on the one hand, the bush administration has made a lot of mistakes. and whenever anyone makes a mistake in the political arena, their political opponents try to polarize the issue to capitalize on it, acting as if all you have to do to fix it is vote for us not them. which is oxshit, the system as a whole is too centralized to be democratic. 2 monolithic parties = too busy fighting eachother to serve the people in a *balanced* fashion. we've also got a lot of government agencies competing with eachother when they should be cooperating. including intelligence agencies.
on the other hand I think we had grounds to invade Iraq; they lost a war and continued shooting at our planes. I'm sure other places give us valid excuse to invade them too. we don't depose every dictator we come across. so it becomes a question of global tactics; what are the benefits of invading, will it help other situations, will it aid the fight against terrorism, will it help our allies in the region, will it help to change the geopolitical landscape into something besides 'kill all americans?' the answer to all those is yes - if they'd taken their time figuring out how to do it right. they didn't. so what you've got is the administration half-assing its cause for war, half-assing it's preparations for rebuilding, half-assing its public interface on the issue, on a war that isn't basically wrong or right, just executed wrong, and is painted as wrong by political opportunists and the media which shares their interests, because these opportunists deeply believe that nothing can go right until they're in power. which is gey. but both sides do it and you can expect more of the same results from anyone who has to cater to their party and partisan support in order to succeed in a political career. part of this is also that many people are too dumb to think for themselves about how easy it is for the media to misrepresent anything. just because you vote for a guy to make *some* decisions for you, doesn't mean you are no longer responsible to get the facts and be as objective as possible about the situations of the day.
people hate bush, not because he's the cause of all our problems, but because it's easier to hate him than take responsibility, and hold society in general responsible, because to do so forces one to confront what a huge change we need to make to survive as a nation. we're afraid of our inability to control how large and powerful we, as a nation and as a global society, have become. so we hate certain people and certain sides of the party lines and whoever certain newsgroups tell us to hate, because we want to believe it's that simple. it aren't
a lot of people hate america because they think we're imperialistic, when in fact we're simply unfettered capitalism. capitalism is meant to be fettered, not by the government, but by the public who vote with their money, their purchases, their sales and investments and business decisions. and wherever you go, if they're involved in that global trade network, they're accomplices. the global economy is the closest thing to a world government (lol), and it depends on people buying into the idea that the american dream is just materialism, depends on the weakness of an individuals' access to information about who they're purchasing from and what the money does, the weakness of an individual's perception from outside a corporation or organization. and this ... dynamic, which is the natural evolution of economy in a society this size, will develop in any society which exists as the premiere financial power base in an empire, a community of nations, or a global society with or without national boundaries. so hating on america is ignorant. not that we aren't responsible to do something; mainly to educate ourselves and our society about the importance of conscientious consumerism and independent, objective information gathering.
/rant