Bush, Infuriating Bush: So Close and Yet So Far
Last night's State of the Union speech was memoriable more for what it felt like than for what was said. In the depths of the Presidential campaign, as the MSM shilled ever more dishonestly and screechingly for Kerry, even die-hard Bush supporters began to feel that creeping feeling of dread one gets when one feels that one's man is done for. Every hour, it seems, another poor victim was beheaded in Iraq, more Islamic Fascist savagery was put on display; it didn't take much insight to see that Americans were getting close to thinking "what the hell are we doing trying to help these monsters?....Screw 'em....."
That being the case, who would have thought that a mere two months later, President Bush could walk into the halls of Congress a conquering hero? That the President could point to Iraq as one of the most important political victories for the U.S. in the post-war period? That the Democrats would recede once again--as they had on election night--to a minority party desperately holding on to retrogade portions of the country by spouting dried-out, reactionary slogans? (Speaking of which, did you see the Democratic response? We neither.)
The feeling in the House was palpable even on TV; it was clear that the oh-so-important mantle of "winner" had been replaced around the President's head, that he was once again The Man, in full control of his office and the political scene. The fact that he has done this in the face of implacable hatred from the liberal/left cultural elite both here and abroad made the spectacle that much more remarkable.
Once again, Bush had found his voice. Once again, he spoke plain, clear truth, daring the losers of the left to fight it out with him. And, once again, he found a way to agonize we conservatives who cherish his presidency and love the man.
We shall leave the commentary on the President's incredibly ambitious domestic agenda to other commentators. We only wish to point out that should the President succeed in cementing in his tax cuts, changing Social Security from a passive "benefits" system to at least a partial "ownership" system and reforming the Internal Revenue Code--and there is every reason to believe he will be successful--he will go down in history as a transformative President along the lines of FDR. In fact, with each passing year, Bush appears to us more and more like FDR: a visionary who took the actions (not all of which were successful or popular) that were necessary to meet the great challenges of the age and who, in doing so, won the unswearving love and loyalty of some and the unyielding and deep hatred of others.
The key to the foreign policy aspects of the speech was its treatment of the current critical situation in the Middle East. A look at each portion of that part of the speech illustrates both President Bush's great insight and his one, deeply troubling blind spot.
Iraq
It's no secret that the President gambled everything on his belief, deeply held, that given the chance the Iraqi people would seize the freedom and liberty currently on offer and, improbably, that they would seize it while being targeted by some of the most ruthless killers in the long, sad annals of man's cruelty to man.
On Sunday, January 30, the world saw Bush win that bet. In their millions, Iraqis came out to vote. Today's editorials in the New York Times, reverting to proper let's-keep-moving-the-goalposts-so-that-Bush-is-always-a-loser form in record time, stated that:
The voting, however, was only a first step. It made the journey to establishing a stable and reasonably democratic government appear possible, but not necessarily likely. The election did not bridge over the fact that a vast majority of Iraq's people think of themselves as Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds or members of smaller ethnic groups rather than as part of an Iraqi nation
Sure, the wise men and women at the NY Times knew all along that the voting would go well; that was the easy part! For liberals and leftists, the great unknown that is the future is nothing more than more opportunities to prove that the Chimp-Faced Moron Fascist President is wrong.
Interestingly, the Last Decent Reporter at the NY Times on the scene, John Burns, seems to disagree with the mandarins of his Editorial Board:
How many times did voters say to me—and I believe to many other reporters who began their interviews with them by asking them, as we so often do, are you Shiite, are you Sunni or are you Kurd—they would say to us, what is that to you? Why are you people so obsessed with that?
I must have heard that several dozen times yesterday—people who said, can’t you get it straight in your mind that we are Iraqis first, and then Sunnis or Shiites second? And this is really very interesting. There is a sense amongst Iraqis that Americans arrived here with an obsession about the ethnic breakdown of this country.
What the President's foes don't seem to grasp is that the President, in this speech, in every other speech, has always been animated by one simple principle: that Islamic Fascism is born of the type of dispair lack of liberty brings and that the solution is freedom.
From the Republican members with purple-blue ink on their fingers, to the snarky silence of the left-wing ranks to the Iraqi woman politician/voter in the gallery, the President's vision was justified by undeniable facts on the ground, spinners be damned.
On the great question of the Iraq War, the President has been completely, utterly vindicated. And how that must rankle! Expect a Dean-led Democratic Party to ease the pain by drifting further into MichaelMooreLand and to lose even more power as a consequence.
