I dont understand the cognitive dissonance, where you can admit that many of the assertions are specious AND it’s one of the better Bush defense screeds.
Unless there are a total of 3 articles defending Bush and this is the most coherent.
I dont believe we have a chance of winning the war in Iraq. Like Vietnam, at one point we will have to leave, while the other side will attack us as long as we are there.
Even if the war was still popular, everything I have read lead me to believe we do not have the ability to continue this fight much longer. The officers and NCOs are leaving the military in droves. Recruitment is down. A lot of soldiers are already on their third tour.
In addition, we are hemorrhaging money. The use of private contractors like Halliburton for logistics and Blackwater for combat is not cheap.
As for the Republican party, the fact that most of the mainstream candidates are trying to outdo Bush, while an unknown like Ron Paul is gaining a lot of traction as an isolationist shows how damaged the party is.
My predictions: Bush will be remembered for having forever damaged the Executive branch, trust in the Federal Government and the Republican Party.
Some things look the same up close and far away. I’ve explained why this is almost certainly one of them. Your response is to hand-wave.
I responded to this earlier.
I bet even in 1951, the possibility that some of Truman’s policies could have a substantial upside was already visible. Go ahead, tell us what policies of Bush’s will somehow compensate, in the view of history, for the obvious, manifold negatives. We can all use a good belly-laugh.
Well, yes I suppose it’s true that saying this one is one of the best Bush defenses of late is not saying much.
This one has the merit that, if you agree with most of Kristol’s suppositions, his conclusions aren’t too far fetched. And some of his suppositions have a reasonable degree of plausibility, for example: the strength of the economy under (despite? because of?) Bush’s policies.
These days, there are very few respectable right-wing commentators who are particularly optimistic about Iraq, which is clearly the weakest component of Kristol’s argument.
It’s possible that in 20 years or so Iraq will have emerged in tolerable shape, and I suppose that could resurrect Bush a little. But I’m not seeing it as very likely. The likely outcome is that 20 years from now Iraq will be worse than it was under Saddam. And that ain’t good.
Of course, 20 years from now we might see some general improvement in the middle east, like how during the 90s Latin America went through a wave of democritization that seems to have caused long lasting improvements in the whole region, and one improvement leads to another in a virtuous circle. But will the Iraq war be seen as a starting point for those Middle East improvements (assuming they will exist), or as an anchor holding them back? Don’t answer that question, it was rhetorical.
The other thing that’s going to make Bush look worse and worse and worse over time is the question of torture. Yeah, torture and abuse of prisoners is a problem as old as the history of warfare. Except other presidents tried to control it. Bush has actively encouraged it. Y’know, it’s one thing if we find out that the CIA tortured a couple of high-level terrorists. But the encouragement of torture spreads to all levels. And so we come to the point where anyone taken into custody by US forces is at risk of torture, simply because it is an open secret that torture is encouraged as a legitimate tactic. And once you start torturing people you invariably find that the people who come fill the torturer roles are those who enjoy torture for it’s own sake. Torture becomes an end in itself for these people, and they are tolerated by the non-sadists because the non-sadists don’t want to have to do the torture themselves, it makes them sick.
Anyway, this is a major black mark against the Bush administration that’s only grow in importance in the future. And I mean the near future…we’re going to be dealing with the consequences of the torture authorizations for quite a long time.
Pakistan being an ally, of course, we can’t conduct any military operations without Musharraf’s permission – which it would be politically problematic for him to grant, even if we would be defending his government. And any U.S. military involvement in Pakistan, even on a small scale, threatens the prospect that we might get caught up in a multi-sided civil war. Again.
I agree that the full impact of Bush’s policies will not be completely understood for another generation. I also believe that once these policies have been analyzed to their fullest, any debate over whether or not he is the worst president ever will be laid to rest.
Why, yes indeed, if everything turns out exactly the opposite of what it is and is trending toward, Bush and his remaining loyalists will indeed savor the sweet taste of vindication. Can’t argue with Kristol at all about that, can we?
One blog theory (Atrios, maybe) has it as Ol’ Bill positioning himself for a lucrative round of talk show appearances, as the superficially-reasonable optimistic conservative who’s just the thing to provide some “balance”.
Oh, it was worth reading. But I don’t see how Bush could be taken to task for drawing certain lessons from history and lavish praise could be showered on people like Scowcroft who are engaged in essentially the same activity.
If Bush is wrong, he is wrong, and the justifications he looks for in history won’t matter much. Furthermore, I think time is showing the futility of the Scowcroft approach - he and the president he served punted a huge problem and left the next three or more administrations deal with the mess.
I’m not opposed to taking the long view on some matters, but we’ve essentially been fighting the Gulf War since 1990 now, and I think that is an unexplored and unexplained aspect of our war fatigue.
