President Bush-Incompetency or Intention

I was talking with a friend last night about President Bush. He made the comment that is common to hear these days regarding the incompetency of our President.

It’s very convenient and easy to consider that President Bush is incompetent in his job. We always like to make fun of or criticize people in power, and Bush, for a myriad of reasons makes an easy target.

Considering his decisions, particularly in Iraq and the Middle East, it is more comforting to think that he is stammering along, as opposed to a worse alternative: that for some unknown reason, his decisions are intentional and he knows exactly what he is doing.

My friend got a bit upset with me when I suggested this. Mind you, he has a newborn son, and feels understandably protective and would hate to think of a world that is being purposefully driven into to the ground by its leadership.

Unfortunately, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities for consideration.

Whether we know why Kennedy was shot or who did it, trust in whether or not our government is working for us began to erode at that time and has continued towards 9/11 and more recently, decisions made around the Iraq war.

The 9/11 attacks were predicted by people knowledgeable in foreign relations prior to the date of its actual occurrence. It’s not that these people were psychic, it’s just that the US does not have a good foreign relations with people in the Middle East, and especially under President Bush, our policy has been to dominate and control rather than use diplomacy and other peaceful means.

When people claim that our government was directly involved in 9/11, I always have to look further to see what they mean. If they mean that 9/11 was a controlled deliberate demolition, that the planes were filled with bombs and other things, and that the US helped coordinate this effort, I don’t yet agree with this.

But if people claim that the US drove terrorists to this behavior (the end doesn’t justify the means, but they are terrorists) then yes, absolutely we have responsibility to bear for the things that have happened.

We need to question how much of what is going on in our world, especially at the hands of our government, and how much of the decisions made consist of a non-stop error in judgement or is a different vision of that which the government has than what we would like to see for ourselves.