The Bush Burden (Blaming Bush for Obama's mess)

NY Times ^ | Sept 5, 2013 | Timothy Egan

[Innovative]

He’s there in every corner of Congress where a microphone fronts a politician, there in Russia and the British Parliament and the Vatican.

Blame Bush? Of course, President Obama has to lead; it’s his superpower now, his armies to move, his stage. But the prior president gave every world leader, every member of Congress a reason to keep the dogs of war on a leash.

The voice that stands out most by his silence, the one that grates with its public coyness, is Bush himself. He has refused to take a side in the Syrian conflict. The president, he said, “has a tough choice to make.” Beyond that, “I refuse to be roped in.”

[Innovative]

The author is actually serious in blaming Bush for Obama's mess -- I am posting this just to give insight into the liberal mind...

Their twisted "logic" is mindboggling...

[canuck_conservative]

Covering for the affirmative-action-idiot’s incompetence.

It’s what Big Media has done for Obama since 2007, why would they stop now??

[BenLurkin]

Newspeak internalized as a thought process.

[cherry]

Bush is blamed for the bammmmmeys's incompetence and evilness...

Bush if he spoke up, would be jumped on by all the antiwar, so called, howood elites, the media, the entire rat cabal.....

its a lose/lose proposition..

[Migraine]

Egan’s post is gas-warfare in its own right. Fortunately, it can’t kill you, but it does cause dizziness.
Whenever history demands that a truly humanitarian solution must be tried (e.g. War on Poverty [1965], Democratizing muslims [2003, 2011, 2012, 2013]), it probably should be tried. But when it fails because the variables make it untenable, this must be admitted.
We are now in the process of admitting that muslim nations cannot be democratized.
If only we could admit that the War on Poverty has been a disaster, we would have a (ding-ding-ding) Daily Double.

[Innovative]

“If only we could admit that the War on Poverty has been a disaster, we would have a (ding-ding-ding) Daily Double.’

Australia seems to have figured it out — they just elected a conservative, Tony Abbott.

“Under Abbott, the government would find billions of dollars in budget cuts, including slashing $4.5 billion (US$4.1 billion) from foreign aid over the next six years. Money saved would be spent on infrastructure projects including motorway upgrades, in a decision slammed by aid groups.”

Tony Abbott pledges ‘competent, trustworthy’ government for Australia

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/07/world/asia/australia-election/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[Jim Scott]

Here I thought that Obama and the liberal media 'blaming Bush' had finally receded into the becoming a late-night TV comedian's punch line. But then Obama was faced with a crisis - that he fomented - and is predictably seeking to shrug off any accountability for the situation and his fumbling response to it. So, the New York Times rides to the rescue with a scathing piece that both excoriates and ridicules President Bush ("in his bathtub, painting his toenails") to give Obama some cover for his feckless actions in this crisis that he helped bring about with his personal threats to the Assad regime (the infamous 'red line') and that Obama quickly tried to disavow with nonsense about 'the world community', not Obama, drawing the line. So now, as the Syrian situation festers and Obama is being revealed for the incompetent fraud he always was, the liberal media is trying to justify his self-inflicted troubles by 'blaming Bush'. The reaction should be a combination of rolling eyeballs and a hearty laugh at the absurdity of it all. Metaphorically, the Syria crisis proves once and for all that the emperor has no clothes.

[nathanbedford]

There are people on the public stage who have genuinely agonized over lessons of the Bush disaster. They say, with some conviction, that they will never be fooled again.

I count myself among those described by the author. I would add that it is not so much a question of being fooled again because that implies that Bush deliberately fooled the country and I think there is no evidence whatsoever to support that charge. I believe Bush proceeded into Iraq the same way he proceeded throughout his administration, with a white heart but an empty head. The lesson I learned from Iraq is the one you cite, that the Muslim world is not ready for democracy because the condition precedent, an enlightenment, has not occurred.

The second lesson I take from Iraq is that we do not have another trillion dollars to squander on feel-good nationbuilding schemes. Our job now as a country is to contain Obama, stop the economic and moral deterioration at home, win the next two elections, and rebuild the military for 21st century warfare. While this is going on we should enthusiastically pursue Mark Levin's Article V movement to reform Washington from flyover country.

I think yours is a very good post. It would be interesting for the New York Times to take a serious look at why the war on poverty has utterly failed the African-American ghetto as well as the whole of America. We have learned our lesson from Iraq but the New York Times will never, ever get real about the harm it, Lyndon Johnson, and their spawn have done to the American culture.

[Migraine]

That Australia info is worthwhile, and very encouraging! Thanks.

[Migraine]

You expressed what I was trying to express, only much better, and in greater detail. Thanks.

[newnhdad]

so according to the lefties, we made a mistake in Iraq and Afghanistan but we should not have learned from them. We should just allow Obama to make that same mistake again, because he’s black.

[nathanbedford]

It's easy to be prolix when you have Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software, it don't make you smart just windy.

[Theodore R.]

Being the “loyal Democrat” he really is, I wonder why GWB hasn’t accepted all the blame and more.

[Steve_Seattle]

Egan is a sanctimonious prick. Bush is refusing to pontificate on Syria not from cowardice but because of his belief that "we only need one president at a time." If Egan were honest - which he demonstrably is not - he would admit that Bush's claims about Iraq's WMDs were widely shared, and had been previously proclaimed by Clinton and most top Democrats.

As for waterboarding, that targets specific individuals and has no collateral damage. When the process is over, you go back to your cell, intact. But Obama's drones involve lots of collateral damage, lots of innocent victims, and when it's over you are NOT intact.

As for Syria, Mr. Egan, what do you propose? Some limp-dicked response that changes nothing but makes you feel like a big shot?

[Steve_Seattle]

Egan is probably just feisty because it's been a few days since he's taken one up the rump. And maybe that's why he's not thinking clearly.

Why does he think we should not learn anything from Iraq? I am convinced that Bush believed that Iraq could be reformed by ousting Saddam Hussein, and that deception played no part in his thinking. In fact, despite the ongoing insurgency, we can not yet claim that Bush's policy failed, only that it's taking longer than hoped. After all, Jim Crow persisted 100 years after the Civil War.

But the difficulties of the Iraq war should at least give us pause in entering a conflict in another Middle East country without a very precise understanding of what we can accomplish and at what cost, and whether our efforts will make matters worse, better, or leave things much the same as they are now. Does Egan even understand what he is saying, that he's adopting the same neo-con attitude that he thinks he's against, the idea that every bad situation requires an American military response?

[dandiegirl]

But Bush was so long ago/sarc