snugs:
You're a 'workaholic' and I thank you for it!!!
IT'S ALL (PRESIDENT) BUSH'S FAULT . . .
A PROUD DAY FOR U.S. AND A LESSON FOR TYRANTS
By Ralph Peters
[Ignore Ralph's obligatory swipes at "the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraqi conflict" and focus on what he admits the President did right -- actually the President did MOST of it right but the MSM/rightwing pundits will NEVER admit it!!]
Hussein is dead. The mighty dictator met a criminal's end on the gallows. The murderer responsible for 1 1/2 million corpses is just a bag of bones.
For decades, the world pandered to his fantasies, overlooking his brutality in return for strategic advantages or naked profit. Diplomats, including our own, courted him, while the world's democracies and their competitors vied to sell him arms.
Saddam always bluffed - even, fatally, about weapons of mass destruction - but the world declined to call him on his excesses. Massacres went unpunished. His invasions of neighboring states failed to draw serious punishment. He never faced personal consequences until our troops reached Baghdad (a dozen years late).
As long as Saddam paid sufficient bribes and granted the right concessions to the well-connected, the world shut its eyes to his cavalcade of atrocities. Even when his soldiers raped Kuwait, the United Nations barely summoned the will to expel his military - and the alliance led by the United States declined to liberate Iraq itself from a tyrant with a sea of blood on his hands.
Everything changed in 2003. For all of its later errors in Iraq, the Bush administration altered the course of history for the better.
It may be hard to discern the deeper meaning of our march to Baghdad amid the chaos afflicting Iraq today, but President Bush got a great thing right: He recognized that the age of dictators was ending, that the era of the popular will had arrived. He and his advisers may have underestimated the difficulties involved and misread the nature of that popular will, but they put us back on the moral side of history.
You can read the rest of this commentary at
http://www.nypost.com/seven/12302006/news/columnists/a_proud_day_for_u_s__and_a_lesson_for_tyrants_columnists_ralph_peters.htm
AN OVERLOOKED LEGACY?
By Captains Quarters
The Washington Post notes an overlooked part of the George Bush presidency, one that gets almost no attention despite the constant focus on the region. Under Bush, the US has tripled aid to Africa, with even more increases proposed for the next two years:
"President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.
The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion.
The moves have surprised -- and pleased -- longtime supporters of assistance for Africa, who note that because Bush has received little support from African American voters, he has little obvious political incentive for his interest. ...
Although some activists criticize Bush for not doing more to end the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, others credit him for playing a role in ending deadly conflicts in Liberia, the Congo and other parts of Sudan. Meanwhile, Bush has overseen a steady rise in U.S. trade with Africa, which has doubled since 2001."
I'm not a big fan of traditional aid programs. They tend to go to areas ruled incompetently by autocratic or oppressive regimes suffering from chronic, self-inflicted problems. The aid usually winds up propping up the governments that cause the problems, exacerbating them and making it more difficult to solve the real underlying issues.
In the case of the Bush aid, it has focused on supporting nations that already have reformed their political processes, making the aid both a real benefit to the people of the country and an incentive for other nations to reform themselves. Of course, it is precisely this strategy that attracts the only criticism in the article, this time from Africa Action, an advocacy group in DC. They complain about the requirement for privatization, a requirement that introduces the kind of market forces that will avoid famines in the future, rather than funding and endorsing the kind of government-run debacles that have killed millions of Africans from neglect or deliberate starvation.
And guess who the Post credits with the President's resolve on this issue? Evangelicals, who have been demonized by the mainstream media ever since they helped elect Bush in 2000 and re-elect him in 2004. It turns out that all of those so-called "Christianists" want to do what they can to save Africa from its famines and pandemics and to stop the slaughter of African children from both. They have put their Christianity into action in a manner that has also gone mostly unnoticed by the American media.
Bush has another reason to prioritize African aid, which we have seen in the Horn region. The instability of Africa and its inability to feed itself has allowed radical Islamists to gain a toehold on the continent. Just like any parasitic infection, the weak state of African nations allow the radical Islamists to gain support by blaming everyone but themselves for their sorry state. Eliminating hunger and pandemics will help stabilize the continents, and the clearest manner in which to gain both is to promote market economics, private property rights, and representative democracy, all of which Africa has lacked.
Will it take ten years for people to appreciate this part of the Bush legacy? Perhaps it might take longer than that, if we have to rely on our own media. Kudos to the Post for noticing.
Read the entire post AND COMMENTS at
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008813.php#trackbacks
IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN RECOMMENDATIONS
By Michael Barone
I can remember reading a couple of years ago an argument that the reason George W. Bush followed the recommendations of the so-called neoconservatives–in Afghanistan as well as Iraq–is that the neoconservatives had an analysis of and a plan of action for dealing with Islamofascist terrorists and their state sponsors and aiders and abettors; and that no one else did.
