Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD
6 days ago
Trouble is that Trump's ideology is all but explicitly rapacious and amoral.
I think you are correct that Bush had a very different ideology. I view him as more of a buffoon than a robber baron. (We spent $2-3T in Iraq -- if it was robbery, it was not effective.) I doubt it makes much difference to people whose lives were ruined. But it could be important in the broader context of predicting US behavior: Bush started the PEPFAR program which saved millions from AIDS in Africa; Trump wrecked it.
One very sad possibility is that Bush discredited the ideology of "compassionate conservatism" in the US through his bumbling, and that contributed to the relative popularity of Trump's "amoral conservatism".
> We spent $2-3T in Iraq -- if it was robbery, it was not effective.
The robbery was done against the American people. They are the ones who were robbed! Imagine in what shape the country would be if you would have gotten free higher education and free healthcare instead?
The other and with that the biggest victim were the causalities from the invasion, but they were not robbed but rather assaulted…
The taxpayers paid $2-3T in Iraq. The military-industrial complex made a killing.
Yes - it was a direct transfer of $$ from taxpayers to Haliburton (Dick Cheney, IIRC) et al.