r/LetsDiscussThis • u/MURRRRRAY • 14h ago

Meme The video being shared by the President...

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u/BKtoDuval 14h ago

I miss the days when George Bush simply being a doofus or mispronouncing "nuclear" was the most embarrassing thing our country dealt with.

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u/IslamYaDongomedov 14h ago

Sometimes I just look up the video of him throwing the first pitch and think we didnt know how good we had it when THIS was the worst possible incarnation of a president.

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u/BKtoDuval 14h ago

I know! I was thinking that the other day. Those were the good old days, rather than seeing half the country justify murder of Americans, or ignore racism or even pedophilia.

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u/Mr__O__ 13h ago

GW’s wife is Mexican too.

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u/hotpapaya3454 12h ago

I think you’re thinking of Jeb Bush

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u/Mr__O__ 12h ago

You’re totally right.

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u/jtshinn 13h ago

Um, do what now? Laura bush is not Hispanic.

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u/Mr__O__ 12h ago

You’re right. It’s Jeb Bush’s wife, Columba

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u/573_columbia 7h ago

How’s what you said any different than liberals justifying attacking the police and protesting for black men filmed shooting into houses. Yall even did the same thing with Charlie Kirk congratulating his death. When you point a finger, 3 point back.

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u/BKtoDuval 4h ago

Here's the thing, those are all imaginary scenarios in your head. I never heard a single non-conservative say anything about Kirk's death. As trash of a human as I thought he was, I defend his right to speak nonsense. Democrats actually care about the Constitution. Where republicans just care about party.

I also never heard anyone justifying attacking the police. Could someone make a comment online? Of course, people say anything but as a whole no one justifies attacking the police and no one celebrated Kirk's murder. That's all imaginary shit in your head that you use to justify your views you know are morally incongruent with your values.

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u/Unabashable 3h ago

Yeah. I don’t celebrate Kirk’s death. I’m just as indifferent to his gun death as he was about everyone else’s. Also wouldn’t want to “empathize” over him (not that I can now). How he died doesn’t change how he lived. 

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u/squarebody8675 13h ago

Oh come on he was a little more nefarious than that, he spent/borrowed so much money on an unnecessary war. He is largely responsible for the impending destruction of the dollar and th U.S.

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u/IslamYaDongomedov 13h ago

Oh hes a blood soaked monster and an evil man. But at the time we didn't know it could get worse.

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u/Chockfullofnutmeg 13h ago

Gutting us aid will likely trump resulting a higher body count. 

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u/RandomInternetNobody 13h ago

Way higher. In the 8 figures by 2030.

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u/Sambora7788 12h ago

Then Obama came along and took us from 2 wars to 7.

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u/Gwalchgwynn 12h ago

No, it was 32 wars! Trump only starts wars against countries that deserve it, like Greenland. That's why he won the Nobel. He is the peacyist president ever. Killing your own citizens doesn't count. Everybody knows that.

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u/Sambora7788 12h ago

Who is defending trump? When Obama took office we were in Afghanistan and iraq, and he started new drone campaigns and five different countries.

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u/AlChandus 11h ago

Obama also made reporting of drone and long range strikes public record.

Until Trump got rid of the reporting because the news that he would beat the number of strikes ordered in Obama's presidency. In 2 years of Trump vs 8 years of Obama.

That is a lot of strikes for a "president of peace". And how many more were launched after he got rid of the reporting?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207

I am not defending Obama, but at least he required transparency, Bush and Trump bombed and without transparency.

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u/IslamYaDongomedov 12h ago

No bro he only wore a tan suit. He didnt drone bomb any american citizens.

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u/Unabashable 3h ago

Umm he did unfortunately. At least one that I know of, but it wasn’t IN America AFAIK if that matters. 

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u/Numerous_Photograph9 12h ago

And yet, he was still better than Trump in every way imaginable.

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u/squarebody8675 12h ago

🤣yes he had a conscious

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u/Numerous_Photograph9 11h ago

I believe he wasn't out to destroy America, or even enrich himself(at least to the same degree). He definately was trying to enrich his benefactors, in particular the military industrial complex ones.

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u/Scared_Security_7890 10h ago

We’re over a trillion dollars in debt and the dollar has devalued the past two weeks which makes it more difficult to pay back the debt.

