If I Hear This One More Time ...

So all the kool-aid conservatives are trying to "rescue" Bush's legacy (Bush is trying too, see the ocean gimmick). Today Matt Continetti sort of defends Bush's presidency in a piece for NPR. You know things are bad when the title is "It Could Have Been Worse". But to that I ask - really? Could it? Of course the only 2 things he argues is that Bush "kept us safe" and "saved us from losing Iraq". Now, if I hear the "kept us safe" argument one more time I'm going to crack. How do we know? You can't prove a negative! Now, some plots were thwarted (like the German ring) and others weren't (Spain, Mumbai) ... but none of this counts because it happened overseas and we exist in a vaccum. Now, it's not nothing to keep violence off our shores - of course that's the #1 job of a President - but you have to remember that terrorists have been pretty successful atl killing Americans (4x as many as died in 9/11) in Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush's reign. So, the claim that Bush "kept us safe" by taking us to war is dubious at best ... they might as well argue that the Iraq war prevented a nuclear war with North Korea, or that because of the "healthy forest initiative" the '88 Yellowstone fire hasn't been repeated, or that because of Cheney's energy task force we didn't see $5/gallon gas ... all of these fake arguments are just as plausible.

Giving Bush credit for the surge "working" is at least a point that can be backed up. I'm not going to even start discussing what the true believers mean by "victory" in Iraq - but assume that Bush did at least turn a corner in Iraq and made it so we don't have to withdraw in disgrace ... that's still not a legacy worthy accomplishment! It's like praising a guy who drove his car into a ditch and for having the gumption to call a tow truck when spinning the tires didn't work.