The common criticism of George W. Bush is that he put American power on a slide by damaging international credibility and draining our resources. I believe he is responsible for making a lot of these problems worse, but on a large scale, the picture looks fairly different.
George W. Bush seems guilty of the following:
-Going to war in Iraq and draining both our military resources and our national credibility
-Refusing to research alternative energy, and thus putting us 8 more years behind in gaining energy independence
-Overspending and putting us in massive debt to China
I will not go into the credit and housing crises because it seems that it would be hard to point a finger at anyone for causing these, despite the many theories.
However, when looking back on the 90s, it seems fair to say that a lot of these things were already in the making. Military cuts meant that fighting one major war would drain our resources. While Iraq, in my opinion, was an unnecessary military adventure, there is a danger to a country as influential as the U.S. putting its military in a position where it can only fight one major war.
In addition, it seems to me that the U.S. has had trade problems for a long time now. With the emergence of globalization, Americans have found themselves losing jobs to people that were used to working harder for less money (this is no disrespect to Americans, we're some of the hardest workers in the developed world and simply used to our way of living), while academia in America has been falling behind. Since the late 70s, America has been falling prey to an increasing trade deficit. The hand of the market dictates that our current way of life will not go unchallenged, and while outsourcing has only become a huge issue recently, it was only inevitable.
On energy, some of the same things can be said. I will warn that in this following paragraph, I a making some guesses as I have not found data for everything, and I would appreciate clarifications/corrections if anyone sees a problem. That said, before and during World War II, America was the industrial giant with the resources to become a world superpower. This was in part because America for a time was a net exporter of oil. As the Germans could attest, military power and oil are tied together quite tightly, and as the Germans struggled with synthetic fuel, the Americans powered a fleet of unprecedented size, approximately 25 aircraft carriers by my estimates, along with the fuel to mobilize an military of 16 million personnel. As America continued to economically grow in the post-war years, we inevitably used up more of this natural resource and dried up more of our own reserves. By the 1970s, we were a net importer of oil. Our military and industrial position is weakened by our own lack of oil, as more has to be spent on fuel, and eventually this could spell curtains for our military predominance.
Moreover, America has had a bad pattern of how it consumes on a larger scale. Our infrastructure is mostly dependent on highways; while suburbs, a uniquely American design of habitation, have created costly sprawl. The average American car, thanks in part to the inability of legislation to enact a gas tax decades ago, consumes only 20 mpg, around half as much as their European counterparts. Reliant on roads, encouraged to move to distant suburban communities, and given no reason not to buy flashy inefficient cars, we've failed to solve the infrastructure issue. Putting two and two together, our energy consumption is downright reckless, and has been well before Bush came into office.
The last thing to address then may be the overspending and overborrowing done by Bush. The budget deficit, excluding Iraq, is alone a whopping $460 bn. A lot of our debt burden comes from Iraq, but it also comes from major tax cuts and pork-barrel spending. Economic policy is a tricky question, and I am generally a proponent of not resorting to higher taxes as a source of revenue, but the Iraq war is clearly a crippling mistake in that it has cost already approximately $1 trillion. Here is one major problem that I believe could have been avoided in recent years.
This said, the United States has been facing natural-resource, trade, and workforce problems for a very long time. It is only natural that our ability to compete in the global workforce, our energy supplies, and our nation defense would be put in danger, but Bush's policies have failed to address these problems using the resources currently available to us. I wonder however, what a democrat would have done to address these problems in the past eight years. We seem prey to events that arguably make self-created problems like Iraq look like a blemish.
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Sheesh, after reading your statement of political stances, I find that the two of us are embarrassingly similar. By any chance, was your mother ever in Houston, Texas? (Your retort is "My mother, never, my father, often.)
However, I did manage to find one thing to disagree with: I think that you are placing too much emphasis on military power. I don't think that military power is very useful anymore as an instrument of policy. Consider the exercises of American military power since the end of World War II. There was Korea, a fair victory; Gulf War I, a big victory; Vietnam, a total loss; numerous interventions in Latin American countries, few of which seem to have had any significant effects; Lebanon, a disaster; Somalia, a disaster; Afghanistan, an incomplete victory; and Iraq, a semi-disaster. All in all, military power hasn't served us very well, has it?