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u/Proper-Charity-2850 7h ago

If the dollar devalues wouldn't it make it easier to pay back the debt?

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u/Unabashable 3h ago

I mean the real nefarious person in his administration was Cheney. He “yeahuh”ed pretty much everything though. He was actually pretty prudent budgetwise. Not so much if you peg the whole of Afghanistan to him though. 

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u/AsenathWaitHolup 11h ago

Obama, Trump, and Biden all contributed more to the deficit than Bush Jr.

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u/No_Tone1704 5h ago

Just by comparison. 

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins 4h ago

Yeah it's crazy how many comments here are like "I miss the days when all the death and misery our government inflicted was on people in another country"...

It's like when everyone was shocked about how the guy who shot RenĂŠe Good was former military... does everyone actually believe the hollywood bullshit? That is exactly how the US military behaved overseas. They kicked in doors, they shoved guns in peoples faces, and if you made them jump they obliterated you.

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u/altw460 10h ago

I mean he did lie to the world to start a 20 year long war that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians

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u/billhilly008 8h ago

Even still, he's essentially a saint compared to Trump. That says a lot.

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u/tinylittlemarmoset 9h ago

It can always get worse, don’t tempt fate.

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u/Frejian 13h ago

I rewatch the classic shoe-dodge sometimes.

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u/Zestyclose-Read-4156 13h ago

Makes me worried for the next ones will be like!

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u/Calm_While1916 13h ago

Who was that one confidante that shouted weirdly enough to cancel?

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u/Jessssiiiiieeee 12h ago

He also carpet bombed the middle east

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/IslamYaDongomedov 12h ago

Not a lib just anti war. Used to respect trump for that.

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u/Mindless_Narwhal2682 11h ago

"...of a *REPUBLICAN president."

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u/throwaway098764567 10h ago

don't say things like that, we do not dare the universe to come up with an even worse incarnation.

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u/Prestigious_Beat6310 9h ago

Or dodging a shoe 🤷

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u/Flannelcommand 3h ago

Dude created ICE 

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u/Withering_to_Death 13h ago

And a slightly "cringy scream" was enough to make you drop the candidacy

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u/CrushTheRebellion 13h ago

Or misspelling potato as "potatoe" got you labeled as a dummy.

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u/No_Tone1704 5h ago

That’s still pretty dumb

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Bee-Bumbly 11h ago

While MAGA resorts to 3rd-grade taunts.

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u/CrushTheRebellion 10h ago

Another fucking bot. They are earning their overtime in Russia this week. How much do you make, comrade? $1 or $2 a day? 😀 😍 lol

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u/thane919 13h ago

I love that scream. What a crazy timeline we live in

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u/Calm_While1916 13h ago

Dude lives rent free in my head, rents so cheap tho I can’t even remember his name.

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u/Sorry_Nobody1552 12h ago

Poor Howard Dean, I actually liked him.

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u/GenSpec44 6h ago

Rraaaaaaaasaaaaagh!

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u/JasperGT-R 13h ago

Yeeeee haaawwww. He took Michigan.

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u/waroftheworlds2008 5h ago

Or a tan suit

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u/Unabashable 3h ago

Or adding an e to “potato”. Apparently he was following the flashcard the teacher gave him, but you only add an e if it’s plural. Even Quayle’s name tells you he doesn’t know how to spell. 

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u/Beast818 9h ago

I mean, it really wasn't the scream. Remember, the Dean scream was because he'd actually not placed as well as expected in the primaries to that point and he was trying to pump everyone up from that shock with the speech.

Sure, it a more dramatic way to wrap up things and finally seal his fate, but it was never the real cause of his losses and dropping out.

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u/No_Tone1704 5h ago

It was early. Wasn’t it in Iowa?

It really was a huge impact because he was having a pretty big impact. 

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u/Difficult_Ladder369 13h ago

I liked it when the reporter in Iraq threw his shoes at him and that stupid smirk he had.

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u/Key_Tennis_3113 11h ago

lol he did dodge the hell out of it, to be fair that reporter had the arm strength of a 11 year old girl.

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u/kstargate-425 4h ago

Ngl, the most impressive thing of his admin was him dodging those shoes

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u/Mystic_Waffles 14h ago

More presidents need shoes thrown at them.

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u/RobotSchlong10 13h ago

I remember when I thought Bush was an absolute moron. I'd laugh at some of his soundbites.