Syria
The other Ba'athist dictatorship in the neighborhood was held up by the President for special scrutiny. No illusions were harbored here. While we wish the President had pointed out that the only people in Syria who have ever voted in free elections were the ex-pat Iraqis living there last Sunday, we were generally pleased with the no-nonsense treatment of this insignificant country which has been a festering sore on every hope for peace in the region for decades.
We were especially pleased that the President pointed out that Syria allows terrorism to flourish in the parts of Lebanon which it occupies. Make no mistake, the Great Opthamologist is on notice. Your time is coming and your day is done, loser. Step aside or be swept aside. Your choice.
Iran
By far and away the most heartening part of the speech. Once again, the President demonstrated that he understands the threat the terrorist regime of Iran presents and, once again, he has proved himself up to the task of facing it down. The President spoke simple, plain words, and the simple plain truth when he said:
Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror — pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium re-processing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.
Let us translate this for you: Iran is a terrorist state that denies basic liberty to its people. We're willing to give the EU a shot at solving this problem since there is a high likelihood of an internal revolution solving our problem for us, but, bottom line is that if Iran keeps on the course it's now on, we'll take care of the problem ourselves, in time-honored American style (if you're uncertain what that is, find an elderly German or Japanese man to explain it to you). And, by the way, that internal revolution we are hoping for? Well, we're for it, we support it, and when you make your move we'll be there to help.
Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain
The bright students in the bunch got a nod for their modernizing and democratizing efforts. There is still a way to go, but in the Islamic world, you take your progress where you find it. These three are vital and critical to showing the Islamic world that "democracy" doesn't mean "do what the United States says," but, rather, means progress, growth, happiness and stability.
Egypt
While the Administration was at pains to stress that the President's Second Inaugural Address didn't presage a change in policy, the President's actions last night showed that there is, indeed, a new game in town. Egypt, a large receiver of direct U.S. foreign aid, was flattered, buttered up and complemented....and then told straight out that the U.S. expects its "ally" to get on board the Greater Middle East Initiative.
Given its reliance on our aid and our support, the GOE is susceptible to this kind of pressure. We at State can look forward to a push in Egypt to translating that aid and support into democratic reform on the ground. Bush's willingness to take on a once sacred cow was incredibly cheering and leaves us hopeful. And, speaking of sacred cows......
Saudi Arabia
Another Michael Moore myth bites the dust. Turns out that "Big Oil Interests" don't control what Bush says and thinks. Imagine our surprise that Moore was wrong. Again.
Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia was singled out as a state in the Middle East that needs to get aboard, and now. By daring to criticize the Kingdom directly and brazenly, the President blew away one of the great taboos of post-WWII American political culture. We were pleased that the President demonstrated that the need for reform in the Middle East includes the Saudis.
However, here is also where the President loses us. Islamic Fascism is just that; it is an ideology of murderous hate. And there is no greater source for the growth of this cancer than Saudi Arabia. From the King Faud Mosque in our own dear Los Angeles (and not far from Canter's at that!) to madrasses in moderate Indonesia, no state has done more the spread the ideology of Islamic Fascism than Saudi Arabia.
The President refuses to see this and, instead, views Saudi Arabia as just another misguided Middle Eastern state in need of a friendly nudge. It is in need of much more than that. Until the President recognizes that the official ideology of the Saudi state is a form of the ideology of The Enemy, we cannot hope for too much progress.
Of course, it is possible that democratic reform in the Kingdom would undo Wahabbism from the inside. Let us hope.
Palestine
It was the President's remarks about Palestine, however, that caused us the most concern. The election of a holocaust-denying, anti-Israel maniac as "President" doesn't fill us with the same joy as it evidently does President Bush.
Let us be plain: many conservatives have been willing to put up with the President's babble about the non-existent brave, democratic Palenstinians who wish to live side-by-side with Israel in peace and harmony because we thought he was merely highlighting their non-existence by demanding that the Palestinians produce them forthwith. But now, after four years, we are starting to believe the President believes this.
This is what we mean when we criticize the President by saying that he is properly romantic when it comes to human liberty, but is a bit over-romantic on the details. There is no evidence, despite the best efforts of the great Christopher Hitchens, that a humanist, democratic opposition exists in Palestine. Rather, there is every indication that the population there is more dedicated to the death of every last Jew in the Middle East with more fervor than ever.
It is this failure--the failure to clearly state that Islamic Fascism is the enemy, the failure to see clearly that there is no "party of peace" among the Palestinians--that drives a wedge between the President and his core supporters.
