Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "George W. Bush and the Texan Style of American Leadership" video.

  1.  @ipredictariot6371  It’s not so much whether the threat level was overestimated, it was the response to the threat that should be examined and criticized. The 9/11 attacks occurred because we underestimated the threat. After the attack there was a scramble to get a correct assessment. A truly accurate assessment of all possible threats is impossible (or at least very very difficult) because of the asymmetric nature of the conflict. The Bush defense/security/intelligence people took the “safer” course of overestimating the level of threat. Is this a huge error? I don’t know, but it did lead to what was a series of fatal errors involving the response to this overestimated threat. It was decided that the response to this estimated level of threat should be the occupation of a country in the Middle East. Iraq was selected for reasons of expedience: 1) it was conquerable, 2) Saddam was a mischief maker and a potential sponsor of terrorism, 3) Iraq had in the past tried to acquire WMDs, might be doing so, and might have them, and most importantly, 4) Iraq was politically isolated—it had no friends in the region, no Arab nation that could credibly oppose an invasion or was inclined to do so. Iraq had “accomplished” this alienation ten years before, when it invaded Kuwait. If the U.S. had a hammer, Iraq certainly looked like a nail! Iraq was the most convenient target. The Bush administration then did two things that I consider to be the fatal errors. 1) it used shortcuts to justify the invasion, including deceiving the public, and 2) it tried to graft the PNAC ideology onto the Iraqi occupation plan. Instead of open and honest debate about whether the invasion was the correct response or even a good idea was suppressed and we instead debated the existence of WMDs in Iraq. Instead of the sensible course of merely setting up military bases and insuring that Iraq’s petroleum industry continued to function, we took on the project of nation building and meddling in Iraq’s internal politics. The meddling was further complicated because we wanted both a puppet government (or at least a friendly one), but we didn’t want to impose one because we also wanted Iraq to be a democracy. Neither of these contradictory ideas are good ones, but combined they are even worse because of the contradiction. All these errors were baked into the project before the military even began to plan the invasion. Dissent was suppressed over most questions except for the WMD question, and even there, deception was used to bolster the argument, both within the administration and in the public square.
    9
  2.  @LRRPFco52  The most laughable aspect of the concept itself is that “BRICS” represents a unified bloc or a coherent alignment of interests.
    3
  3. Don’t make the error that Pete is unbiased just because he is unvarnished and sincere in presenting his views. Im not saying he has an agenda—that’s too strong a word. But he does have a viewpoint that is not purely objective. It’s a viewpoint that is in alignment with his major clients. I’m not saying that he caters to his clients views (he’s not a yes-man), but I would say that they wouldn’t be his clients if there wasn’t a sympathetic basis. Pete isn’t objective, but he is most certainly an honest broker of ideas and he makes the effort to base his ideas in reality. This is why he is excellent, even when he makes errors. I don’t think we can really ask for more.
    2
  4. Pete isn’t doing state-by-state breakdowns, he’s doing quick portraits of recent presidents. The digression into Texas politics is necessary to understand Bush’s approach to governing.
    1
  5. This is a superficial reading. The overall purpose was global stability. A linchpin to global stability is a stable energy supply. This is the underlying reasons for the Iraqi invasion. Maybe it was misguided from the get go. Maybe it was misguided because the Bush administration hawks grafted to the invasion their PNAC program of “democracy building”. (My thinking tends towards the later, although the former is an open question.) No doubt Halliburton benefitted both from the war and from its connections to Cheney. That’s fairly obvious. But it is incorrect to say that Halliburton controlled U.S. foreign policy. It’s like saying a remora controls the shark or the tick controls the dog.
    1
  6. This is revisionist history. You’re pretending you don’t know him and are unrelated to him after the fact. If he had had a successful presidency, he’d still be embraced as a red blooded son of Texas instead of disdained as a blue blooded Northener. By engaging in this denial, I don’t think you are embodying Texas values. I think you yourself have fallen prey to the Trumpian tendency to deny your own foibles and blame others. This is NOT the Texas way.
    1
  7. He meant Bob Gates.
    1
  8. The disaster of Iraq was due to a chain of errors. The invasion itself wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it wasn’t debated honestly because the hawks in the administration forced the debate into whether or not there were WMDs in Iraq, and then lied about their evidence. The grand mistake was to graft the overly ambitious PNAC program onto what should have been a narrow mission. The narrow mission would have been to base troops in Iraq, and to insure the petroleum industry continued to operate. A “skinny plan” might have worked. It was the nation-building and meddling in Iraqi domestic politics that led to disaster. I’ll allow that the wisdom of invading at all is debatable. Perhaps the original mistake was that we really didn’t have that debate. I’m also a fan of W the man, warts and all. I don’t think we can blame his tendency to delegate on his being from Texas (and the former governor of Texas) or a recognition that foreign policy was his weak area, but on his own insecurity wrt that weakness. He overcame that insecurity by about 2006, but it was too late—the damage was done, and he couldn’t reverse it. About all he could do was fire Rumsfeld’s ass and stop listening to Cheney.
    1
  9. Next episode in the “5-minute Presidential Portrait” series is Obama.
    1
  10.  stv1  You’re not a serious person and you aren’t interested in fair debate or an intellectually honest exchange if ideas.
    1
  11. Why are you so sure he’s the target? Maybe Pete has a specific set of skills . . .
    1
  12. This is a good gloss for the most part in this series of 5-minute summations of recent presidential administrations, but it really doesn’t do justice to the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the huge errors made by those that conceived and executed the policy. I hope Pete fills out the complicated history at a later date.
    1
  13. This is 100% incorrect. The U.S. pulled out of the ABM treaty. Russia withdrew from START II. It was replaced bilaterally by the SORT agreement. You are distorting the facts, either out of ignorance or intentionally lying to spread Russian propaganda.
    1