George W. Bush was a bad president.

Intro“Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.” -Ludwig von MisesThose who write presidential history often give titles of “great” or “good” to presidents who start wars, usurp liberties, and intervene in the economy; however, those actions are often unconstitutional and contrary to human well-being. President George W. Bush’s like all other presidents should be judged based on how his policies affected the nation and the world during his presidency and over the course of history. His policies were terrible.The “ruler” with which I will categorically evaluate Bush’s presidency is the criteria of peace, prosperity, and freedom. Peace allows human beings to be free from unnecessary suffering at the hands of other men and lays the foundation for sound economics and the protection of civil liberties. Prosperity increases the standard of living of humans within its scope and of trading nations. Freedom allows a human to exercise his protected rights in any manner he chooses (so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others) and is a fundamental aspect of human nature’s desires. Bush is scored negatively on all of these criteria; thus, making him a bad president.Peace 1: Invaded Iraq for no good reason and became enmeshed in a militaristic quagmire that hurt U.S. antiterrorism effortsExisting intelligence undermined virtually every rationale Bush proposed for war with Iraq, but he decided it was worth 150,000 deaths including 122,000 civilian deaths and over $3t dollars. Some analysts have correctly characterized Bush’s decision to invade Iraq as one of the most colossal foreign policy disasters in US history. This action likely increased the long-term terrorist threat to the US. [1, 2]a) Bush had plans to invade Iraq prior to 9/11 According to Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, in January 2001, almost as soon as Bush assumed office and about eight months before the 9/11 attacks, the administration began serious talks about how to change the regime in Iraq. Similarly, according to James Risen, who reports on intelligence for the New York Times, officials from the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group told an April 2002 gathering that Iraq had been on Bush’s agenda from the very start of his administration and that 9/11 had delayed the action. Whereas Bush’s critics have correctly pointed out that the invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the more important task of counterattacking the 9/11 attackers, the Bush administration, obsessed with settling old scores with Saddam Hussein, believed the opposite: that 9/11 was a distraction from a Bush vendetta against Saddam. [3, 4]b) Stated the grounds for war in Iraq were “Weapons of Mass Destruction”The Bush administration generally claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and was rapidly getting nuclear weapons; it implied that Hussein might use such unconventional weapons imminently against the US, directly or through terrorist proxies. In a September 12, 2002 speech before the UN General Assembly, president Bush declared, falsely and without hard evidence, that Iraq had nuclear weapons capacity. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors to reenter Iraq, and they found no unconventional weapons or weapons programs. The IAEA issued two reports before the invasion declaring that no evidence was found to show that Saddam was reconstituting a nuclear program. [5]c) Stated that terrorism was the grounds for war in IraqThe Bush administration repeatedly stated and implied that there was a connection between al Qaeda (even the 9/11 attacks) and Saddam Hussein. On September 25, 2002, Bush claimed, “You can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam.” Yet just after 9/11, Bush and his advisers were told that no connection existed between Saddam and al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission, other investigative bodies, and captured senior al Qaeda operatives all have denied a connection. In fact, the terrorist groups Saddam did support were anti-Israeli groups and did not even focus their attacks on US targets. [6]Prosperity 1: Set the stage for the Great RecessionThe economy of Clinton’s second term was a phony bubble-economy, so there would have been a recession early in Bush’s term, but Bush wanted to get reelected, so he chose to exacerbate the economic problems by using stimulus to get a temporary, artificial relief instead of accepting a restructuring of the economy. The result of the economic stimulus was deficit spending, cut taxes, increased government spending; Alan Greenspan cooperated and slashed interest rates down to one percent. Harvard Professor Jeffry A. Frieden writes, "The Fed's loose monetary policy almost certainly was designed to help get Alan Greenspan reappointed in May 2004, and to help get George W. Bush reelected in November 2004." Bush set the stage for the 2nd worst economic fiasco in US history with his monetary, fiscal, and economic policies. These fueled the irrational exuberance in the heavily regulated and controlled real estate and financial services sectors, which culminated in the Great Recession due to the unsustainability of investment trajectories, exposed malinvestments, and the bursting of those aforementioned bubbles. [7, 8]Prosperity 2: Increased ProtectionismGenerally bad on tariffs and trade, Bush was more of a protectionist as a supposed “free market guy” than Clinton. Bush imposed high tariffs on steel, which cost around $600,000 per job saved and were removed only when the WTO renounced them as illegal. He maintained the high sugar tariffs, which results in a government-induced monopoly of ADM controlling around 80% of HFCS and US food and beverage companies being forced to use HFCS. “The great economic error of mercantilist protectionism is the belief that foreign buyers are great but foreign sellers are not, and thus barriers to imports are necessary. For a nation at large, this error can be extremely costly because it dooms producers in the home country to inefficient lines of production and foists unnecessarily high prices on consumers. Mercantilism is also harmful toward foreign nations and thereby gives rise to political conflicts that can lead to war.” [9]Freedom 1: Falsely sold the war to the publicCross-apply Peace 1 here. Lying about terrorism, WMDs, and over 900 other documented lies as noted in the book by Vincent Bugliosi, and further acting on those lies to get over 4,000 Americans killed is dishonest, morally despicable, and atrocious. The genocide in which Bush was involved didn’t get him the death penalty, he gets a pension. [10]Freedom 2: Assaulted Civil Liberties and Raped the ConstitutionBush claimed, as an inherent power of the Presidency,the right to indefinitely detain Americans. He thought that he could simply label anyone in the US, or elsewhere, an enemy combatant and seize and detain them indefinitely without regard for their constitutional rights, a power usually exercised by dictators. Add in the use of torture, and we see a violation of the 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments to the US Constitution. [11]I wish I could type more: out of characters.[1] http://www.iraqbodycount.org...[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com...[3] http://articles.cnn.com...[4] James Risen, State of War, pgs. 214, 229[5] http://www.gwu.edu...[6] http://en.wikipedia.org...[7] http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu...[8] http://mises.org...[9] http://mises.org...[10] The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder[11] David Whitley, The American Presidents, pg. 540