A Decade of Destruction

Posted by Joe Rivett on 12.27.2009

What I didn't like about this decade and why I think the next decade will be better...

The last decade did not go so well for America. It doesn't take a genius to point out what went wrong so I'll limit it to just a few of the biggies.

• The largest terrorist attack in our nation's history.
• No WMDs found in Iraq despite the mushroom cloud warnings.
• The job still not done in Afghanistan.
• New Orleans looking similar to a third world country in the midst of a civil war.
• Double digit unemployment.
• Double digit trillion dollar deficits.
• GM almost dies.
• Partisanship in Washington appears to be at an all time high.

So it was probably the worst decade since the 70s when we had a crook and a pessimistic peanut farmer as a president, (I guess Gerry Ford wasn't so bad after all). At least the 80s had good foreign policy and I think we can all agree that the 90s went fairly smooth.

I think the next decade will be better. The economy may not roar like it did in the late 90s but maybe we learned not to pay too much for a house or to buy a car that gets the gas mileage of the tank. Unemployment should get better and it appears that exports are getting back to normal.

The Middle East is still as crazy as ever, but maybe our nation learned that it is easy to overthrow a dictator but much harder to run his country without mass terror. Iraq has settled down and Obama made the right decision in sending more troops along with having expectations/goals.

The deficit will probably never go away, but the health care bill will decrease the cost of Medicare by billions. In addition, if the Republicans ever take back power, they are going to have a hard time increasing the deficit with tax cuts this time around considering this nation is no where near a surplus. I also don't expect the deficits to be as high in the following years with the worst of the recession over and people actually making money to be taxed in the stock market again. Not to be forgotten is that many of the banks and insurance companies will be able to pay TARP money back.

While there will always be terrorism, our nation learned its lesson after 9/11 and I doubt Obama will be telling his staffers "you covered your ass" when they bring him intelligence reports. I'm fairly surprised there hasn't been another major terrorist attack which means the war in Afghanistan has obviously destabilized Al Qaeda and maybe Bush was right that it doesn't matter if they get Bin Laden.

While many were upset that GM was bailed out, it will pay dividends in the long run. Their automobiles have already improved greatly and Ford is putting out quality as well or better than its Asian counterparts.

There are many things that need to be improved in the following decade:
• Infrastructure is awful.
• Iran is going to need to be addressed.
• Health care costs will still be too high even if/when the bill passes.
• Increased energy independence.
• Partisanship and Special Interests that go against America's interest.

Out of all of these problems it is sad that I'm more concerned about our own government's functioning than Iran. Our legislatures will do anything to protect their own jobs and campaign contributions over the interest of us. But isn't our government by the people? Therefore, if the government is messed up then maybe the American people are messed up. We have no one to blame but ourselves for this partisanship. We are too afraid to throw the bums out. We whine about the deficit and then dry hump our Senators when they bring pork home. We whine about health care until someone actually tries to do something about it, then we whine too many people will have health care!

So I think the next decade will be better than the previous and the only thing I fear is us.