The actions of the Bush administration are basically continuing the trend of US involvement in the world which has been going on for half a century: making the world a much more dangerous place for everyone and threatening the survival of the species.
The US continues to provide weapons to human rights abusers. In fact the US is the largest supplier of arms to human rights abusers according to a study by the centrist Congressional Research Service. The largest recipients of US arms in value terms were Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia with contracts of $5.1, $3.5, $3.2 billion US dollars (2006) respectively. All regimes with grotesque human rights records and current practices.
According to a Times article, "Pakistan was a major recipient of American arms sales in 2006, including... $640 million in missiles and bombs." Yet, "At the same time, the State Department's own survey of global human rights in 2006 noted a variety of shortcomings (a huge understatement) in Pakistan's record on human rights and democratization" (Shanker 2007).
The article goes on to explain the Bush administration's reasoning behind the sale, saying that the administration has "argued that it is important to maintain the support of a nuclear-armed Pakistan in the broader counterterrorism fight, in particular as Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders regroup in the rugged North-West Frontier Province along the Afghan border." It was the administration's bungled operations in Afghanistan that have pushed extremists into Pakistan. But the lesson here for any leader in any developing nation is clear: either get weapons of mass destruction and be engaged diplomatically (like Pakistan or North Korea), or don't get weapons of mass destruction and be obliterated (like Iraq).
Furthermore, with the US the major arms supplier to the developing world ($10.3 billion or 35.8% of arms trade deals with developing countries) it is precipitating conflict. The US is the major weapons supplier to both India and Pakistan, which means it is fueling both sides of a conflict which caused the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' "Doomsday Clock" to move closer to midnight (causing possible extinction of human life) in 1998, which has since not been retracted (http://www.thebulletin.org/minutes-to-midnight/timeline.html).
The actions of the Bush administration are basically continuing the trend of US involvement in the world which has been going on for half a century: making the world a much more dangerous place for everyone and threatening the survival of the species.
Shanker, Thom. 2007. "U.S. Is Top Arms Seller to Developing World." The New York Times. 01 Oct 2007.