Preconceptions

I suspect I may be seeing some visitors to this site from a certain group of friends who’ve not seen this blog before, or been exposed to the full intensity of my political ranting. Consider that we’ve recently been talking about reconsidering certain preconceptions that we hold dear.

Consider also that I grew up in a totalitarian dictatorship.

Now try to keep an open mind about the following statements:

• George W. Bush is neither:
  • a fundamentalist
  • a liar
  • an idiot
  • a puppet controlled by (pick one)
    • big business
    • the religious right
    • shadow neo-con conspiracies.
• Bush’s foreign policy deserves praise precisely because it does away with 50 years of Cold War realpolitik and amoral pragmatism.
• Bush’s foreign policy has been directly responsible for amazing events in the world lately, including:
  • Libya giving up its nuclear program
  • Pakistan revealing the existence of the Libya-Iran-North Korea nuclear axis
  • municipal elections in Saudi Arabia
  • municipal elections in Palestine
  • the Israeli pullout from Gaza, along with the recent thaw in Israeli/Palestinian relations
  • massive popular revolt in Ukraine leading to real democratic elections
  • mass pro-democracy and anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon, leading Syria to end its 20-year illegal occupation of Arab territory.
• The American invasion of Iraq saved at least 10,000 more lives than it took.
• Life in Afghanistan and Iraq is objectively better now than in 2000.
• Of the conflicts of the last 20 years that have been successfully ended by international action, the UN has been responsible for none and the US at least 4.
• The United Nations was complicit in allowing Saddam Hussein and the governments of France and Canada to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money that was supposed to be buying milk for starving Iraqi children.
• The Kyoto Accord is a pointless and hypocritical face-saving exercise. Oh, and it wasn’t George W. Bush who refused to sign it.

If you disagree with any of the statements above, what is your evidence for doing so? “Everybody knows” doesn’t cut it.