Looking Back at the Bush Administration So Far

What are the results of the Bush administration for the United States after 6 1/2 years?

Security

Early in the administration, we have learned, the intelligence community went to the White House to express serious concerns about a potential terrorist attack in the near future. Nothing was done. 9/11 occurred. The Bush administration then created an atmosphere of excessive fear in the United States, which it exploited to pass a number of laws. The Homeland Security Department has done many things to improve homeland security, but it has also wasted many billions of dollars in grants in areas that have no real risks. On the other hand there are many important security threats that should have but have not been reduced. Perhaps most important of these is the global security of nuclear materials, which has to be addressed primarily by diplomatic negotiations.

The 900 deaths and the dismal recovery experience from Hurricane Katrina represents a serious failure in Bush administration homeland security policy, perhaps as bad as 9/11.

Legal System and Human Rights

The Bush administration has established a network of prisons in foreign countries where it could keep prisoners in ways not allowed domestically under the Constitution. It has sent prisoners to other countries where they could be tortured. It has established a system of interrogation that would seem to include cruel and unusual punishment, and used it on thousands of innocent people. It appears that Abu Ghraib was a foreseeable outcome of the policy environment that the Bush administration created.

It has politicized the Justice Department, not only by placing political cronies as the Attorneys General and hiring lots of right wing politicos for policy position at the Department, but also be seeking to use political criteria to hire United States Attorneys.

It has conducted a massive program of illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens as part of the intelligence efforts against terrorism.

Bush and his administration have also managed a conservative shift in the Supreme Court, which has started to undo progress made over some decades in assuring a woman's right to choose, separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and integration.

Military

The Bush administration got the United States into an unjust war against Iraq. In the process it put the United States in violation of international convention that a nation is justified in attacking another only when that other nation's actions constitute an immediate threat to its security.

The United States is now engaged militarily in two insurgencies which are likely to last for a very long time, unless we withdraw. Since the Bush administration is unwilling to pay the political price of building military strength accordingly, the military services have a much reduced strength. Apparently there is no longer sufficient uncommitted military strength to permit the United States to make credible military threats to other nations.

Given the move of Iran and North Korea towards the creation of weapons of mass destruction, the lack of a more credible U.S. threat seems especially damaging to U.S. interests.

Environmental Policy

The Bush administration has not done anything in its term of office to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It has refused to honor the Kyoto Agreement. As a result, instead of decreasing the rate of emissions, the world has increased the rate, making it that much harder to bring them down to levels compatible with an acceptably low level of climate change.

Its general approach is to favor companies over environmentalists. It has done grave damage in challenging the validity of scientific data in establishing the nature and urgency of environmental risks.

Prototypical of its approach has been its effort to allow snowmobiles in national parks, in spite of the evidence that they do environmental damage.

Foreign Policy

The prestige of the United States has suffered greatly due to Bush administration military interventions and failure to accept environmental conventions. The Bush administration go-it-alone approach has diminished U.S. capacity to form coalitions -- other countries are less willing to make concessions to this country knowing the Bush administration is unwilling to make concessions to them.

The Bush administration has seen the tensions in the Middle East grow substantially, and U.S. allies in Muslim countries have been seriously weakened by their visible alliance with us. It has created serious problems U.S. relations with North Korea and Iran. It appears to have lost significant opportunities to establish stronger relations with Russia, and has refused to recognize any of the treaties among former Communist countries, even when collaboration with such treaties would be to the benefits of the United States.

The Bush administration, while condemning Sudan for the Darfur crisis, has done little to stop the genocide there.

The United States continues to be seriously in arrears in its contributions to the United Nations system. The Bush administration statements to the United Nations before the Iraq invasion, based on lies and/or terrible intelligence work, seriously undermined U.S. credibility in the international community. U.S. representation by John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations appears both to have delayed important work of the United Nations and to have decreased U.S. influence in that body.

Economic Policy

The Bush administration has run huge deficits as it paid for the wars, and has allowed huge balance of payments deficits to continue. It has consistently favored policies that increased the income and wealth divisions within the United States. It allowed high levels of unemployment during its first term of office.

Social Policies

The Bush administration sought to reform immigration law, but failed in that attempt when it could not bring along the Republicans in Congress. As a result, the United States continues to have some 12 million illegal aliens living here, continues to have porous borders, continues to lack decent policies to allow in all the highly skilled foreign workers we could use.

There has been no progress in extending health insurance coverage in the United States. The reform of Social Security to allow payment for pharmaceuticals has done nothing to reduce their costs, which are the highest in the world; the system is exceptionally cumbersome.

No Child Left Behind, which was the Bush administration's signature piece of domestic legislation, is drawing increasing criticism. While having information on school performance seems a reasonable idea, the implementation appears to have resulted in decreases in science and technology education and in the arts in schools.

Bush policies on reproductive biology and medicine have been reactionary, and the limitations on stem cell research that the Bush administration has put in place will delay scientific advances and the development of important medical advances.

Politics

While Bush campaigned for office saying that he would improve cooperation between the Democrats and Republicans, between the Executive and Legislative branches of government, the Bush administration has made those relationships worse.

What have I left out?