What we will say in closing is this: we must admit we doubted the President on Iraq on some of the fundamentals. Perhaps it is we who are wrong and the President right. Perhaps, if given a chance, a real chance, the screaming death-cult that is Palestine will embrace liberty and peace.
After all, he's been right so many times in the last four years.
God, please, let him be right again.
That being the case, who would have thought that a mere two months later, President Bush could walk into the halls of Congress a conquering hero? That the President could point to Iraq as one of the most important political victories for the U.S. in the post-war period? That the Democrats would recede once again--as they had on election night--to a minority party desperately holding on to retrogade portions of the country by spouting dried-out, reactionary slogans? (Speaking of which, did you see the Democratic response? We neither.)
The feeling in the House was palpable even on TV; it was clear that the oh-so-important mantle of "winner" had been replaced around the President's head, that he was once again The Man, in full control of his office and the political scene. The fact that he has done this in the face of implacable hatred from the liberal/left cultural elite both here and abroad made the spectacle that much more remarkable.
Once again, Bush had found his voice. Once again, he spoke plain, clear truth, daring the losers of the left to fight it out with him. And, once again, he found a way to agonize we conservatives who cherish his presidency and love the man.
We shall leave the commentary on the President's incredibly ambitious domestic agenda to other commentators. We only wish to point out that should the President succeed in cementing in his tax cuts, changing Social Security from a passive "benefits" system to at least a partial "ownership" system and reforming the Internal Revenue Code--and there is every reason to believe he will be successful--he will go down in history as a transformative President along the lines of FDR. In fact, with each passing year, Bush appears to us more and more like FDR: a visionary who took the actions (not all of which were successful or popular) that were necessary to meet the great challenges of the age and who, in doing so, won the unswearving love and loyalty of some and the unyielding and deep hatred of others.
The key to the foreign policy aspects of the speech was its treatment of the current critical situation in the Middle East. A look at each portion of that part of the speech illustrates both President Bush's great insight and his one, deeply troubling blind spot.
Iraq
It's no secret that the President gambled everything on his belief, deeply held, that given the chance the Iraqi people would seize the freedom and liberty currently on offer and, improbably, that they would seize it while being targeted by some of the most ruthless killers in the long, sad annals of man's cruelty to man.
On Sunday, January 30, the world saw Bush win that bet. In their millions, Iraqis came out to vote. Today's editorials in the New York Times, reverting to proper let's-keep-moving-the-goalposts-so-that-Bush-is-always-a-loser form in record time, stated that:
The voting, however, was only a first step. It made the journey to establishing a stable and reasonably democratic government appear possible, but not necessarily likely. The election did not bridge over the fact that a vast majority of Iraq's people think of themselves as Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds or members of smaller ethnic groups rather than as part of an Iraqi nation
Sure, the wise men and women at the NY Times knew all along that the voting would go well; that was the easy part! For liberals and leftists, the great unknown that is the future is nothing more than more opportunities to prove that the Chimp-Faced Moron Fascist President is wrong.
Interestingly, the Last Decent Reporter at the NY Times on the scene, John Burns, seems to disagree with the mandarins of his Editorial Board:
How many times did voters say to me—and I believe to many other reporters who began their interviews with them by asking them, as we so often do, are you Shiite, are you Sunni or are you Kurd—they would say to us, what is that to you? Why are you people so obsessed with that?
I must have heard that several dozen times yesterday—people who said, can’t you get it straight in your mind that we are Iraqis first, and then Sunnis or Shiites second? And this is really very interesting. There is a sense amongst Iraqis that Americans arrived here with an obsession about the ethnic breakdown of this country.
What the President's foes don't seem to grasp is that the President, in this speech, in every other speech, has always been animated by one simple principle: that Islamic Fascism is born of the type of dispair lack of liberty brings and that the solution is freedom.
From the Republican members with purple-blue ink on their fingers, to the snarky silence of the left-wing ranks to the Iraqi woman politician/voter in the gallery, the President's vision was justified by undeniable facts on the ground, spinners be damned.
On the great question of the Iraq War, the President has been completely, utterly vindicated. And how that must rankle! Expect a Dean-led Democratic Party to ease the pain by drifting further into MichaelMooreLand and to lose even more power as a consequence.
Syria
The other Ba'athist dictatorship in the neighborhood was held up by the President for special scrutiny. No illusions were harbored here. While we wish the President had pointed out that the only people in Syria who have ever voted in free elections were the ex-pat Iraqis living there last Sunday, we were generally pleased with the no-nonsense treatment of this insignificant country which has been a festering sore on every hope for peace in the region for decades.
