I never thought I'd see anything like it, but here it is.
On the front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer, there's a column by the anti-Bush Dick Polman which dares to admit the possibility that the laughable Bush doctrine might be working:
Mideast moves give Bush critics pause
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst
It may be too early for a victory lap. But President Bush, who has spent most of his tenure under fire for his bold foreign policy, is now winning praise for the nascent outburst of democratic sentiment in the Middle East.
It's not often that Bush-bashing TV host Jon Stewart will quip, as he did the other night, "My kid's going to go to a high school named after him." Or that Democrat-friendly columnist Joe Klein will contend in Time magazine that Bush's critics were "embarrassingly, scandalously, blessedly wrong." Or that, in London, the left-leaning Independent newspaper will run a banner headline that asks, "Was Bush right after all?"
After spending two years waging a difficult, polarizing war, at a cost thus far of $300 billion and 1,500 American deaths, Bush is now seeing some daylight, thanks to a confluence of historic events: the Iraq elections, the Palestinian election of a leader who wants to end the armed struggle against Israel, municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the announcement of a multiparty presidential election in Egypt, the unprecedented challenge to a pro-Syrian autocratic regime in Lebanon.
In America, the potential domestic impact is clear. If these rumblings ultimately bring peace to the region (and reduce the threat of terrorism), voters are likely to reward the Republican Party and reinforce their long-standing preference for the GOP over the Democrats on national security issues.
I'm amazed. I'm so used to reading and hearing about the stupid, blundering Bush, a man who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time, whose crackpot NeoCon policies were moving the world towards a fundamentalist Christian Stone Age.....
And now this?
What on earth might be going on?
More amazingly, Polman concludes by being nice to Glenn Reynolds:
But what buoys Republicans the most, and worries Democrats, is that, if democracy truly flowers in the Middle East, Bush will further cement the GOP's image as the national security party - just as Ronald Reagan did, when he was widely credited with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union. Republicans say that, while Bush didn't create the region's democratic rumblings, he has helped inspire them by invading Iraq and creating the conditions for free elections.
The democratic breezes are fragile, however, which is why pro-Bush blogger Glenn Reynolds issued a no-gloat warning the other day. "It's just a whiff," he said, "not a gale."
It might not be a gale yet, and I'm far too much of a pessimist to engage in gloating. But things are getting breezy for the Democrats. There are sure to be more fingers in the air.
But I won't gloat.
And I'd never inhale.
posted by Eric on 03.10.05 at 09:27 AM
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/2073
Comments
I will congratulate the republican party on a start on mideast intervention. But remember we've been down this road before.
In Iran, Mossadeq was toppeled by CIA intervention/military coup; which eventually brought the shah into working with american powers. That lasted only so long, till eventually the shah was overthrown in 1979. Now for some reason, they don't like us anymore. Luckily, Halliburton still deals with them through offshore accounting.
Saddam Hussein was supposed to bring democracy to Iraq. Maybe you remember the pictures of rumsfeld shaking his hand? He was 'our guy', even after he accused 60 members of his own party of a coup, and slaughtered them all on his first day of goverment. He was still 'our guy' during the Iraq-Iran war, when he used illegal chemical weapons on both Iranian soldiers, and the Kurds, whose torture and mutilation we turned a blind eye on for 2 decades.
Osama bin Laden is beleived to have worked with the CIA during the soviet-afganistan war. The CIA is beleived to have trained him, and funded operations against the iron curtain. At the very least, US provided weapons to Pakistan, who distributed them to various rebel factions. Pakistan tended to provide these weapons to Islamic groups of the most radical views, ensuring that when the war is over, Afghanistan would become an Islamic state. In trying to 'save freedom' we created Afghanistan, which created 9/11. Oh, yeah, and there was an oil pipeline they wanted.
Fastfoward to today:
I really, really hope these countries stay democrat. That would be amazing. HOwever, you can't simply dissavow the subtleties of the situation because it would be nice if...
