Thank you. Just... thank you.

[hermionesviolin]

I was thinking last night. All of us complain and bitch about President Bush, but in the future, 20 years later in textbooks, he won't be remembered for all of this shit. Not for the rejected environmental laws or the pretzel or the Patriot Act. The only people who'll learn about the messed up elections are AP US History Students. Years later, Bush will be remembered for liberating two countries that everyone was afraid of.

Whenever Afghanistan was mentioned in the past, you'd hear about how horrible it was for women. Now that's no more. Girls can actually get an education. For Iraq, everyone hated Saddam (if you said you didn't, it's b/c you're afraid of getting shot) and people pitied the Iraqis. Now that's no more. All because someone decided not to sit back and watch and talk about what's going on, but to actually go out there and change it.

I'm not Republican. I'm not a Bush-supporter. I wouldn't have voted for him. But you must admit, knocking down two horrible regimes during a single term is pretty up-there. Yes, a lot of people were killed, but all of this would happen eventually. It just waited for the person with enough guts to do it. Even if you hate Bush, you have to agree that it's going to be better without the Taliban and Saddam. I didn't know how much Iraqis despised the latter until they were knocking down statues and smacking them with sandals. That's amazing.

You can be the person that leans back and complains about what's going on, or you can be the person that goes out there and changes it.

It makes me wonder. Perhaps the 2000 election wasn't as wacked-out as we think. The butterfly ballot scandal came out of nowhere; it was such a random thing, with a huge effect. If those old people in Florida voted correctly, Gore would've won. If Gore was president, all of this undoubtedly wouldn't have happened. Women in Afghanistan would be stoned in streets and people would be afraid for their lives to speak their minds in Iraq. It makes me wonder if this is the way it was meant to be, if this is a plan of someone above us.

Comments

Re: I can't agree with this article . . .

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I just didn't expect I'd have to argue and defend my stupid post. This is more work than I wanted.

Again, my apologies. I'll be happy to take you out to lunch this fall to make up for it. :)

I really appreciate all the calm, rational, mature discussion that has gone on in this post, though. lilithchilde said "I hope we're not scaring you off from Smith with all this," but honestly this kind of discussion is one of my favorite things about this place.

(And to weigh in on this discussion, Word to "I don't know how well peace talks work with stubborn dictators with hidden bunkers and torture rooms." One of the problems with advocating a civilized way of dealing with a situation is that it only works when all involved parties are civilized.)