The Surge President and His Legacy

So Bush "surged" Iraq and got a relative period of calm. It apparently was enough to make us forget that our soldiers are still dying there and that we're still pouring one to two billion dollars per week into that black hole of a war. It's apparently enough for us to put the war on the back burner, and that's a shame. I happen to think that a country at war should have no higher priority than to finish or end that war. Everything else should be a lower priority. What's ironic is that this surge, while it may have reduced violence, has done nothing to improve the infrastructure of Iraq. It has not resulted in progress for the Iraqi "government." The only thing it's done is give Bush the chance to maintain status quo until he leaves office. If he can just surge till January, he will leave a very expensive, relative calm to his successor. If things get worse, it will be the next president's fault. And no matter what the next president does to improve the situation in Iraq, if it's successful, Bush will take credit. So the surge, as far as he's concerned, is the biggest success of his presidency. It has worked so well that he's going to "surge" Afghanistan next. 3,300 marines will not actually be enough to make up the troop shortage there caused by decreased commitment of will and troops by his "coalition of the willing." But he may get the temporary lull in Afghanistan that he got in Iraq that will allow him to say things were getting better when he left office and put him in the same position - blame his successor for subsequent failures, but take credit for future success.
He's taking his lessons from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and applying them here at home. He now wants to "surge" our economy. We have 9 trillion dollars of debt directly attributable to the Republican economy. I don't call it the Bush economy because this is the one thing Republicans have always agreed with him on. Cut taxes, even if it means we go broke. In this case, the surge is necessary because, while recessions are part of the normal economic cycle, since this economy was fueled by individual and national debt, few people have the savings we usually have to get us through hard times. Since almost no one has a personal safety net (Americans are debtors, not savers), the government needs to provide it. What I don't get is that no one is pointing out that this is a Republican economy and will be a Republican recession. Once the nominee is decided, I hope he or she points this out. Republicans are all still crying "Tax cuts! Tax cuts!" They support the Bush economic philosophy and even say he didn't go far enough. The last successful fiscal conservative was...Bill Clinton! It took a Democrat to fix the Reagan/Bush Sr. economic mess, and only a Democrat will do what's necessary to fix the looming Bush Jr. economic disaster.
It's not all the Republicans' fault. We Americans have suspended our common sense. We know and have always known that debt is a bad thing. On the individual level, some debt is unavoidable. We need mortgages to finance our homes. Car loans are the only way to get reliable transportation for most of us. But spending beyond our means with accounts at department stores and maxed out credit cards is just STUPID. It's bad for families. It's bad for the economy in the long run, since spending dependent on debt is UNSUSTAINABLE. This is where common sense has been suspended on the individual level. We have let economic "experts" hornswoggle us and convince us that this common sense principle doesn't apply to the government. We're so rich that, as Dick Cheney said, "Deficits don't matter." Well, quit listening to these idiots. The same principle applies - a certain amount of debt is reasonable and sustainable. We need deficit spending in time of war or during recessions, but when the economy is good, we should use that as an opportunity to pay down the debt. This is smart, this is reasonable, this is common sense. The Republicans have used this economic boom fueled by debt, not to pay down the national debt, but to increase it. Unfortunately, Bush is all too willing to use a "surge" rebate to make us feel better in the short term, to give us a little breathing room until he's out of office, at which time he can blame his successor for failures and take credit for any improvements. And people say he's stupid.