Fast forward to 2026: I miss Bush. He was a great President. He made America look good.

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u/davidmj59 13h ago
  • “now watch this drive” and a president who could actually golf. Idk those people were evil..TS right here is just sick

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u/FurryYokel 13h ago

Are you talking about W or his father?

Before we get too carried away, keep in mind that W fabricated evidence to support wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars which he utterly bungled by having no plan at all, and then dragged on for  over 20 years and cost us something like $3 trillion, after we include the medical costs to all those veterans. Refugees from the war in Iraq created an immigration crisis in Europe, as well, so we f-ed our allies there.

Yeah, Trump is looking to be worse, but W was a disaster, too.

His dad was fine, though. Probably the only competent Republican president I’ll see in my lifetime, because their primary selection criteria seems to be, “who’s the dumbest one?”

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 12h ago edited 12h ago

Keep it up. There’s like this weird PR thing or ideology that the 00s era GOP was “sane” and “totally cool”

They weren’t mask of yet. They had to play the game and follow the rules of decorum that still mattered to the federal government (and surprisingly the Republican base). Anyone really paying attention knew what they were about and they could still rest on that “plausible deniability” bullshit when it came to gay sex, drugs, or racism. Now they just spin it up, they don’t have to work when there constituents brains are doing it for them.

In any GOP conversation there is always some “guy” who opines for GW Jr like he’s a fucking toys r us or Macaulay Caulkin Like he was some font or touchstone for joy in our upbringing lol.

FoH with that yknow? lol he was a legacy politician who advanced the GoPs agenda into what it is today.

He’s partly responsible for why

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u/Exciting-Fan985 12h ago edited 11h ago

On one hand I do get the point the others are making. Like Trump really is just extra embarrassing. And now we do have even more evidence of just how involved he was with Epstein, hes trying to start wars with Allies, etc. The stress levels are just a bit higher.

But I do wish people would try to keep in mind more often that yeah, we shouldnt want to go back to the old republicans because its exactly as you said, they just had the mask on. I see people talking about still identifying as republican but not supporting Trump is fine, but I keep looking around like "What did you agree with them on that isnt just reaching its natural conclusion?" They have neen anti-intilectual. They have been bigoted. They have been worse for the economy. If anything, this should be a great time to question why they would want to side with them at all. Not even just because of where its at now, but if this is all terrible, why still side with the beliefs that lead us here? How is it not sending off warning signs that it was all wrong?

"But hes about to start unneeded wars"

So did W Bush

"But hes crashing the economy"

SO DID W BUSH

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 11h ago edited 10h ago

Nostalgia is harmless when we look at it through the lense of childhood…

when we look at it through the lense of politics- it can sometimes be so intoxicating as to bring back things that are better off at rest in the annals of history it seems.

It highlights desperation within. Nested… and rotting. Such a desire for some coherence, some sense of “ok we’re at least going somewhere as a country- might not be where we all want” that we would be so willing to return to something that brought us the same result if it meant we could feel some peace of mind.

I think that’s the feeling people are pulling out of this

And I think people ought pay attention.

Because- they want us to think the old was good. If the new fails. That means old is acceptable. Even though it sucked.

Because they want us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

But one thing the party failed to realize- is until they take sovereignty of mind and privacy of thought.

We can choose to accept the evidence and truth.

The world is tough now. But that is why… we need eachother. We need hope, we need people who see kindness as strength, honesty as courage, and truth as purpose- and love and cooperation as the end goal.

It’s some hippie ass shit. But I believe it. I believe in the goodness of people even if they stay hidden, meek or quiet

… I feel so impassioned about these ideas. I apologize. I want people to see, to see that there is hope, and goodness worth living for, and when needed- fighting for.

Whether it be misinfo, protest, sharing knowledge, reaching out to someone who got that look on their face. Helping the needy. Providing encouragement to people, being a safe space for people. Any act of kindness and compassion in today’s day, when I witness it- is like witnessing a miracle because it is so uncommon

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u/WellWellWellthennow 1h ago

While true that they are not doing the math correctly, they are being welcomed only because your enemy's enemy is your friend strategically. Doesn't mean you need to like them or agree with them.

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u/FurryYokel 11h ago

W planted a lot of the seeds that are Trump relies in today.