The economy enjoyed a huge boost from the "peace dividend" as we scaled down the military in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Use of military force alone is something I would agree is ineffective. However, I believe that a lot of our clout still comes from military power.
Wars like Gulf War I would never have come through had it not been for a military hegemon. The armies of the developed world for the most part do not have true projection capabilities, as shown by the fact that there are few wars waged solely by Western European countries, the Falklands war the only one I could think of.
That said, there was force to back up the words "don't you dare" when Saddam advanced upon Kuwait. Without that military power, I wonder who would have been there.
On the other hand, recklessly using that muscle is no good. Our military resources have been drained by policing a region of tens of millions. I believe that if we were not stuck in the quagmire of Iraq, Iran would see us holding a much bigger stick and would not want to risk angering us. Especially since no disaster in Iraq = more likelihood of hawkish sentiment; and Khameini/Ahmadenejad, unlike Saddam, are a rational actors.
In addition, counterinsurgency will require a great deal more resources than people initially believed. Places like Afghanistan are going to require a more trained army and more inventive technology, leaving plenty more to be spent. So while it may be worthwhile to cut down on some conventional weapons (such as our so-called "supercarriers"), I expect that we'll need more work on robotics, recon, and training. And seeing that Al-Qaeda really can pose a threat (despite that there are worse ones out there), it will be necessary to learn to win on that front.
Yes, our forces were immensely successful in Gulf War I, but that war really didn't take all the manpower we used. Most of the destruction was done by our air power. The heavy armor just sort of romped across the desert and the infantry were used almost exclusively for mopping up hot spots bypassed by the armor. In other words, we really didn't need a big army to win in Gulf War I.
I doubt that we'll ever have to fight a stand-up fight again. Gulf War I proved that a modern high-tech army could shred anything less modern; I believe that we could do with a much reduced main force army. However, we still need infantry for peacekeeping tasks.
In any case, I think we would do well to pull out of Iraq, beef up Afghanistan, and reduce most of our main force strength.
We're getting into more specifics about military strength, but here's where some more heavy disagreement goes.
Airstrikes alone cannot do the job, they're sloppy and they end up hitting a lot of civilians. In addition, they do not take out all of the targets. While the tank may seem to be an outdated weapon, Iraqi field commanders from the first Gulf War claim that it was the tanks that did the biggest damage, not the airstrikes, to their companies that is.
In addition, I do not see how a personnel cut could be done. In Afghanistan, we do need to beef up forces, and it seems that we'll have to beef them up by quite a lot. Outnumbered U.S. forces calling in airstrikes creates a great deal more resentment due to the collateral damage it brings, but at the same time we cannot put them in danger. This said, I think that the number in Afghanistan of total foreign forces may have to near 150,000 by the end of this war; overwhelming force is the doctrine of choice in order to avoid both our own casualties and those of Afghan civilians.
In addition, we are running a human war here. Specialists and trainers of all sorts would need to be on the ground. Though then again, it is arguable that developing the Afghan defense force is the #1 priority.
I can't imagine that we won't be fighting any more stand-up wars. You are right that force ratio for invasions an now come with a lot of airpower and intelligence, but don't forget that those programs cost a great deal of money, a lot goes on behind the scenes. I also however stress that armor will continue to maintain a significant role. While I believe we will never go to war with a country like China, belligerents like North Korea and Iran always pose a threat given the right circumstances, and Pakistan is a bit on the fence itself. With that in mind, what exactly are your proposals to what we should cut in the military? It seems that our current levels of infantry, our tanks, our airpower, and our electronics are all essential. This leaves naval spending. I admit that I imagine we should cut our carrier fleet in half, which would save a lot of money, but beyond that, under the assumption that there will be threats (another issue to debate), I don't see what is so "un-modern" about any of the parts of our ground forces.
Btw, on that last post, it seems I have some unintelligible typos. I was falling asleep shortly before I wrote this, so I will go to bed and hope that you can fill in the blanks for the confusing sentences.
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