Lessee - 2000.
Had a financial surplus. Had the respect of the world. Had a complete Constitution.
Had a surplus generated by taxes levied on fraudulent stock values. Sure it was a surplus that stole money from investors and paid to the Fed.
Respect? Who? What nation's respect should any intelligent US citizen be so concerned about? The answer is simple: none. If we had respect from most folks in the world...it means we are doing something horribly wrong, because most nations in the world are horribly messed up and have provided next to nothing to modern society. The Constitution is still there, perfect and in one piece.
2006.
World despises US. Record deficits. Illegal and immoral war against a third-world country. Gitmo. Abu Ghraib. Afthanistan - more opium than ever under puppet president. Trade deficit expanding. Cutting back on benefits to old, poor and students to pay for slaughtering 30,000 completely innocent people in Iraq ALONE.
The world has ALWAYS despised America. They hold their mouths closed just long enough for you give them money, technology and freedom and then they talk bad about you as soon as you walk away.
In the 1800's the US was an "uncivilized land of refugees".
In the 1900's the US was "rough hewn and primitive".
In the twentieth century the US was already considered "Imperialistic" for going to the Philippines. This belief was already firm in the minds of the world's 'intellectuals' back in 1905. When the US didn't enter a war we were "heartless & selfish". Woodrow Wilson earned only scorn from the world for a policy of neutrality. After we saved the weak, incompetent and whining nations from their own devices, we threw away the billions of dollars in bills they owed us for our efforts. America was still hated by the majority of foreigners. "America is too powerful" and "Americans are too rich" were already on the mouths of the civilized and the savage. Nothing changed at all as the same thing repeated during and after WWII.
Illegal war? Try again. There is no such thing as an "illegal war". All wars are WARS. There is no document, UN approval or vote in some council that makes a war "legal". The US engaged in war and the US Constitution empowered Bush and Congress to wage it. So from the US laws POV it's perfectly legal. Sure Saddam can say it's illegal and the CORRUPT folks in cahoots with SADDAM at the UN can say it's illegal - but those are just words. Meaningless words said by impotent people, from impotent nations.
Immoral? Try again. The bar of morality even if there were fifty Abu-Ghraib detention facilities would still be with the USA. All this shock and outrage for brutalities of war is the byproduct of the digital age. Nothing has changed.
American soldiers were committing brutal acts upon their prisoners since the inception of the Union. During WWII The Russians were even more brutal and the Slavs were sadistic beyond imagining. The Japanese set a precedent in China that is hard for sadistic peoples to match. Now we are world full of people with digital cameras and an internet to send and post images publicly. In your world the Rodney King beating would be the first case of Police brutality, when such has gone on forever.
Nothing new. Give folks an opportunity to exploit others and they will.
Give a person an opportunity to lash out at others and other groups with different beliefs and they will - you are living proof of that.
Fortunately, HZ is a digital community and this keeps you from flogging Tom literally, cuffing Scott, spitting on Frank or peeing on DFM, even if you may engage in such behavior rhetorically.
So the events in Iraq are not new to history and not new to America. What is new is the amount of effort spent to reduce carnage - where possible. If Patton were still alive he would've rolling over Fallujah with a mechanized division followed by an infantry division and told his men 'we don't have space for prisoners'. There would be no Fallujah, except for a few stragglers who got away. Such a tale would be the story told in many 'hold out' towns were the US fighting this war with 1942 morality.
You don't see the improvements or the morality change because you don't want to see it. Whatever your personal need for castigating the Bush administration, and America in 2006, is your own demon in a bottle that you must deal with.
What bullet was dodged? Seems to me we've taken every bullet possible. One from Osama, who is still free, using Saudis, which is still Bush's friend, and the rest from ourselves in a successful attempt to enrich Halliburton, satisfy an Old Testament Christian God and Israel.
I'm trying to see a bullet that missed.
We've got a White House controlled Congress and Supreme Court, aka dictatorship, if no here then very close, corruption throughout the leadership as never been seen before, limited investigation, an eroded Constitution, the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT and CIA spying DOMESTICALLY, the NSA SPYING DOMESTICALLY, and you say we dodged a bullet?
We have secret imprisonments for indefinite lengths of time at yer Leaders disgression.
Dodged a bullet? If so, only because we are so chewed up there was nothing left to hit.
Arf (They're happy with the situation, Bow. Sez a lot about 'em, doesn't it!)
One can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. And you can't defend a nation with completely porous borders without massive SIGINT. Bush was on the receiving end of the blame for not preventing 9/11 and now that he has successfully prevented several repeat performances you want to chastise him for tapping a few foreign phonecalls.
The Patriot Act was the end of freedom and presented as an Orwellian nightmare come to fruition, but none of the doom and gloom has come to pass. Guantanamo holds foreign prisoners of war. It's not overflowing with US citizens seized in the night by black SUVs with force - like Elian Gonzalez was by Clinton and Janet Reno.
History is the ally of the Bush administration. History is the vindicator of the US as the most moral nation humanity has yet produced.
Those who shout about US inhumanity and belligerence are themselves some of the most belligerent and inhuman individuals and nations.
Al Gore is now neurotic. His win at any cost effort cost him his mental balance. Sure Al Gore the President might've been a totally different man - but his speech and mannerisms already hinted at neurosis. So having Bush in office rather than Gore was a big victory for a 9/11 destined America.
It's hard to see how different history may have been. But I know how different America could be with the wrong leadership. By 2002, with ineffective deterrant or global distraction, we might've seen several more attacks. Los Angeles, DC, NY, Dallas, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco & San Diego - all hit by disaster. We would see a US paralyzed by fear. An exodus from the cities would follow even just the third successful attack. Our economy would be shot (even more than it already massively endured) and US confidence would be near nil.
Follow those with even just a dirty bomb style nuclear attack on a major city and the US might never fully recover its confidence or economic base. Folks would live in lockdown mode. Fearful. Aggressive. Hostile to all foreigners. Racism would be insanely high and lynchings and killings would occur with a regularity and higher incidence than anytime in US history.
Hate would give birth and elect leaders who run on a campaign of hard retaliation to end the nightmare once and for all.
In short order the real Middle East 'war' would begin from western nations who suffer any type of nuclear or biological attacks. The middle east would be a wasteland with few left to mourn for the nations whose border posts would lie abandoned in the irradiated sand. Or worse...the western nations 'nonexistent' supply of neutron bombs would be employed and all humanity in these regions would simply cease to exist and true imperialism on a scale you couldn't fathom would take place with much of the world's blessing.
Like many folks, you have no idea how bad it could be, Bowser. Not a clue.
That's fine.
I just thank goodness some folks do know how bad it could be and have worked, despite criticism from you and millions of folks with your political stripe, to protect America, and the middle east from such a fate.