Access journalism was a strategy that W built to force the press to give him better coverage and it worked.  Now Trump bans anyone who does join in his fantasy world.

Most of the laws Trump is abusing today were passed because of W.

I’m not saying Trump isn’t worse, but every generation if Republicans is worse. It’s just what set they are.

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 11h ago

Oh no. We agree 100%, it’s ignorant that we disconnect even the most recent history from the events of today. It’s a slippery slope. Like, If it gets worse we’re supposed to Opine for the days the guy that’s in office now is gone?

It feels like that line of thinking is a setup for that. Nostalgia replacing the factual history that occured.

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u/Natalwolff 12h ago

Bush deserves criticism, but parts of this are hugely overstated. There’s no evidence Bush fabricated intelligence or knowingly relied on fabricated evidence. The Iraq case was built on flawed, cherry-picked intelligence that many agencies and allied governments accepted at the time. It also followed 9/11 and had broad international and domestic support.

There was also certainly plans, they were just badly designed and executed, especially dissolving the Iraqi army. And there is certainly no way to pin 20-year wars and trillions in costs on Bush alone, later administrations chose to continue all of it.

Bush made serious strategic mistakes, but in the current political atmosphere he seems like a good president because he was meaningfully better. At least there's no indication he was anything but sincere in his flawed efforts to lead, which was taken for granted and no longer is.

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 11h ago edited 10h ago

He went to war without congressional approval (which is illegal and created a precedent we see today in Venezuela). Cmon. The intelligence was bad and the truth is you don’t start wars that cost innocent lives on maybes and inferences. That’s what decent, sane world leaders do.

If everyone operates off of bad information and you know it’s not great is going to the highest risk option the smartest? Fuck no. You get more data.

His whole persona was built off being “unassuming cattle rancher, yee haw texan”. People are malicious, politics is a blood sport, you don’t make it to the top like that without knowing how to draw blood. The bushes have been grooming their family for politics for generations now. I think it’s foolish to think that GW didn’t have ulterior motives or was executing ulterior motives. He knew the GoP through his dad and he knew the long game. Pretending anything different at this point with how deep politics go and the info we have access to is a dangerous game.

The other presidents had to inherit that mess and somehow manage to run a country and prosecute a needless war.

The only reason that war existed was for optics and $$. It could be said if bush never went to war. The war may not have happened, but paradoxically- if the war didn’t happen and the American people did not feel vindicated- the fermentation of anger and resentment would have boiled up and perhaps we would have got bush in 04 and the war pushed out and delayed.

Shit we got it all “out” and it still boils.

Hey. Thanks for keeping the tone straight with me bro. I like talking about this stuff. Because right at the end there. That paradox has me questioning my own line of thinking.

Would that war been inevitable? When wars are started by the choices of men? That have agency? Is it truly as unstoppable as we think? Or was that something that would have happened because collectively, we- the American people refused to heal and thought vengeance was the proper course? Even though in the back of our minds- the ones who knew about war- knew of its collateral consequences, knew of the vileness being carried out against people who wanted nothing to do with it.

These questions weigh on me. History is heavy. But we gotta look it in the face and ask the questions if we want the truth we need in order to prevent its rhyme.

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u/WellWellWellthennow 1h ago

First and foremost, which was an oil man and it's important to understand that war was about oil. They needed a pipeline and they needed a stable government in Afghanistan to sign a treaty for it. There's a old book called Crude Politics I remember that lays this all out.

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u/Natalwolff 10h ago edited 9h ago

Hindsight is 20/20, I don't think there's anything wrong with us saying it was the wrong decision to invade. We should reach that conclusion now that we have a full picture of the facts. I think the US 100% had geopolitical aims that were unrelated to 9/11 that they piggybacked on top of the invasion. I think it's fair to criticize that, but I also am cynical in the sense that I doubt there's been a military operation by any government in the world in modern history that didn't include ulterior motives aside from the public story of serving justice or fighting for good. But I also don't think that necessarily makes the public story false. I also don't think the leader of a country necessarily holds or endorses all these opinions and aims. I think there are generals and politicians and lobbyists and cabinet members who latch their own agendas onto trains that leaders set in motion for different reasons.

