We Are Safer…Thank You, Mr. Bush
By Ceasar I. LeFlore III
President Elect Barack Obama owes President George W. Bush an apology! In fact, he owes him a huge apology that should be accompanied by a significant expression of gratitude and appreciation, which he should extend to President Bush on behalf of a grateful nation as one of his first official acts as our new president.
For the past few years, opponents of the war in Iraq, especially those who like President Elect Obama were regular participants in the bash Bush for everything frenzy, have often accused the President of making us “less safe” because of his courageous decision to invade Iraq and depose it’s murderous, terror supporting dictator, Saddam Hussein.
One by one the war detractors have come forward and for their own personal and political reasons, repeated the talking point / sound bite lie claiming that because of Iraq, the president has made us less safe, and that we were actually losing the war. Barack Obama said it. Hillary Clinton said it. Harry Reid said it. Nancy Pelosi said it. And all of the nut jobs with Code Pink and Moveon.org have said it, and sometimes in some extremely repugnant ways.
Well, I think it’s safe to say that these doomsayer opponents of the war have been wrong. We are far safer than we were before, and the facts prove this to be true. Since the beginning of the war we have had not one single attack on the American homeland. Not one. Even in the face of stinging rebukes and stiff opposition to almost everything he tried – from wire taps to the surge – the president pressed on with a steely determination to protect this nation; which he viewed as the paramount responsibility of his presidency. And he did a fantastic job of it; just ask Osama bin Laden if you can find him.
A recent national intelligence estimate reveals that Al Qaeda, which once struck fear in the hearts of Americans at the mere mention of their name, now has little too no operational capacity to strike the United States in any significant way, and their leaders have mostly become cave dwellers and are being killed by our brave soldiers in dramatic numbers almost every day. Plots to do violence against our homeland have been repeatedly discovered and foiled, and just seven years after the tragedy that was September 11th; most Americans go throughout their normal everyday affairs free from worry, fear, and anxiety over being attacked, again. Thank you, Mr. President.
Things are not only better here, but in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.
Violence is down all over Iraq and the Iraqi Army is now manning over 600 brigades of Iraqi soldiers – not Republican Guard hit squads – that are stepping up to defend their own homeland. In defending his decisions and his handling of the war, President Bush said “Iraq was supposed to be the place where al-Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs have joined with Americans to drive al-Qaeda out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden and his grim ideology.”
It has been reported that our forces are at the point of impacting over 85 percent of the insurgent network in terms of detaining, capturing or killing leadership, and neutralizing their capability to conduct operations against the Iraqi people. Without a doubt the citizens of Iraq will remember George Bush and the United States Military for the liberty and freedom that most of them are experiencing for the very first time in their lives. Surely, that’s a good thing for them and for us as well.
I think it’s time for President Elect Obama to “man up” and admit that the surge worked, and that America is a safer place because we were blessed to have a president during a turbulent period in world history who put the safety and welfare of his people above his poll numbers and legacy considerations. I hope that would be an example of courage that a President Obama will be willing to emulate.
President Bush has often said that history will have to judge him and the decisions that he had to make. Just as it was with Harry Truman, I believe that the appreciation that comes with time will present the Bush presidency in a much different light, particularly the decision to take our country to war in Iraq. But history will also judge those who stood against the president during a time of war; especially those who continue to call him a liar because we still haven’t found the caches of prohibited weapons that President Bush and other leaders (Clinton, Kerry, and Edwards) feared would be used against us.
It’s interesting that while campaigning for president, then Senator Obama would often site intelligence reports that claimed that Al Qaeda was stronger now than it was before September 11th as a justification for criticizing the president’s decision to go to war in the first place. Some would wonder why he would believe intelligence reports that make that claim which is proving to be incorrect; but would disparage President Bush for taking serious intelligence reports from this nation, and every other major intelligence agency in the world that insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, to include a desire to attain a nuclear weapon. It’s something to think about, to say the least.
As he leaves office, I believe that President Bush is vastly under – appreciated, especially when we consider the way he has fought to keep us safe. I believe that we are safer today than we were on September 10, 2001, and for that I want to say, thank you very much, President George W. Bush.
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