December 28, 2004
IDEALISM NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD:
Sins of the Father: DUBYA IS BAD. HIS FATHER WAS WORSE. (Tom Frank, 12.27.04, New Republic)
Even his foreign policy was unprincipled and heedless--at least when the stakes were low. When officers in Panama's army attempted a coup against the country's dictator, Manuel Noriega, Bush, who had openly advocated such a revolt, now couldn't decide whether to intervene or stand aside. In the end, he managed to do neither, ordering American troops in the country (the canal had not yet been transferred to Panamanian sovereignty) to set up a pair of roadblocks but otherwise wringing his hands. After the press criticized him for timidity, Bush had second thoughts and, a few weeks later, invaded the country. He was, increasingly, a silly man in a serious job.Other world events just made Bush look small. When the Berlin Wall fell, Bush, taken by surprise, reacted with caution, if not exactly reflection: "I don't think any single event is the end of what you might call the Iron Curtain. But clearly, this is a long way from the harsh days of the--the harshest Iron Curtain days--a long way from that."
Indeed, Bush's presidency may have faded into welcome insignificance had Saddam Hussein not invaded Kuwait in August 1990. At the time, Bush had gone through a rough summer. It was mainly because he had chosen to break his campaign pledge of "Read my lips: no new taxes," leading to the New York Post headline, "Read My Lips--I Lied." In 1988, Bush had repeated his tax promise at every campaign stop--getting the crowds to chant it with him--and pummeled Dukakis for refusing to make a similar pledge. (He'd also eliminated Bob Dole from the GOP primaries with the same tactic.) Now the bill was due.
With Saddam, however, Bush proved that, at least in the realm of foreign affairs, he could occasionally act with seriousness and resolve. Because war was the desired end--without one, Iraq could withdraw and remain a threat--Bush laid out demands in a manner designed to prevent Saddam from negotiating his way to a settlement. In the meantime, he assembled a large military coalition blessed by the United Nations. The offensive began in January, and, by February of the following year, Iraq had been driven out of Kuwait. It was an astonishing rout.
But Bush also had to figure out how he wanted to end the war. Marching to Baghdad would splinter the coalition, but leaving Saddam in power meant trouble, too. So Bush chose to encourage a rebellion in the Iraqi military, in the hope that a new Sunni strongman might emerge to replace Saddam. While the fighting raged, Bush suggested in February 1991 that Iraqis "take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside." Radio broadcasts later linked to the CIA encouraged Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. Things didn't go as planned, however. Shia and Kurds bravely accepted the invitation to rise up, but Saddam's army officers didn't, turning their guns instead on the rebels.
Faced with the prospect of supporting a Shia rebellion--and the possible creation of a Shia state, which friends such as Saudi Arabia opposed--Bush suddenly found the prospect of Saddam's ouster less appealing. So he changed his mind. Saddam, happy to have a free hand, employed helicopter gunships to kill tens of thousands of Shia and Kurds as American forces in the region stood by. By early April, millions of Kurds were fleeing the massacres and crowding into refugee camps in neighboring Turkey, and Bush was starting to come under fire in Washington. "We went over there for a moral purpose," argued Senator Al Gore at the time, "and now we are insisting that our American forces stand by and watch as helicopter gunships, responding to the orders of Saddam Hussein, open fire on innocent men, women, and children--even firing on hospitals--simply because these people who are being killed responded to our request that they rise up against Saddam Hussein."
Bush, in response to such criticism, said he naturally felt "frustration and a sense of grief for the innocents that are being killed brutally, but we are not there to intervene ... that is not our purpose. It never was our purpose." Even when all twelve members of the European Community (yes, even France was tougher than Bush on this one) argued for placing humanitarian considerations above territorial ones--to create safe enclaves in Iraq, say, for those fleeing Saddam--Bush remained obdurate. "The objectives ... never included the demise and destruction of Saddam personally," Bush explained to reporters. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.
You can't really blame the senior President Bush--there's never been a good Realist presidency, but the elites keep insisting it'll work eventually. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 28, 2004 2:23 PM
It's also a cautionary tale for whoever runs for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Aside from the "Read My Lips" pledge, Bush 41's other theme was the "kinder, gentler" conservatism, which hinted at, but never confronted the question: Kinder and gentler than who? The slogan was an implied claim that there was some unnecessary meanness in the Reagan years, and was designed mainly to soften GHWB's media image, since in big media's eyes just having Reagan in the White House was mean-spirited.
The result was the "RML" pledge, which was created to offset the negative image that the other slogan generated among the Republican base. Once he broke the tax hike promise in 1990, all that was left was the pledge to play nice with congressional Democrats, and we know how that turned out.
Bush 43 tackled the image/slogan thing in 2000 with "Compassionate Conservatism," but in the last four years has enraged Democrats by refusing to roll over for them, which has again brought up claims of mean-spiritedness by the Dems and the media. So candidates running for the GOP nod in 2008 can placate the media by staging their own "kinder, gentler" campaign, but at the risk of alienating the base, or they can embrace GWB and run as a more legitamate continuation of his administration.