In contrast, on the left we heard after September 11 some anguished voices asking, "Why do they hate us?" But many on the left immediately recognized that what they hated us for was our toleration and freedoms–the very things those on the left like most about our society. Shall we order women to wear veils and order the death by stoning of homosexuals in order to appease the perpetrators of September 11? Obviously not.
As for the foreign policy realists, their recommendations had always been to accommodate Arab governments in the Middle East and to take seriously their pleas that we force the Israelis to make concessions to the Palestinians. The problem is that some governments in the Middle East had been at least encouraging Islamofascism, and that Bill Clinton less than 12 months before September 11 had pretty well exhausted the possibilities of pressuring the Israelis, without success. Now the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group has recommended the same thing but has not met with great cheers
. . . Figuring out how to fight back and prevail is not easy and there will be errors along the way (as there have been in all our wars, and in great abundance). But it's better than sitting back and seeing what is the worst they can do to you.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/archives/061229/iraq_and_afghan.htm?s_cid=rss:site1
THE ARTICLES LISTED ABOVE ONLY UNDERSCORE KOCH'S CONCLUSION IN THE ARTICLE BELOW:
WHY PRESIDENT BUSH IS A HERO
By Ed Koch
President George W. Bush, vilified by many, supported by some, is a hero to me.
Why do I say that? It's not because I agree with the President's domestic agenda. It's not because I think he's done a perfect job in the White House.
George Bush is a hero to me because he has courage. The President does what he believes to be in the best interest of the United States. He sticks with his beliefs, no matter how intense the criticism and invective that are directed against him every day.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/12/why_president_bush_is_a_hero.html
Thanks, as always, DrDeb, for the links!
Mr. Koch is correct, President Bush is a man of courage. The end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 has found me thinking a lot about that, lately. He is also a very strong man, to have gotten through these last 6 years!
Thank you, DD and Happy New Year!!!!
Thanks for the Pink Dr. Deb, I have been missing all the pings I use to get from Tonkin Gulf.
One only has to look at the press coverage of Abraham Lincoln to see how wrong the press can be. But it is not just the case of the press attacking Lincoln that proves my point.
Today it is agreed by both Republicans and Democrats that Harry Truman saved the world from Communism. While FDR gladly gave Eastern Europe to his Uncle Joe Stalin, it was Truman who stopped the Soviet Union in its tracks. Yes, FDR referred to Stalin... as Uncle Joe. Truman saw through Stalin the first time he met him. And even with Churchill defeated and off the world stage, Truman stopped much of the expansion of the Soviet Union. The press, at the time, was more biased against Truman than any president since Lincoln. I still remember H.V.Kaltenborn, the Walter Cronkite of his day, saying at 6:00Am on the day after the 1948 election, and I quote. "While Truman holds a slight lead in the popular vote, there is no doubt when the final vote tallies cities come in, Thomas Dewey will be elected president."
H.V. did not even believe the returns. Every one was aware that the big cities were Democratic strongholds and there was next to no chance at that point that Truman would lose. The media called the 1948 race wrong a lot more than they called the 2000 race wrong.
I invite you to consider the coverage of Jimmy Carter. That failed misfit got his rump covered by the media when they excused his terrible mistakes by putting out the word that the presidency was far to big a job for any one man to handle. They told us that if any one man could handle most of the job, that man was Jimmy Carter.
I would note that in retrospect there was never a doubt that Reagan could handle the entire job of President and did. I remember arguing with a liberal who was decrying that Reagan slept through cabinet meetings. I replied to his tirade by commenting... "You mean to tell me that Reagan has produced this fantastic economy and world peace while asleep? My God, what couldn't he accomplish if he were dead."
I remember the media trashing Reagan over his so called "Star Wars" policy. When Reagan refused to trade Star Wars for a reduction in nuclear missiles, the press was vicious in its attack. Yet today history shows that it was that decision that resulted in the fall of the Soviet Union.
The media today tells us how great men like Truman and Reagan were.. they never tell us how wrong they were about those men and many others. They also try to paint the history of failures like Carter and LBJ as men who could have been great if not for the opposition of Republicans.
Most of the media people I have met whose goals in life were to be media stars, have always been at heart people who wanted to be elected officials but failed to have the skills to gain elected office.
Yet those same people who failed to earn enough support to even try a political career, think they are bright enough and skilled enough to judge those that do earn the greatest office in the land.
It is my belief that the media is made up of a political meritocracy. They are want to be players who never got to play in the game. It should not surprise us that they most praise and favor those who have little more talent and skill than they do.
As we look back on the last 75 years .. the period of the rise of the media, it is easy to determine that the presidents they fostered and supported were failures and the presidents they vilified and trashed were the success stories of the last 25 years.
We need to remind everyone just how failed the media has always been.
I do not fear for President George W. Bush's place in history.