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Tuesday, 26 December 2006 14:34 |
 | | Mark West |
When the historians add up the pluses and minuses of the Bush administration in 20 or 30 years, I suspect he will indeed be ranked as one of the worst. But when they list the major failings of the administration, its biggest error will not be the war in Iraq.
Make no mistake; the war in Iraq has been a debacle. U.S. prestige has suffered immensely; the position of Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East has been strengthened; and the loss in lives has been immense and unpardonable.
One
would have thought that the lesson of Vietnam would have been to never
send American troops into harmës way without a plan for strategic and
political victory. But, as we all know, George W. Bush sat out Vietnam
in a cushy spot provided by his daddy while others did the hard work
and learned the hard lessons.
The failure of
the Bush administration to ratify the Kyoto accords, or to make any
significant headway on the issue of global warming, will be another
black mark for the current regime. The time to put out the fire in
oneës home is not after the fire marshal has definitively identified
the source as that frayed extension cord in the living room; the time
to put out such a fire is when the first smoke is sensed.
Similarly, we
had our first warnings about global warming and we have ignored them.
We will pay dearly for it and some of the blame falls on the Bush
administration.
But, even considering how grave those failures are, they are not the worst error of the current administration.
The last six
years may well have been Americaës opportunity to comfortably move to
renewable energy. And Bush squandered that opportunity, telling
Americans that 9/11 was instead a time for the military to move in,
while the public continued to shop ÇƒÓ lest the terrorists win.
Now, let me be
perfectly clear. Osama bin Laden is a Qutbist fanatic, who needs to be
stopped. But his funding comes from a few likeminded individuals in
oil-rich places. That means that some of the dollars we pay for foreign
oil are eventually piped to people who want to do us harm.
The only
sensible strategy the U.S. could adopt after 9/11 was police action
against bin Laden, and a massive campaign for energy independence. But
Bush chose another path, one more pleasing to his oil-company sponsors.
Later, though, Bush realized that energy independence did matter to the public, and proposed an initiative for ÇƒÓ hydrogen cars!
General Motors
says that it will have a production-ready hydrogen automobile in 2010.
How much it will cost is anyoneës guess, but current experimental
hydrogen vehicles are fabulously expensive.
And thereës
always the chicken-and-egg problem with hydrogen as a fuel; who would
be nutty enough to buy a hydrogen car until the fuel was generally
available ÇƒÓ and what gas company would provide it until there was a
critical mass of hydrogen cars driving around?
George Bush
could have called for a Marshall Plan for energy independence. Instead,
he was a day late and a dollar short with a "Jetsons"¨?‑style plan that
just wonët work.
Global warming,
Qutbist terrorism, energy independence and the welfare of the United
States are inextricably linked. George Bushës failure to take the one
path that could have dealt with them all ÇƒÓ the path of renewable
resources and conservation ÇƒÓ will be what historians remember as his
single greatest failing.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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