Is President Bush a warrior?

I was troubled by all the violence I see in the world and wondering is it the rest of the world or do we have a taste for it here. So I did a little research and although was surprised at my findings I wasn't shocked. It is no secret that I have been blasting the Administration and specifically this President because of his apparent enjoyment of the use of belligerent language. For example, the words "fighting" the war on terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, belligerent comments to North Korea, Axis of Evil comments in the State of the Union a few years back, the recent comments about what we told Pakistan after 9/11, and the most recent comments threatening Iran that we would not allow them to develop a Nuclear weapon. Bush was referred to as the cowboy by Chavez and the Devil at the UN.

I wondered did he manifest that behavior back in Texas when he was Governor and thought about how did he compare to other Governors on issues where we could examine the aggressive nature of this President. Here is what I found:

I looked back into Texas history of the Governors of the past 25 years and looked at the number of executions conducted by the Texas Dept. of Corrections under each of their stewardships as Governor.

From 1982 to and including 2006, there have been a total of 357 Texas state executions.
There has been 4 Governors during that period. Here is their record

Governor Clements, Republican 18 executions spanning a period of 5 years or 5% of the total executions.
Governor White, Democrat 19 executions spanning a period of 4 years or 5% of the total executions.

Governor Richards, Democrat 48 executions spanning a period of 4 years or 13% of the total executions.

Governor Bush, Republican 154 executions spanning a period of 6 years or 43%of the total executions.

Governor Perry, Republican 137 executions spanning a period of 6 years or 38% of the total executions.


I think the data speaks for itself. Bush may have wanted to be seen as tough on crime and where he could have slowed the execution process down, facts have shown he chose to speed it up. One other piece of info that I was surprised to learn. Texas has had a Democratic Governor from 1874 through 1979 uninterrupted. So Texas was a Democratic state for 100 years when choosing their Governor. This surprised me.

So the seeds of the behavior were there all along. With all the people who have been imprisoned and on death row, only later to be found innocent by DNA testing, I have real difficulty with state executions even if just one person was innocent and killed by mistake. We know the numbers are much greater than that. Add into the mix racism and you know the numbers of innocent convictions are probably much higher.

We had the whole world with us after 9/11 and Bush has lost that and much more by his aggressiveness and arrogance. As one of the most powerful nations in the world, if we continue to grab the sword when people don't agree with us, there won't be anything worth saving, as we will have destroyed humanity and the very planet itself. We are sure doing a good job right now.