It’s called containing a problem that can’t be fixed. Reality sometimes demands that as the least worst solution. What other approach would have resulted in fewer US deaths than the zero under that policy? If Bush 1 had done what Bush 2 did, and against a much better armed opponent, what the hell makes you think the results would have been any better?
I would rather Bush go down in history as a good president after a miracle in Iraq fixes everything than be able to smugly watch him burn in history books after the Iraq occupation plays out its current ugly course.
But, a favorable outcome in Iraq is flat out not going to happen. The end. I wish to god it wasn’t true. If Patraeus had been running the occupation from the beginning we might have had a chance. If Bush had been straightforward about our real goals of replacing a hostile dictator with a friendly democracy instead of lying about (or deliberately ignoring) the truth, we might have had a chance. Is it even seriously debatable that America has a realistic chance of pulling a “victory” out of this mess?
Bush is going to go down pretty badly in the history books, and it makes me pretty upset.
Scowcroft doesn’t deserve any praise - just the opposite. He was just one more insider who knew the Bushies were going down the wrong road, but kept his mouth shut about it in public until long after it could have made a difference. It’s this whole bit where it turns out to be more important to be loyal to the President than the country that I have a problem with. Fuck Scowcroft and his buddies with a rusty fork, AFAIAC.
But that doesn’t get Bush off the hook for talking about “history” when he barely knows any, and what he knows, he knows wrong.
How big a problem was Saddam after 1991, compared to the crater of lawlessness and anarchy we now have where Saddam’s regime used to be?
The situation we’re in now shows the economy of the containment approach we’d been practicing. We could have done that from now until the heat death of the sun, for far less than the invasion and occupation has cost us in blood and treasure. And while we contained Saddam, he continued to contain Iran. This was a positive good we realized from Saddam’s regime, which nobody else was going to do in his stead once he was gone, and the Bushies probably didn’t even consider that they might be throwing it away. That’s how stupid they were. And that’s just one aspect of many.
This statement just plain boggles the mind with its absurdity.
Even if the Shrub’s administration and choices weren’t manifestly incompetent and disastrous (and make no mistake: they were), he’d come out on the wrong side of history. Take a look at this article about the generational changes in American opinions that are currently taking place.
Some numbers from that story:
Those are just two of many trendlines described in the article; taken together, they all paint the picture of a body politic that is increasingly secular and progressive, and within 30 years I feel certain people will look back on anyone who opposed the use of stem cells or the presence of gays in…well, anywhere, and think they were small-minded jerks.
Why does everyone forget the 2001 anthrax attacks, which took place after September 11, 2001? They almost certainly weren’t carried out by Muslims, but they have had a lasting effect on mail services to some organisations on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.
Trying to think of a point Kristol made that I agree with. I don’t even agree that Bush has been good for the economy (or, if you like, that the economy is doing well – how much influence a president has on it is a different debate). The financial economy is booming in some parts, but the real economy, the one ordinary people live in, is in trouble. We’ve got a negative average savings rate, and (I think) the highest per capita personal debt ever (even adjusted for inflation). The trend is toward a shrinking middle class, a small elite of super-rich, and a large permanent underclass of working poor. Policies backed by Bush (tax cuts for rich people, getting rid of estate taxes and capital-gains taxes, cuts to social services, etc.) are all pushing in that direction.
Every time I see a piece by Kristol, I wonder how he got the gig. Why does anybody hire him? I can see cleverer, better-written delusional nonsense right here on the SDMB for free.
{tin foil hat on}Well Kristol obviously knows that the anthrax affair was a government black op and not a terrorist attack.{tin foil hat off}
Why “no one” remembers the L’affaire de Anthrax is a legitimate question, and has probably been a thread of its own more than once. I think the fact that it occurred almostly immediately in the wake of 9/11 is the biggest thing…people tend to remember the images of skyscrapers falling to the earth more than the image of guys in biohazard suits entering office buildings. It might be a different thing if the letters were mailed in 2002…
Another thing is that “no one” really knows what the case really was. No recognized international terrorist group ever claimed responsibility for it. The case doesn’t fit into the theme of “the homeland hasn’t been hit since 9/11” so Bush standard bearers like Kristol will simply ignore it or when forced to remember it, fudge the dates and pretend the event counts as part of “9/11” and thus doesn’t count against Bush’s record of “success” in the War on Terror.
Personally, I think the fact that the case remains unsolved to this day means it was an “inside” job in some way…if not a fully sanctioned “black op” than perhaps an operation by a lone wolf who the government knows but can’t touch for whatever reason.
All of Bush’s eggs are in one basket. The only way he doesn’t go down in history as the worst president ever would be if Iraq somehow has a positive ending. If, as is likely, it doesn’t, the decision to invade may well go down in history as the worst ever made by a president.
Personally I think Kristol was too hard on Bush. Sure there’s been relatively few terrorist attacks during the Bush administration and he deserves credit for that. But he totally ignores Bush’s 100% success rate in not letting the United States be struck by giant meteorites from outer space or overrun by zombies.