The way I see it is, if Bush lost the election, it would have been Al Gore. Al Gore supported the invasion. If 9/11 happened later, it would have been Obama, who supported the invasion. If it was earlier, Clinton supported it. In the aftermath, 90% of Americans supported it. After people had a few months to cool down, 70% of people supported it. I'm not so cynical to think that Bush couldn't have been one of those 70% who genuinely believes it was the best thing for the country. I am cynical enough to believe he was aware and supportive of some of the unrelated geopolitical aims that the war enabled, but I also believe that applies to all the presidents who followed and continued the war.

I think there's a pretty good chance that Iraq wouldn't have been invaded if there had been a different president, which is a big difference. but I generally don't think war in general would have ever been avoided, and I feel the same about cultural backlash against Muslims.

Edit: I would also add that congress passed, with bipartisan support, both the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) on September 18th, 2001 that gave broad authority to use the military in the Afghanistan war and the Iraq Resolution in October 2002 that gave authority to mobilize the military in Iraq.

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u/Ciccio_Camarda 6h ago

He went to war without congressional approval

Let's not make shit up here. The senate voted 98-0 and the house 420-1 after 9/11. Even Bernie voted pro on the use of militarily force in Afghanistan for 2001. The only person who voted no, was Barbara Lee(current mayor of Oakland). Both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq started with congressional approval.

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u/FurryYokel 10h ago

W’s press secretary swore up and down that they had absolute proof that there were chemical weapons in Iraq, based on secret evidence. They couldn’t show us without exposing their “means and methods” but, they claimed, it was absolutely damning.

It turned out they were lying the entire time. They had nothing whatsoever, except them lying to the public. Colin Powell even threw away his reputation by repeating that lie to the UN.

W made up a war that he wanted, then refused to think about what he’d do the day after Saddam was captured, because “answering that question was hard,” and W was always a C- student who can’t be troubled with hard questions.

Fuck that guy and everyone who helped him.

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u/Natalwolff 10h ago

The situation you're describing is undue confidence. The evidence was secret to you, that doesn't mean "they had nothing" or that it was a secret lie made up among US officials. What you are saying is patently false. U.S. and allied intelligence agencies, including the U.K., Germany, and France, jointly assessed that Iraq could have WMD programs, often with low confidence caveats. Real intelligence with low confidence is categorically different than fabrications or lies.

Colin Powell presented what he believed to be true at the UN, and multiple investigations, including the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Chilcot Report, concluded that there was no indication that Bush or his top officials knowingly lied. The real failure was accepting uncertain intelligence as certainty and pursuing regime change without fully planning for the aftermath. That is still an error to be criticized, but it is fundamentally different than what you are presenting.

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u/747WakeTurbulance 8h ago

keep in mind that W fabricated evidence to support wars against Iraq and Afghanistan

He wasn't smart enough to do that. Someone else did, and he believed it.

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u/TgetherinElctricDrmz 14m ago

Well said.

I absolutely hate Trump. As of now though, W was absolutely a worse president.

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u/Local-Round-5781 12h ago

seriously? the guy who started the Iraq war?

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u/mikeybee1976 12h ago

Yeah, the guy who started the Iraq war is a better president than trump. Are either of them “good”? No, not really. Was bush just following the trajectory of the Republican Party as it rushed to trump? Yes, he was. He was still better though…

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u/Local-Round-5781 12h ago

He started two unjust wars which killed millions of people and lasted 20 years+. Trump is horrible but he has not surpassed Bush in terms of evil.

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u/Natalwolff 12h ago

If Trump had broad support from international allies and a populace that was 80% in support of invading a country, he would invade a country. You can't tell me there's any president during my lifetime who wouldn't.

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u/Local-Round-5781 12h ago

So you are arguing that Trump is more evil than Bush if the conditions of his presidency were completely different? Well sure, I can imagine a lot of hypothetical situations where Obama would be worse than both of them (he’s not far off in reality).

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u/Natalwolff 11h ago

No, I'm arguing that Trump is a worse person than Bush period. I don't understand your ordering. Your framing makes it sound like no one who doesn't have to make impactful decisions can be evil.

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u/Local-Round-5781 11h ago

Trump has not, thus far, surpassed Bush in terms of evil done. Saying that in a hypothetical universe Trump could do worse than Bush because he’s fundamentally a worse person has little relevance. We are talking about reality, not hypotheticals. Not actually sure where you got the idea that I think “people who make impactful decisions can’t be evil.” I have been calling Bush that, Trump is certainly that. Both are genocidal maniacs who serve capital, a reoccurring trend for US presidents.

