Opinion

Bush gets undeserved media flak

By Ryan Loyd

As a conservative, I am getting tired of all the flak President Bush is taking. The war in Iraq is a just war and I would like the chance to counter all the junk that is put out by the liberal media. 

Bush is not the first president to start an "unjustified" war, but he is the most criticized. Why is this? Let's have a history lesson for all the anti-Bush liberals. Franklin Roosevelt led the United States into the war in Europe during World War II, even though Hitler never posed a direct threat to the United States. Around 450,000 American soldiers died as a result. However, we now feel WW II was a justified war because Hitler was committing genocide. We didn't see the proof of his genocide until we went over there. If we hadn't found any evidence of his crimes, would Americans have criticized Roosevelt for getting involved in WW II?

Harry Truman started the war in Korea. They never attacked us like Japan did, but we fought them anyway. Over the course of the war, 55,000 U.S. troops died. John F. Kennedy started the conflict in Vietnam because of intelligence he relied on from other countries. Sound familiar? Lyndon B. Johnson helped make it into a full-blown war. 58,000 U.S. troops died. The almighty Bill Clinton (which all liberals seem to revere as the greatest man to ever hold office) went to war in Bosnia without the consent of the United Nations or France. Clinton also had the opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden when Sudan offered him to the United States. But Clinton, in all his wisdom, decided to pass up the opportunity. I even remember a time when Clinton attacked Iraq because he thought it had weapons of mass destruction. Where were all the protesters then? They were somewhere not being covered by the liberal media.

Some have stated that the war was started because of ignorance by the Bush administration. In other words, it had poor intelligence. Is this the first time the United States has received bad intelligence? No. Faulty intelligence is going to occur; no one can be right all the time. Bush went to war with Iraq because he viewed the country as a direct threat to our freedom. Saddam Hussein was a madman who killed 300,000 of his own people. He was believed to have weapons of mass destruction and to be harboring terrorists. So what if they found no WMDs after their investigations? Aren't Iraqis better off? 

After 9/11, Bush waged a war on terror. We all seemed to agree with his actions then, so why are so many against him now? Since 9/11, have there been any attacks on U.S. soil? Maybe Bush's efforts to rid the world of terror is a success. The war in Iraq has a valid reason, and it wasn't for oil.

You may not agree with the war in Iraq, and you're welcome to your own opinion. But liberals need to stop trying to tell me what I should think about Bush. Think what you want about Bush and the war, but do not say that he is the only president to start a war that was "unjustified." And he is certainly not the worst the president we have ever had -- I could write a few more things about Clinton.

Ryan Loyd, an accounting sophomore, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu.