THE ANGER OF THE ANTI-ANTI-INTELLECTUALS:

Why Bush Angers Liberals: We have our reasons, and that is why we're so pragmatic about 2004 (MICHAEL KINSLEY, Oct. 13, 2003, TIME)

We ... thought that Bush's apparent affability, and his lack of knowledge or strong views or even great interest in policy issues, would make him temperate on the ideological thermometer. (Psst! We also thought, and still think, he's pretty dumb — though you're not supposed to say it and we usually don't. And we thought that this too would make him easier to swallow.) It turns out, though, that Bush's, um, unreflectiveness shores up his ideological backbone. An adviser who persuades Bush to adopt Policy X does not have to be worried that our President will keep turning it over in his mind, monitoring its progress, reading and thinking about the complaints of its critics, perhaps even re-examining it on the basis of subsequent developments, and announce one day that he prefers Policy Y. This does not happen. He knows what he thinks, and he has to be told it only once.

This dynamic works on facts just as it does on policies, making Bush a remarkably successful liar. This too is unexpected. There seemed to be something guileless and nonneurotic about Bush when we first made his acquaintance. It was the flip side of his, um, dimness and seemed to promise frankness if nothing else. But guess what? Ignorance and lack of curiosity are terrific fortifications for dishonesty. Bill Clinton knew that he had had sex with that woman and had to work hard to convince himself that he hadn't. Bush neither knew nor cared whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or close connections to al-Qaeda when he started to say so, and once he started, mere lack of evidence was not going to make him stop.

Just this week, responding to the brouhaha about the alleged White House outing of an undercover CIA agent, Bush declared that he takes leaks very seriously and deplores them. Liberals across America screamed into their TV sets, "But that leak was in the papers two months ago, and you did nothing about it until the fuss started last weekend!" If Bush could hear them, he might furrow his brow in puzzlement and say, "And your point is?" Steeped as liberals are in irony, it took us a while to learn what a powerful tool an irony-free mind can be.

Screaming powerlessly at a defenseless television set is a metaphor for the sense of powerlessness that unites these elements in liberal rage. In the 1980s, liberals nursed the fear that we really might be dwelling in an irrelevant cul-de-sac outside of the majority American culture. That kept us sullen and mopey. Today we feel that our side got the most votes, and it didn't matter. This man then sold a war to the country based on fictions, and it didn't matter. It didn't even matter if he hadn't made the sale, since he mainly asserted the right to invade another country. And Krauthammer is right: we didn't think he had the heart or the brains for anything like this. It's maddening.

You almost have to wonder if Mr. Kinsley didn't just pull one of his own columns from the 80s--about why liberals hate Ronald Reagan--and switch the names & add the stolen election bit.

MORE (via Political Theory)
Grenada re-visited 20 years on (Dominic Bascombe, October 05 2003, Great Reporter)

To this day it remains unclear what sparked the internal political problems.

A rift had been developing between Bishop and Coard, and in particular the people within their own party who supported each side.

According to some, it was a blatant grab for power by Deputy Prime Minister Coard.

For others, Bishop seemed too willing to adopt his approach to strengthen a relationship with the US, largely following advice from the then Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister George Chambers.

Whatever it was, the rift widened and Bishop was soon denounced at a political party meeting and placed under house arrest.

The situation dismayed many observers, for "to arrest Bishop is to arrest the revolution itself," it was said.

There was little public support for the counter-coup by Coard however, and a crowd of people marched to Bishop’s home to free and take him to Fort Rupert.

It was there that the army crushed the group and Bishop and his colleagues were executed.

The situation now demanded some form of action from their Caribbean neighbours.

Eugenia Charles, then Prime Minister of Dominica, met with other heads of government of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and imposed diplomatic sanctions on the tiny island.

Charles later met with Prime Ministers Edward Seaga of Jamaica and Tom Adams of Barbados and discussed the possibility of using force to restore peace on the island.

She then took the unprecedented step of inviting the US President Ronald Regan to send American troops to Grenada.

This was just the impetus the US was looking for, as they could now claim legitimacy in their actions.

This step was roundly condemned by Trinidad, Guyana, Belize and the Bahamas, all of whom disagreed with the use of force against the small island.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the affair was the British response.

A former British colony, Grenada is a member of the Commonwealth, but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government publicly denied any knowledge of any impending use of force in Grenada.

Indeed, when Reagan ordered the US invasion on October 25 1983, Thatcher claimed ignorance of the deed.

But the actions of the US were not ignored by the rest of the world.

At the United Nations, a General Assembly resolution condemning the action garnered 108 votes in favour and only nine votes against.

Displaying a frightening nonchalance with world opinion, the invasion went ahead, with bombs dropped on the small island and thousands of US troops sent to take on a handful of ill-equipped Grenadian and Cuban workers.

During the invasion, the US Government seized its opportunity to spread falsehoods alleging there were thousands of Cubans on the island and that Grenada was stockpiling weapons and ammunition, (in today’s parlance these would perhaps be re-named weapons of mass destruction).

The attack was inevitably over within a matter of days with the dead included 24 Cubans, 18 Grenadians and 18 Americans. The Grenadian figure remains disputed to this day .

It's always helpful to remember epissodes like Grenada and Nicaragua when the Left and the Europeans start babbling about how we all fought communism side-by-side in the Cold War. They bailed out on us then too.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 6, 2003 6:30 PM