Sunni Iraq still refuses to be brought along in the process, escalating the insurgency. Voting was as low as 10% in many Sunni neighborhoods, despite low violence on the election day. Many politicians are still disappearing at an alarming rate. Kurdistan beleives almost unanimously in an independent kurdish state. This will almost certainly cause a Turkish invasion. (Right now the most popular book in Turkey is a fiction about an American invasion of Turkey).
The leading pollitical party/terrorist group in Lebannon is Hezbollah. It will be a democracy with teeth.
Israel is known to be planning an air strike in Iran if US fails diplomacy, or fails to act itself. Such an action would only further Iranian involvement in Iraq.
And despite all this, there are still numerous dictatorships (saudi arabia, uzbekistan, coastal guinea etc) which the administration will not touch because they are 'friendly' to american pursuits. These wars are about capitalism, not democracy. If things work out, it may not be a horrible thing; however let's be honest about our intentions.
alchemist · March 10, 2005 01:33 PM
We're nowhere near out of the woods yet. Here's Fareed Zakaria's qualifications of his cautious endorsement of the Bush Doctrine:
"If Bush is to be credited for the benefits of his policies, he must also take responsibility for their costs. Over the past three years, his administration has racked up enormous costs, many of which could easily have been lowered or avoided altogether. The pointless snubbing of allies, the brusque manner in which it went to war in Iraq, the undermanned occupation and the stubborn insistence (until last summer) on pursuing policies that were fueling both an insurgency and anti-Americanism in Iraq -- all have taken their toll in thousands of American and Iraqi lives and almost $300 billion.
"Perhaps an even more lasting cost is the broad and deep shifts in public opinion against America around the world. Look at countries as disparate as Britain, Poland, Turkey and Japan, all allies of the United States. In every one of them, public views have changed significantly in the past few years, and being pro-American is now a political liability. Tony Blair, once the most popular British leader in decades, has fallen far in public esteem, largely because of his unflinching support for the Bush administration."
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
I will congratulate the republican party on a start on mideast intervention. But remember we've been down this road before.
In Iran, Mossadeq was toppeled by CIA intervention/military coup; which eventually brought the shah into working with american powers. That lasted only so long, till eventually the shah was overthrown in 1979. Now for some reason, they don't like us anymore. Luckily, Halliburton still deals with them through offshore accounting.
Saddam Hussein was supposed to bring democracy to Iraq. Maybe you remember the pictures of rumsfeld shaking his hand? He was 'our guy', even after he accused 60 members of his own party of a coup, and slaughtered them all on his first day of goverment. He was still 'our guy' during the Iraq-Iran war, when he used illegal chemical weapons on both Iranian soldiers, and the Kurds, whose torture and mutilation we turned a blind eye on for 2 decades.
Osama bin Laden is beleived to have worked with the CIA during the soviet-afganistan war. The CIA is beleived to have trained him, and funded operations against the iron curtain. At the very least, US provided weapons to Pakistan, who distributed them to various rebel factions. Pakistan tended to provide these weapons to Islamic groups of the most radical views, ensuring that when the war is over, Afghanistan would become an Islamic state. In trying to 'save freedom' we created Afghanistan, which created 9/11. Oh, yeah, and there was an oil pipeline they wanted.
Fastfoward to today:
I really, really hope these countries stay democrat. That would be amazing. HOwever, you can't simply dissavow the subtleties of the situation because it would be nice if...
Sunni Iraq still refuses to be brought along in the process, escalating the insurgency. Voting was as low as 10% in many Sunni neighborhoods, despite low violence on the election day. Many politicians are still disappearing at an alarming rate. Kurdistan beleives almost unanimously in an independent kurdish state. This will almost certainly cause a Turkish invasion. (Right now the most popular book in Turkey is a fiction about an American invasion of Turkey).
The leading pollitical party/terrorist group in Lebannon is Hezbollah. It will be a democracy with teeth.
Israel is known to be planning an air strike in Iran if US fails diplomacy, or fails to act itself. Such an action would only further Iranian involvement in Iraq.
And despite all this, there are still numerous dictatorships (saudi arabia, uzbekistan, coastal guinea etc) which the administration will not touch because they are 'friendly' to american pursuits. These wars are about capitalism, not democracy. If things work out, it may not be a horrible thing; however let's be honest about our intentions.