Posted on 05/20/2009 6:40:38 AM PDT by big black dog
Let's face it, this is shaping up as George W. Bush's best month in years. The last time the 43rd president enjoyed this kind of vindication was when a bedraggled Saddam Hussein was pulled from a hole in the ground by American soldiers in 2003. All of Barack Obama's efforts to cast the Bush administration as an immoral stain on American history have not merely collapsed, but collapsed on the heads of Bush's most public and vocal critics.
Here's a non-stammering Nancy Pelosi talking about Bush last July: "God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject."
Don't mind if I do. How about national security? It turns out that support for a criminal investigation of Bush policies yielded an important finding after all: Pelosi's own long-standing agreement with the Bush administration's toughest measures. On that point she's in sync with the rest of the country. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll found that Americans approve of the interrogation methods Bush okayed by a margin of 50% to 46%. In other words, she didn't have to go through the condemnation charade to begin with.
Then there's Iraq. That July interview with Pelosi is quite a goldmine. When faced with a 14% approval rating for Congress, she counters: "Everything I see says this is about ending the war. . . " Well, that's not happening anytime soon. Everything I see says "ending the war" was as phony as Nancy Pelosi's outrage. Hillary Clinton went to Baghdad three weeks ago to reassure the Maliki government that the Obama administration will not abandon Iraq. On top of that, Gen. Ray Odierno said the U.S. might "maintain a presence" in some Iraqi cities beyond the scheduled draw-down date if the Iraqis request it. Did Pelosi mean the other war, in Afghanistan? Obama has done an outstanding job of taking that challenge seriously, and for those keeping score, his pick of Gen. Stanley McChrystal (the man who hunted down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq) has met with the gushing approval of Dick Cheney.
And speaking of Dick Cheney: Not only has he proved to be an important and articulate defender of the Bush administration's national-security policy; his repeated interviews and statements have done Bush the service of drawing fire away from the former president. Bush not only looks wise these days; he looks modest and thoughtful as well. And Cheney's (denied) request to declassify more CIA interrogation memos explodes the myth of the "most secretive administration in American history."
Let us not forget the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility. For years adduced as a monument to the Bush administration's disdain for due process and human rights, Gitmo was slated to be shut down by Barack Obama as a first order of business. Today, the posture without a plan has come up against a bi-partisan roadblock. Thursday, the House denied the Obama administration a requested $80 million to close the facility. The Senate's version of the bill in question contains $50 million for the Pentagon to shutter the place, but the money can only be tapped 30 days after Robert Gates devises a plan to relocate detainees outside the U.S. -- so far France will take one. To top it all off, on Friday Obama announced the revival of Guantanamo military tribunals.
On Iran, the Obama administration is veering from its stance of bottomless "respect" and "perseverance." This week Obama set early October as a "target" to determine whether Iran is really deserving of all that extended goodwill. Additionally, the administration has drawn up benchmarks to gauge Tehran's cooperation in halting their march toward a nuclear weapon. As Robert Kagan put it, "[Obama's] policy toward Iran makes sense, so long as he is ready with a serious Plan B if the negotiating track with Tehran fails." The October non-surprise will be the revelation that Bush wasn't merely neglecting to smile at the mullahs and to ask nicely.
Finally, there's the strange and frankly unsettling image makeover of the Saudi royals. The Bush family's alleged intimacy with an extremist monarchy formed the very backbone of the anti-Bush industry. Yet, upon taking office Barack Obama commented on the bravery of King Abdullah and went on to virtually adopt the Saudi Peace Initiative as American policy. The administration is also seriously considering sending released Guantanamo detainees through the Saudi "jihad rehab" program. A week ago, "60 Minutes" aired a prime-time broadcast praising the same absurdity. The free pass Barack Obama gets on his all-encompassing embrace of Riyadh leaves the score of anti-Bush best sellers and documentaries looking a little less than credible.
President Obama, and the country at large, is finding out that George W. Bush's most controversial policies were not born of ideological delusion, American arrogance, or missionary zeal. They were imperfect but sound (with the exception of our ties to Riyadh) responses to complicated threats. But the validation of the last president runs a very distant second to the most compelling aspect of all this: the drama over CIA interrogations and Guantanamo will hopefully serve to set the administration on a more serious national security course. And it would be helpful if the American public finally dropped moral outrage as the preferred mode of political argumentation.
And Then There Was Only Guantánamo . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]
With the Democratic no-go on Guantánamo (I’ll leave it to the better informed to ascertain the degree that the Democratic Congress came to the rescue of an embarrassed Obama administration and cut off funding for the shutdown to allow him an out with the now familiar excuse of “they did it — not me, who keeps promises”), I think we now have come to the end to the five-year left-wing attack theme of Bush “shredding the Constitution.”
Except for the introduction of euphemisms and a few new ballyhooed but largely meaningless protocols, there is no longer a Bush-did-it argument. The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq, Afghanistan — and now Guantánamo — are officially no longer part of the demonic Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld nexus, but apparently collective legitimate anti-terrorism measures designed to thwart killers, and by agreement, after years of observance, of great utility in keeping us safe the last eight years.
Add in the Holder statements about Guantánamo in the 2002 interview, the Pelosi/Rockefeller/et al. waterboarding briefings, the need to consider torture in past statements by senators such as Schumer, and I think historians will now look back at these “dark years” as largely a collective, bipartisan effort.
All of which leaves us a final musing: If so, what was the hysteria of 2001-2008 about other than simple politics?
