On September 10, 2001, I could have blocked out the country of Iraq, and then thrown a dart at a map of the Arabian peninsula and Southeast Asia. The chances would have been quite decent that I would have hit a nation that posed more of an existential threat to the United States, its interests, or its allies than Saddam's country. Historical revisionism cannot change that.

Bush is a disaster because his political philosophy stems from the fundamental argument that government is bad at everything all of the time. Yet he undercuts his own philosophy by taking on a interventionist, frankly anti-conservative agenda. Thus, he exposes the farce of his own politics faster than anyone else ever could. Want to fight two wars and re-make the Middle East as a bastion of democracy? Sure, just make sure no has to pay for it through evil taxes. Want to save a major American city from oblivion? OK, but let's count on local authorities to handle a devastating natural disaster far beyond their scope. Want to reduce the influence of the activist, out of touch federal government? Easy, just stock it with unqualified friends who value loyalty over experience and competence...since they can't do the job in the first place it will serve as a stark reminder that job should not be done at all. It all becomes the most convenient of self-fulfulling prophecies. Only we reap the consequences, not him.

I simply don't understand how you can be so secure that (a) a Gore administration would have ignored the same intelligence about Al-Qaeda that the Bush administration did, (b) that Gore would have squandered the chance to destroy Al-Qaeda and gain a much stronger foothold in Afghanistan than Bush, (c) that Gore would have alienated so many of our allies and sent the reputation of the United States plummeting to heretofore unheard of levels, (d) that he would not have logically and reasonably dealt with our tax situation in the face of a massive war expense, and (e) that he would have politicized the federal government to such a grotesque extent that it was under Bush. From someone who writes such insightful pieces on such a wide range of topics...it's just shocking to me.