10 Most Important Stories of the Decade

As we near the end of 2009 it's time to look back on the decade of the 2000's. These past ten years are often being referred to as the "oh-ohs," a nod to the number of things that went wrong. Here is my list of the most important happenings.

10-Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars. The brilliantly successful NASA rovers landed in January, 2004 and discovered abundant evidence of oodles of water on the Red Planet, both in the past and frozen under the surface now. This keeps the door open on whether life may have developed there or may still exist underground, perhaps dormantly. When we get around to colonizing Mars, which we eventually will and must unless we destroy ourselves on this planet first, these findings show us the raw materials to survive on and terraform the planet are there. If so, a thousand years from now this story may be considered the most important one on this list.

9-Beijing Summer Olympics. The 2008 international athletic extravaganza was China's true international coming out party. From the incomparable opening ceremony through the unsurpassed competition, China showed it is most definitely back. The games themselves were simply a showcase of the epochal events taking shape in the globe's most populous country. 500 years ago the Middle Kingdom had the largest economy in the world, and it is on the way to regaining that position once more. China has 1.35 billion people, one-fifth of the world's total. With a GDP of $4.6 trillion in 2008 it will soon eclipse Japan as the number two economy. That could happen this year. The USA's $14 trillion is still three times as great, but if current trends hold, China will go past the Americans by 2030. That is definitely something to think about.

8-Hurricane Katrina. The mammoth storm slammed into the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts on august 29, 2005. With 1,836 confirmed dead, 705 declared missing and at least $75 billion in property damage it was among the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States. The abysmal response to the emergency discredited the competence of the Bush administration and led directly to Democratic control of Congress in 2006. Bush's, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie!" to FEMA Director Michael D. Brown as TV reports showed thousands marooned and bodies floating in the flooded streets of New Orleans, 80% of which were underwater, spoke to how completely out of touch he was. After this crushing blow to his credibility the majority of the American people finally began to see through his charades in Iraq and the economy as well.


7-Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize. On December 10, 2007 former Vice President Al Gore accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway for his body of work alerting the world to the escalating dangers of global warming. The award signifies broad consensus in scientific and international governmental circles that adverse climate change is an extremely serious human-caused problem that needs a human-designed solution. In short, 9.1 billion tons of greenhouse gasses were emitted into the atmosphere last year-almost all of them due to human activity-and natural processes such as ocean absorption and plant respiration could remove only 5 billion of those tons. Sea level rise, the increasing ferocity of major storms, drought and disease expansion are some of the consequences already under way that promise to get worse. This is another item that will likely seem of greater importance in hindsight, particularly if not enough is done in the next couple of decades to address the threat.


6-Bungled Campaign in Afghanistan. Following the terrorist attacks against America in September 2001, U.S. forces commenced operations in Afghanistan on October 7 against the al-Qaeda terror organization based there and the Taliban government that hosted it. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration disastrously bungled the operation, limiting U.S. involvement primarily to air and cruise missile strikes and the introduction of a few hundred special forces troops who served primarily as forward observers to coordinate the bombings. The ground campaign was left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, a collection of anti-Taliban forces who held only a few remote valleys in the country's far north. As a result of the failure to commit sufficient American forces, the leadership cadres of al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden and the Taliban under Mullah Omar were able to effect their escapes. They remain at large to this day, probably across the border in Pakistan, plotting, scheming, recruiting, training and killing.


5-Financial Crash/Recession of 2008-2010. Brought on largely by reckless practices and deregulatory nonsense in subprime mortgages and derivatives trading, the effects of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression have spread worldwide. The outcome of the 2008 presidential election was clinched when giant investment house Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 14, 2008 and Republican candidate John McCain stated the next day, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." Since a total implosion of the financial sector was averted, the public at large is not fully aware of how close we actually were to Great Depression II. The Fed bailouts, unpopular though they were, under both Bush and Obama, were necessary to preventing catastrophe, though there certainly should have been much stronger accountability. They are beginning to be paid back now with interest. The Obama $787 billion stimulus has also been crucial to staving off a depressionary downward spiral. The situation calls for more. As usual, Republican prescriptions are to return to Hooverism by cutting taxes and spending. If their ideas are adopted they will achieve their customary results.


4-Invasion of Iraq. The worst foreign policy blunder in American history began in March, 2003. The imbroglio is a trenchant reminder of how easily a frightened public can be stampeded into belligerent foolishness, even by a leader who is neither particularly intelligent nor a very good communicator. To date, the official American dead are 4,500, the wounded 31,000 and Iraqi civilian casualties stand at 87,000. Actual numbers may be much higher, particularly of the civilians. The direct cost to the U.S. has been $628 billion. There is little question now that the Bush administration sought conquest in Iraq before it even took office, and that the mood created by 9/11 provided the opportunity. The lies, mismanagement, baseless justifications, misdirected effort from the nation's real enemies, abandonment of moral and constitutional principles America has stood for since its inception and loss of respect in the world are the legacies of the fiasco and cautionary portents for the future.


3-Election of 2000. We will probably never know the real winner of this election. The Supreme Court as much as admitted the political motivation of its ruling in Bush v. Gore by declaring the decision did not set a precedent for the future. It turned out to be of immense importance, for imagine the policy differences that would have attended a Gore presidency. We would probably have eliminated the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership rapidly and decisively. We would never have gone into Iraq. We would have made substantial progress on energy independence and global warming. We would not have squandered the budget surpluses (remember them?) on tax cuts for the rich, and would instead have put Medicare and Social Security on a permanently sound footing. We would not have begun contracting out our defense to a mercenary army, nor would we have been torturing people.


2-Election of Barack Obama. Given the nation's history, the election of the first half-minority president, especially an African-American, is an axial event. The United States is the first major Western nation to do this. If he is a fairly effective president there is a good chance he will be featured on national currency someday. Another thing to keep in mind is how bad things had to have gotten under the perniciously venal and incompetent Bush-Cheney administration for this to take place. Obama has begun his first year taking a tack to a more moral and progressive stance. He has not been as liberal as his base would like, but there is an immense load on his plate and political realities are what they are. This has been evidenced by moderately progressive achievements on the budget, stimulus, and health care up to now. The country and the world are already far the better off thanks to his election rather than his opponent, who agreed with Bush on every major policy question.


1-September 11, 2001. Most of the negative events in this list are associated with the fallout from that horrendous day nine years ago. The national fear provided cover for Bush-Cheney's sinister depredations on the Constitution and their fiasco in Iraq. It gave them a narrow re-election victory in 2004. It undermined the economy and national finances, worsening the effects of the meltdown and constricting Obama's and the Congress's options on the budget, stimulus and health care. It worsened the response to Katrina, with funds unavailable to improve the levees and National Guard equipment and personnel diverted to Iraq. It has badly hurt the airline industry and, partly because of Bush's chosen response, kept the volatile Middle East a cauldron.