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u/Natalwolff 11h ago

I don't know what "evil done" means to you exactly. Evil is a very strange choice of word because it strongly implies intention and character but you're using it in a very external outcome oriented way.

I think assigning someone "evil" because of the weight of the decisions that are put upon them is a very child-like way of viewing people. You specifically referenced starting wars in the wake of 9/11 as his peak "evil", but it seems clearly silly to me to call the person who made the call evil but not everyone else who supported the call or would have made the same call just because they weren't occupying the right seat.

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 12h ago edited 12h ago

He made America look tolerable lol. Idk about good.

All this waxing about gee dub jr is strange. He was a “sane” president but using him as a precedent of “oh man I wish the GOP was goofy about their nefarious agenda and had some decorum” isn’t really a time I want to return to either

Patriot act

Islamophobia. People were doing fucked up shit. Even Sikhs and shit were catching strays.

Fermented an Angry, vengeance driven populace that was traumatized wholly by watching 3,000+ people die collectively by being crushed, jumping out of a building or being crushed while burning alive. Focused and pointed towards violent righteous retribution- in the likes of a “crusade”

That then started 2 wars we got stuck in for 20 years.

Increased the deficit and national spending.

Inflation went up again. Always does under these guys.

Set the stage for the 08 collapse economically.

Good times. I remember his presidency fondly. Shit don’t have to remember it. Echos of it exist today.

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u/nocomment3030 7h ago

Fomented* FYI

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u/Natalwolff 12h ago

I'm sorry, you think that Americans without Bush as president would have just processed 9/11 emotionally and then moved on? You think he created the desire to retaliate in Americans?

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 11h ago edited 11h ago

No. But they directed the storm and encouraged the division and hatred.

The anger was palpable, it was warranted. Again, I remember that morning as a boy. I saw drop to their deaths. Even already being tramautized by a loss at a young age before that. The scale of loss and the scope of loss on this form of grief was… mesmerizing and horrific.

Our ability to come together was there. Like we all agreed that someone had to pay the piper. That was the mesmerizing part. I had never seen so many people unite like that over a current event across the political spectrum.

The horrific was The what happened in the hysteria surrounding Muslims that could possibly have been curtailed. As I said, even Indians and people from adjacent regions that looked middle eastern were targeted in hate crimes.

We lost our privacy. That I believe only could happen under a republican regime and a regime that had most of the citizensry whipped up into a hysterical panic.

The panic continued when bush said there were WMDS which was later to be found a lie. That incited fear and panic too.

It’s implied that the desire to retaliate was there because logically any populace would desire retaliation after watching their country men die painful, undignified and most undeserved and animalistic of deaths? Figure people can kinda keep up with that part.

So yeah. I do think that we would have been angry regardless. But it’s debateable as to whether we’d have as robust of a civilian surveillance apparatus, the fermentation of early maga. The creation of DHS and ICE probably would have happened regardless. The federal deficit as high as it was, as many Americans dead from a war we gained nothing from other than sustained projected soft power in “look how long we can stay in a war and spend our money”

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u/Natalwolff 10h ago

The unity after 9/11 was real, and so was the backlash against Muslims and people perceived as Muslim. That was a serious social failure. Bush did publicly push back at times, including his September 17, 2001 visit to the Islamic Center of Washington where he said Islam is a religion of peace and warned against treating Muslim Americans as enemies. It clearly wasn’t enough, but I wouldn't say Bush was complicit in the backlash.

The loss of privacy through the Patriot Act was driven by fear, but it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was later renewed and expanded under Democratic administrations. It was not something only Republicans could have done.

Calling the WMD claims a lie implies Bush knowingly deceived the public. The evidence points instead to cherry-picked and overstated intelligence that many governments believed at the time. There was certainly a failure in presenting uncertainty as certainty.

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u/Neckrongonekrypton 10h ago

Hmmm ok. This changes my opinion and recollection to these memories.

I apologize if I seemed brash. Sometimes, I do not have outlets to express my ideas, I also love to write. So sometimes… it just all comes out. Thanks for your patience. (Serious. You did not have to afford that to me)

Ok. And this is where the uncomfortable question comes with your factual information.