We were especially pleased that the President pointed out that Syria allows terrorism to flourish in the parts of Lebanon which it occupies. Make no mistake, the Great Opthamologist is on notice. Your time is coming and your day is done, loser. Step aside or be swept aside. Your choice.
Iran
By far and away the most heartening part of the speech. Once again, the President demonstrated that he understands the threat the terrorist regime of Iran presents and, once again, he has proved himself up to the task of facing it down. The President spoke simple, plain words, and the simple plain truth when he said:
Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror — pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium re-processing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.
Let us translate this for you: Iran is a terrorist state that denies basic liberty to its people. We're willing to give the EU a shot at solving this problem since there is a high likelihood of an internal revolution solving our problem for us, but, bottom line is that if Iran keeps on the course it's now on, we'll take care of the problem ourselves, in time-honored American style (if you're uncertain what that is, find an elderly German or Japanese man to explain it to you). And, by the way, that internal revolution we are hoping for? Well, we're for it, we support it, and when you make your move we'll be there to help.
Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain
The bright students in the bunch got a nod for their modernizing and democratizing efforts. There is still a way to go, but in the Islamic world, you take your progress where you find it. These three are vital and critical to showing the Islamic world that "democracy" doesn't mean "do what the United States says," but, rather, means progress, growth, happiness and stability.
Egypt
While the Administration was at pains to stress that the President's Second Inaugural Address didn't presage a change in policy, the President's actions last night showed that there is, indeed, a new game in town. Egypt, a large receiver of direct U.S. foreign aid, was flattered, buttered up and complemented....and then told straight out that the U.S. expects its "ally" to get on board the Greater Middle East Initiative.
Given its reliance on our aid and our support, the GOE is susceptible to this kind of pressure. We at State can look forward to a push in Egypt to translating that aid and support into democratic reform on the ground. Bush's willingness to take on a once sacred cow was incredibly cheering and leaves us hopeful. And, speaking of sacred cows......
Saudi Arabia
Another Michael Moore myth bites the dust. Turns out that "Big Oil Interests" don't control what Bush says and thinks. Imagine our surprise that Moore was wrong. Again.
Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia was singled out as a state in the Middle East that needs to get aboard, and now. By daring to criticize the Kingdom directly and brazenly, the President blew away one of the great taboos of post-WWII American political culture. We were pleased that the President demonstrated that the need for reform in the Middle East includes the Saudis.
However, here is also where the President loses us. Islamic Fascism is just that; it is an ideology of murderous hate. And there is no greater source for the growth of this cancer than Saudi Arabia. From the King Faud Mosque in our own dear Los Angeles (and not far from Canter's at that!) to madrasses in moderate Indonesia, no state has done more the spread the ideology of Islamic Fascism than Saudi Arabia.
The President refuses to see this and, instead, views Saudi Arabia as just another misguided Middle Eastern state in need of a friendly nudge. It is in need of much more than that. Until the President recognizes that the official ideology of the Saudi state is a form of the ideology of The Enemy, we cannot hope for too much progress.
Of course, it is possible that democratic reform in the Kingdom would undo Wahabbism from the inside. Let us hope.
Palestine
It was the President's remarks about Palestine, however, that caused us the most concern. The election of a holocaust-denying, anti-Israel maniac as "President" doesn't fill us with the same joy as it evidently does President Bush.
Let us be plain: many conservatives have been willing to put up with the President's babble about the non-existent brave, democratic Palenstinians who wish to live side-by-side with Israel in peace and harmony because we thought he was merely highlighting their non-existence by demanding that the Palestinians produce them forthwith. But now, after four years, we are starting to believe the President believes this.
This is what we mean when we criticize the President by saying that he is properly romantic when it comes to human liberty, but is a bit over-romantic on the details. There is no evidence, despite the best efforts of the great Christopher Hitchens, that a humanist, democratic opposition exists in Palestine. Rather, there is every indication that the population there is more dedicated to the death of every last Jew in the Middle East with more fervor than ever.
It is this failure--the failure to clearly state that Islamic Fascism is the enemy, the failure to see clearly that there is no "party of peace" among the Palestinians--that drives a wedge between the President and his core supporters.
What we will say in closing is this: we must admit we doubted the President on Iraq on some of the fundamentals. Perhaps it is we who are wrong and the President right. Perhaps, if given a chance, a real chance, the screaming death-cult that is Palestine will embrace liberty and peace.
After all, he's been right so many times in the last four years.
God, please, let him be right again.
