I, too, am very disappointed at this column. Frankly, it permanently damages her in my eyes. She has written a few catty columns about Bush before, but this on appears at an absolutely critical moment in our history. We don't need this kind of silly jealousy now. This column will be remembered for a long time. The liberals will use it to damage and to undermine the War on Terror.
But I want to make just one point after what so many other Freepers have said.
The division she draws between the moralists and the realists in foreign policy is simply false in this case. Sometimes the moral position is also the realist position. That was true with Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. Like it or not, his moral fervor helped win the day. Was the Monroe Doctrine moralist or realist? It was both. Was the Truman Doctrine moralist or realist? It was both. Is the Bush doctrine moralist or realist? It is both.
Will we succeed in turning the Arabs into perfect Democrats? Of course not. Nobody expects we will, least of all George W. Bush. But we need to go in there and change things nevertheless while we still can. And the promise of freedom is a powerful promise. It's one of the few ideals that can work against Islamic fanaticism. It is a promise that already has a long record of bringing down kings and tyrants. You need such an ideal to sway men's minds, not some kind of complex Kissingerian Realpolitik which nobody but a Political Science PhD can understand.
Excellent post 406. I do not mind it when columnists criticize Bush (I've criticized him plenty and still do), but this one seems so unfair and off base. If he had done something that deserved this, I would be on her side (though I have never been a fan of her columns). But she is seeing things that aren't there. And too much God? He didn't say anything that hasn't been said many times before by other Presidents.