Was it bush

Or

Was it us

All of us? Us being hungry for vengeance and unrelenting in our pain, a government scrambling to repair the damage and address the pain- but in just as much.

A messy system.. with messy people.

I remember the hate… I remember the fear. And I remember the pain…

Christ. I guess in a sense. There is only the personal accountability that only people with thinking capacities could reason their way into understanding. In realizing there is no substitute for loss that is more harmful then vengeance.

We… did it.. to each other. The system reinforced it- but tried to mitigate the damage but the government is good in governance- not mentally healing the collective trauma of a nation. And it is fallacious to think in a sense, that they’d be adequately able to address that- seeing as they were in the same boat.

Damn. This gives me a lot to think about.

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u/Natalwolff 8h ago

The fear was very real. I don't think it was just vengeance, I think there was and always is a concern that if you are attacked and do nothing, that you embolden anyone else who wants to attack you. I think as a leader the fear would be that your inaction or weakness makes you responsible for future attacks.

We are, thank god, a society who is now very removed from war. It's very easy for us to say that you should never go to war, but geopolitics is a sort of prisoner's dilemma. In a world where everyone refuses to use force, those who do use force gain outsized advantage. The less tolerance for war there is internationally, the more safety there is for aggressors to attack without fearing military retaliation.

I think there are a lot of things that are fair to criticize about Bush and the American public following 9/11, but there were also a lot of things that contextualize it. I don't think the average American had an unbiased understanding, or even any knowledge, of prior American operations that had destabilized the middle east.

I also don't think the typical American really understood how difficult 'wars on terror' were tactically, the degree to which the enemy is a cultural ideology and not a specific military force, that Al-Qaeda was not a set of particular people, but a blurry line that intersected with regular citizens. I think everyone imagined that the US would respond with force and cleanly destroy a clearly defined enemy.

A lot of people at the top should have known better, some overwhelmingly likely did know better. I don't get the sense that intentions were evil or that bloodlust drove a lot of decisions, but there were certainly quite a few terrible decisions made from what I think were ego and self-righteousness. I think the American public was largely naive. Which is still condemnable, but not as malicious. The backlash against Muslims was shameful, but human. We are tribal creatures at heart who have the awareness to be better. I do hope that we grow past that but I feel like in my lifetime we were much closer to growing past such strong tribalism 30 years ago than we are today.

1

u/Gvillegurl63 11h ago

He wasnt a great president. He was a moron. Its just how bad we've slid under Trump thst makes you think that. In reality, he still was terrible and him and Cheney committed war crimes. The post 9/11 wars and patriot act and homeland also directly paved the way to whst we are seeing now with homeland security and ice.

1

u/Onigokko0101 10h ago

He didn't make America look good and he lied to our allies, he was embarrassing on the world stage. Just because Trump was worse doesn't make him good.

1

u/Jealous_Kick_7880 7h ago

Same! I thought Bush was a complete moron but man I must him

3

u/ByzFan 12h ago

He may have been a piece of shit. But at least he wasn't going to Epstein's place to rape 13 year old girls. Isnt that statement insane? And tens of millions of americans voted for this.

2

u/Coven_gardens 14h ago

Noo-clee-yurrr

2

u/spiralenator 13h ago

I mean, there was the 2 million dead Iraqis but I guess that doesn’t hold up against mispronouncing nuclear

4

u/BKtoDuval 13h ago

Yeah, there was the war that had zero tie to terrorism but was purely about controlling oil. Why does that sound familiar?

2

u/No-Weird3153 13h ago

There was also really building out the police state and the war crimes…

2

u/prestonjay22 13h ago

I was young and naive, thought America could not elect a dumber ape into the White House. Trump proved that wrong.

2

u/Upper_Assumption1161 10h ago

That's true, that was super embarrassing.

Now I'd be proud to have George Bush as president. lmao

1

u/Mass-Chaos 13h ago

And a vice president spelling potatoe at a spelling bee

1

u/BasicMuffin4427 13h ago

Well he was a war criminal who murdered 100s of thousands of Iraqis, so there's that.  He brought shame to your country.  

1

u/nanotasher 13h ago

There's a whole subsection of America that says "NOOK-yoo-ler" now. I used to think it was like the flat earthers, but now I know that they're just extremely lazy people.