I doubt we get any more movies about ongoing renditions, redactions, any more Checkpoint-like novels, any more waterboarding skits and reenactments, any more late-night comedians doing their Bush tapped, intercepted, tortured, renditioned, tribunaled poor suspect X routines.
And I guess as well that the good old days of supposedly flushed Korans in Guantánamo and Omar the poor liberationist renditioned to Cairo are over. We are now in the age of a sober and judicious President Obama who circumspectly, if reluctantly and in anguish at the high cost, does what is necessary to keep us safe.
And we won’t see a brave young liberal senator, Obama-like, barnstorming the Iowa precincts blasting a presidency for trampling our values with the shame of Guantánamo, wiretaps, intercepts, renditions, military tribunals, Predators, Iraq, etc. That motif just dissolved — or rather, it never really existed.
It short, all the fury, the vicious slander, the self-righteous outbursts, the impassioned speeches from the floor, the “I accuse” op-eds by the usual moralistic pundits — all that turned out to be solely about politics, nothing more.
Yes and this was a very good political strategy. He was claiming leaving Iraq would pay for health care, where as Mccain had to say he would stay in Iraq. In the short run, Freepers may feel vindicated as Obama flips, but this jsut makes Obama look better to most people.
Remember the same terrorist hawks (example hannity/Levin) that are crowing about Obama flipping were warning listeners he would surrender, so they look wrong.
Something has to give on Obama, a mistake or a crisis he cant handle before the Bush-bots get their dream.
Obama is seen as cleaning up GWB’s messes. If there was no war and no terrorism now with Obama, similar to USSR collapse 1989-90, then Bush would be loved like Reagan was. But it looks like he just passed on a number of messes to Obama. Worse it looks like he created the messes because he was an activist president. That is the difference.
Nationalizing the banking and auto industries wasn't enough for the commies, eh? I guess we need some show trials!
The point I got from the article was not what President Bush did wrong, but that Hussein is getting high numbers for doing the same things that President Bush did (in foreign policy). The only difference there could be is that Hussein pretends he’s going to do something different, then when reality and the generals hit him upside the head, he realises that the present policies are pretty much the only possible ones (or he already knew that, but is covering his azz). I don’t think he’s that concerned with foreign policy-at least as yet-since I believe that his racism informs his politics, and that would be concern domestic affairs-getting property and power out of the hands of the majority and into the hands of minorities (right now, so as not to be blatant about it, any rat voter group will do. he can whittle it down further, later, when he’s solidified his position). I think he’ll only be concerned with foreign policy when he thinks whites are out of the picture. How that’s going to play with the military, will be interesting, to say the least.
No I don’t think I missed it-Hussein is “seen as”—who is creating that perception?
I like the article except for one point.
The appointment of General McChrystal was all to Gates/Petraus/DOD credit. Oboomba only signed the memo. He wouldn’t even recognize which branch of the military the man is from.
That motif never really existed for Hussein. And who could even have a tiny doubt that it was all a show, for political purpose, from the left all these years? I don’t believe in their cries of “principle”, becuase I see how they operate in the political arena. If they don’t have principles when facing their fellow countrymen, they don’t have principles at all. Just ambition and a hunger for power.
Hanson nails it once again.
I don’t know of anyone who thinks that Obama is seen as cleaning up Bush’s messes. Bush’s budgets increased the debt, but Obama’s 2010 budget is much worse. Obama hasn’t greatly decreased or increased the number of troops, in Iraq.
I agree with that Bush quote. I was in the navy for 21 years, and I was near Baghdad, in the Triangle of Death, in a marine infantry battalion, Sept. 2004-Mar. ‘05. While I was there, I rarely heard my co-workers (mostly marines and soldiers) complain about American presence, in Iraq. After I returned to the U.S., I heard many people, who haven’t served, in the military, complain about it. The servicemembers know that we protect the Americans from terrorists, but too many Americans aren’t grateful.
You make a good point, but the problem for the Dems is it’s fast becoming apparent that they are complicit in everything they’ve been complaining about for years.
You make a good point, but the problem for the Dems is it’s fast becoming apparent that they are complicit in everything they’ve been complaining about for years.
I agree. The nexus you just named has done as much harm as the socialist politicians themselves (to date) by their hypocritical deceitful enabling of it. I agree, the only way to stop the socialist take-over is to smash their monopoly on truth. But I don’t see it happening. All the internet has done is allow everyone to seek their own vindication. The “MSM” is still shaping opinion rather than reporting news. They’re not dead by a long shot.
I misspoke-NOT their monopoly on truth-they wouldn’t know the truth to save their souls-their monopoly on breaking news or headline news for most Americans.
Well here’s my gratitude to you and them, and to my brother who is headed over there for a second round, after a first one in Iraq then another one in Kosovo. Speaking of Kosovo, where are all the anti-war activists on that? Haven’t heard much from them.
I agree about Kosovo. Some liberals who protest the war, say that no Iraqis attacked the U.S. In the 1990’2, no one, from Kosovo, Bosnia, or Croatia, attacked the U.S., and no liberals protested, when Clinton sent Americans, to risk their lives, in those countries.
Amen, Amen.
And anyway, for pity’s sake-we weren’t fighting the Iraqis, we were fighting “for” them if anything (besides our primary objective, which is to secure America from terrorists, and those who support them). And before anyone says it wasn’t only Saddam, just look at all the grief we’ve gotten from getting rid of him and fighting the terrorists there-how in the world could we be expected, given that, to take on every instance of terrorist support anywhere? It would be like trying to fight WW3, with America vs The World. It’s already been something like that, and we’ve only been in one country (for our own purposes, I mean, not a UN-trumped-up wag-the-dog “war”)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.