RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Dubya's vision requires lasik...

He's as blind as a bat!!!!

His "vision" and foresight have landed us in more than one quagmire already.

As a far-left liberal, this is the category that I can rate him the highest on. I think that he has developed what he feels is a vision of where the U.S. should be in the future and states how to go about getting there. Now, I do not agree with his vision most of the time, but I can respect that he has one.

This guy believes that 'god' speaks to him....directly.....I wonder if he meets with the Easter Bunny and Santa too. His vision is completely clouded by money and a wild imagination.

George Bush is one of the great visionaries of our time. The Bush Doctrine uniquely redirected the course of our nation's foreign policy in a similar vein to Reagan's departure of Cold War balance of power doctrine. The short term impact of this has been profound. Pakistan is working with the Western world in the War On Terror. Lybia has given up all WMD aspirations and allowed for inspections. Palestine has held elections and is back at the bargaining table with Israel. Syria is (seemingly) steadily moving out of Lebanon. Egypt is amending its constitution to allow for multiparty elections. Afghanistan is free from Taliban rule and holding elections for the first time EVER! Iraq is deliberating the creation of their government through a pluralistic discussion not by force and sword after holding highly successful elections. Are these things happening in a vacuum- of course not. Would they all have happened without the implementation of the Bush Doctrine- absolutely not. Will it continue to be successful and reap benifits- I hope so but only the future can tell so long as we keep putting in the effort. Either way however the long term strategy to combat world terrorism and real implementation of the Wilsonian doctrine is visionary even if you don't agree with the prospects of its success.

Bush has no vision...and because of this, innocent American peoples are perishing in Iraq.

His vision & focus would improve greatly if his eyes weren't too close together.

right now his vision consists of keeping our nation safe from terrorism, which is as good a place to start as any.

Bush does a better job with the vision thing than his father did, but the visions he has aren't necessarily good ones. My problem with Bush is that he's so negative about everything. All of his speeches have to always allude to that boogey man lurking behind every rock and tree. He is essentially trying to get elected by scaring the hell out of the American people; every speech has to mention terrorism. Now we're finding that high public officials are limiting their public engagements for fear of terrorist attacks. Come on now, this is what the terrorists want! We can't hide from these people; they'll win if we do. Also, we're not really making progress on the international front, particularly with the war on terrorism. This isn't a normal war; it's transnational and the enemy is very spread out. The way that you discourage terrorism is by making sure that more people don't join these groups in the first place. So far, our foreign policy has grown increasingly interventionist and this has only created more terrorism abroad. From a raw strategic point of view, we need to remove our collective footprint on the world, not add to it. If we continue to intervene in other countries like we've been doing for the past few years, we're going to be at war for the next 30 years and at the end of the day we're not going to win this fight. Let's attack the root cause of terrorism. I'm not saying that we should roll over when we're attacked, what I am saying is that there are a variety of other ways we can prevent terrorism besides constant belligerence. The nature of the terrorist threat is not conventional, rather it's similiar to guerilla warfare where normal citizens of a nation take up the fight against another nation. We're only creating more enemies by striking at other countries that harbor terrorists. Bush has no vision concerning the war on terrorism, it's just a cycle of violence very similar to what Ariel Sharon is doing in Israel. The only way terrorism will be defeated is by broad multi-lateral economic and military aid programs that help out countries involved in the war on terrorism. We can't beat terrorism by ourselves. I'm not seeing active debate in Bush's White House, and that concerns me; it's too security oriented, we need to get on the offensive here both diplomatically and militarily. And yes, these two go hand in hand. The siege mentality is what Bush's vision is all about. You don't see the optimism that Ronald Reagan had in George Bush; everyone says that Bush Jr. is the return of Reagan, but I don't see it. Reagan was an optimist who believed that the American people could do great things if they put their minds to a task. He also advocated the right things like smaller government. The only thing Bush ever does is frighten Americans with his rhetoric and on the side also use the war on terrorism as a means to expand the government bureaucracy. We shouldn't be forced to give up our freedoms over the terrorist threat.

If he had an ounce of vision, he would have read a history of the Vietnam war and seen that Iraq was a quagmire just waiting for him.

Having a vision is one thing. Working towards making that vision a reality is another thing. We all saw Bush's "vision" in the 2000 Elections. He promised to be the educational president. "We need a new attitude in Washington D.C.". Oh yeah, Bush has brought a new attitude alright. One of distrust and partisanship. "I'm a uniter not a divider". Ha! You will not be able to unite by having the "My way or the highway" motto written on your forehead. What has this man done for education? He's running up trillion dollar deficits. People are losing their homes due to high interest rates. He's already gotten two tax cuts passed. Enough is enough! The only vision that Bush has is four more years in office.

has a good plan but does not know how to get there

Examine the man's successes.

His vision is of a world under the American thumb, kowtowing to our wishes while we suck its resources dry. His vision is of an America controlled and dominated by evangelical Christianity, watched over by an ever-more-intrusive police apparatus, enslaved by its corporate masters, marching in lockstep to his ultra-right tune. He can have it for my part.