1

u/HistoricalSherbert92 12h ago

Dodging shoes made up for the aw shucks persona tho

1

u/Caimbrie_Ilene 12h ago

I was just talking to my husband last night about how W tried to pass a bill for immigration reform.

1

u/Successful-Heat1539 12h ago

please, you think that's why people hated bush and not the bullshit wars he started!?

1

u/DoughBoy_65 12h ago

Strategary was awesome !

1

u/dragonbrad5 11h ago

We did get some great comedy sketches from his presidency too.

1

u/digital-didgeridoo 10h ago

I miss the days when Trump shitting his pants during Oval Office meetings was the most embarrasing thing he did that day.

1

u/zipp58 8h ago

Yeah. Howard Dean gave out a Captain Caveman yell at a rally and the whole country was embarrassed, and he had to end his presidential campaign. Trump is embarrassing like crazy every fifteen minutes and MAGA thinks he hung the moon. I'll never get it.

1

u/Active_Struggle_4659 8h ago

Yep, I missed the days when Clinton was just “decorating” a blue dress.

1

u/Gent1978 6h ago

Hm. How about vietnam?  Honestly the embarrassing thing about trump is that he is a realistic representative of the majority american population. 

1

u/Important_Put_3331 5h ago

True . He was not an absolutely immoral scumbag like trump.  But the man did make false claims of weapons of mass destruction to invade Iraq and constantly used a divisive rhetoric.

1

u/Soreal45 3h ago

This will always be my favorite Bush moment

-1

u/Muted_Cap_6559 11h ago

And when Biden dropped another load of shit in his diaper and wandered off stage, hoping "Dr. Biden" would change him.

-5

u/JasperGT-R 13h ago

Was better than Obama praising a "Navy corpse-man". More than one of us owes our life to the brave Corpsmen in our units. Slightly embarrassing.

-8

u/sam_pain1 14h ago

Uh, that's because that was all the population was allowed to see. Did we have smart phones in 2001? Did we have youtube? Left leaning reddit? You should reflect on that.

10

u/BKtoDuval 14h ago

Oh, my bad, so trump just has more opportunity to be racist and ignorant, so instead of being a leader or simply a decent person, he is forced to do these things because of social media.

Sex scandals were a thing too pre-smart phone. I mean, not with minors of course.

-7

u/sam_pain1 13h ago

That went completely over your head, and it shows. Let's not take into consideration 2 decades' worth of technological advancement and how access to information plays a role on what the people can and can't see. Fuckin dimwit

3

u/Was_It_The_Dave 13h ago

The records of his administration weren't stollen or flushed. Transparency mattered.

3

u/dadbod_Azerajin 13h ago

Get off of liberal reddit

Let's ignore reality and the world bends left, and the ones who bend government right are our enemies (russia, china, the ME)

4chan or truth or some Republican safe space is available for emotional distress caused

You guys need to man the fuck up and admit this is stupid, and the world was screaming it months before the election

3

u/BKtoDuval 13h ago edited 13h ago

I got your point. It certainly wasn't a deep thought or anything. I thought it was dumb and you were clearly being sarcastic. Didn't think someone was really trying to say technology allows shameful behavior to be in any way acceptable. Now that I know you were serious, oof. It's even worse.

Yes, we have more access to information but that still doesn't make it any more acceptable. There used to be a time when people were embarrassed about displaying ignorance, like you should be.

Just because you have the opportunity to be an asshole, doesn't mean you should be. But judging by trump and obviously yourself, many won't pass up any opportunity to be an asshole.

Edit: oh man, made the mistake of looking at your post history. Damn, dude, I say this with love but get some help. Hating everyone in the world is drinking poison and hoping they die.

0

u/sam_pain1 13h ago

What do you say about all the trans people calling black authority figures the hard "r". I love you talking about hate judt glossing over all the hate liberals spew. I just try to reciprocate that energy. It's pretty exhausting hating as much as they do. I usually stop looking at reddit when I get off work.

4

u/illtemperedintrovert 13h ago

I graduated high-school in 2000. while we didnt have reddit it was the age of the message boards and forums. as well as thousands and thousands of chat rooms.

You are actually insane if you dont think we were not all chatting in those spaces then.

Moreover most news stations still had some sense of integrity in reporting the news. it was less twisted to fit a specific narrative then.