RECOIL THIS:

Bush As Churchill?: Many of the elegies to Mr. Bush in the U.S. media since "9/11" have refered to his supposed "Churchillian" qualities. But do these comparisons of Mr. Bush to the legendary British Prime Minister hold water? Or are the two figures, in fact, opposites? Martin Sieff goes on a fascinating exploration of the issue. (Martin Sieff, March 03, 2003, The Globalist)

[R]ather than being Churchill Redux, as his many current admirers claim, it is far more accurate to see George W. Bush as the Anti-Churchill, and someone from whom the Great Winston might well have recoiled.

Churchill was...notable for rising above party and political prejudice as a national war leader. His Great Coalition of 1940-45 still ranks as arguably the greatest of all British wartime administrations.

Many of its best talents came from the opposition Labour Party which at that time was so far left it would horrify current Third Way Democrats just to think about it.

The Bush Administration, by contrast, has recruited few Democrats or even Independents to join a Cabinet notable for its lack of administrative grasp and intellectual brilliance even in the year and a half since "9/11". [...]

Finally, Churchill won World War II above all not by his direct military direction of the British war effort, which was often disastrously incompetent, but by his brilliant diplomatic and strategic sense.

He did more to maintain and hold together Britain's Grand Alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union than any other leader in all three countries.

George Bush, for his part, has already sloughed off the great "wall-to-wall" international alliance that rallied round him after "9/11"--with more than a little help from Secretary of State Colin Powell.

He appears amazingly unconcerned at shattering the venerable Atlantic Alliance--and defying Russia and China as well over Iraq and even appears to relish going into Iraq virtually alone, save for an increasingly isolated British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side.

Churchill famously said that the only thing worse than having to wage war with allies was having to wage it without them. Mr. Bush, in sharp contrast, appears liberated and even exhilarated by the very prospect Churchill so feared.

Even by the low standards of anti-Bush, anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Western idiocy that so much of Europe seems to be in the grip of, this is a remarkably disingenuous essay. All you have to do is ask yourself two questions: (1) Would Churchill still have fought Hitler if no one in Labour had agreed to join his cabinet?; and (2) would he he have had Britain fight Hitler alone? The answer to the first is: of course. The answer to the second may even be: he did. But he was fortunate in that he had a loyal opposition and, eventually, an overwhelmingly powerful ally, in America.

George W. Bush, unfortunately for him as president but fortunate for we who have him for a president, lives in different times. Because Democrats were so bitter over the results of the 2000 election, all of those who were approached about serving in the cabinet, with the exception of Norm Minetta and George Tenet who were already there, refused to serve their country if it meant serving a Republican president. Meanwhile, whereas Britain in 1940 had no allies because Hitler had conquered them all, America in 2003 has few because most no longer have the stomach to fight for Western values. But we do have some, and most important among them is Britain. One suspects that, somewhere or other, Mr. Churchill is rather proud of both Tony Blair and George W. Bush, and all the prouder because, like him, they stubbornly persist despite a paucity of allies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2003 9:45 PM