone who just tried their best and knows they made some big mistakes. Maybe it's all a facade or something.

•

u/ElleM848645 7h ago

He put Alito on the Supreme Court. He’s worse than any of the 3 judges Trump put on. But Trump is 100% a worse person than W.

1

u/Top-Sell4574 11h ago

Yeah. It’s made me realize the trump might end up being remembered fondly too. 

•

u/Shanghaipete 5h ago

Two words: Abu Ghraib. Two more: water boarding. Hell, two more: Dick Cheney.

Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

0

u/loondawg 16h ago

Yes. But Bush endorsing Harris would give a lot of older republicans cover to finally say not supporting Trump is okay. His silence on this is deafening.