I can already guess which way John McCain plans to run (or Sen. Hagel, if he takes the plunge). But it will be interesting to see what other Republicans are willing to risk being tagged as a meanie by the press while running in support of Bush, with the plus likely being a far more energized base during the general election.
Posted by: John at December 28, 2004 3:00 PMWell, this is a nice corrective to the plaudits we've been hearing for GHWB (given only to stick a knife in his son) and to the overblown and nonsensical "dynastic" concerns. But what a mess this essay is. Frank should at least decide if Bush I showed strength and resolve in Iraq, or was more feckless than the French.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 28, 2004 3:03 PMThe Republican candidates in 2008 are going to have a very difficult time measuring up to President Bush. They seem to be choosing the road of soft talk and accomodation, which will give them about 35% of the vote.
If they want to run as GHWB, more power to them.
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 28, 2004 4:11 PMMy wife won't hear a word against GWHB, and her idol is Barbara, so I promised a word in his defence. I know the tax fiasco and the failure to take Baghdad still sticks in the craw for many, but what he did in challenging Hussein was a reversal of forty long years of lassitude, and it captured the stunned admiration and cheers of even the most hardened crap-on-America-Euros. The President does have the advantage of being able to build on that legacy and, it must be admitted,( ugh) Clinton's Bosnian adventure. It is easy to forget how craven and timid we all had become. Even Reagan's bombing of Tripoli in repose to murderous terrorist attacks was almost universally seen as audacious and destabilizing. Think that would be an issue today?
Posted by: Peter B at December 28, 2004 6:03 PMBut it was a mistake. What difference did it make which corrupt regime sold us the oil?
Posted by: oj at December 28, 2004 6:05 PMOld Bush was a corrupt, poorly advised, feckless wimpy idiot. However, he is retired and his son has wisely paid more attentions to oracle bones and chicken entrails than to whatever advice his father and the coterie of criminals like Baker and Scowcroft might have.
Why Tom Frank chooses to remind us of the worst GOP president ever is beyond me?
Posted by: Bart at December 28, 2004 6:13 PMGHWB is the reason I became a Democrat. The man was awful.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at December 28, 2004 6:45 PMChris:
Really? Can you elaborate? Seriously.
Orrin:
Colour me confused. We talk a lot here about the interplay between the moral and self-interested aspects of foreign policy. GWHB, whatever his sins, got the whole world to rise in anger and commit troops and money to challenge an international bandit. America's star rose sharply. Granted he wimped out too early, but why was the venture a mistake?
Posted by: Peter B at December 28, 2004 7:31 PMPeter:
International banditry isn't a cause worth fighting.
Posted by: oj at December 28, 2004 7:56 PMThat's local banditry.
Posted by: oj at December 28, 2004 8:34 PMPeter:
Had he gone to war to remove Saddam from power in Iraq rather than from power in Kuwait it would have been a good war.
Posted by: oj at December 28, 2004 8:56 PMI don't mind do-nothing Democrat presidents. Unfortunately they all want to do "something" and it always turns out to be the wrong thing. Think Clinton, Carter, LBJ.
But Americans elect Republican presidents to do "something" and GHWB didn't really want to do anything. He just wanted to be president. Besides the Gulf War, what did he accomplish? He fixed the savings & loan crisis. Remember that one? It needed to be done, but Americans expected more.
Stopping the Bosnian genocide in 1991 or 1992, instead of waiting for Clinton to do it in 1995, would have been a noteworthy accomplishment. Unfortunately he picked advisors whose goal was to keep the US out of the Balkans (and prevent German reunification).
What Bosnian genocide? Do you perhaps mean Serb Christian self-defense from the Mujahadeen terrorists?
Posted by: Bart at December 29, 2004 6:10 AMAny strong feelings about GHWB, particularly in context between his predecessors and successors in the presidency, always leave me puzzled. On balance I'm not a fan, though I voted for him in both 88 and 92, but I can't understand being excited by him, one way or the other.
In the Gulf War, he certainly missed his chance for greatness. His concern never was primarily with Kuwait. He wanted to develop a new world order, protect Saudi, shut Saddam down and free Kuwait, in roughly that order. To get the coalition, and UN approval, he had to agree not to go into Iraq. When push came to shove, a great president (his son, for example) would have solved the Gordian Knot the only way it can ever be solved, but GHWB just couldn't bring himself to do it.
As I think about it, "Willing to break a promise to the American people, but not willing to break a promise to the UN" is a fitting epitaph for him.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 29, 2004 8:01 AMThe first Gulf war was a mistake. What his son is doing now is cleaning up the results of that mistake.
Posted by: Mike at December 29, 2004 9:58 AMBart: no, I don't mean that at all. I mean the deliberate killing of all the men and boys in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Bosnian town by Serb paramilitaries.... culminating in the murder of 7000 at Srebrenitsa while Danish "peacekeepers" stood idly by.
And I refer to the gang rapes of thousands of Bosnian women and girls, sometimes followed by their executions.
Did mujahadeen from Chechnya and elsewhere enter the conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo later? Yes. Another reason why this ought to have been resolved years earlier than it was, during the administration of Bush the Elder.
From Day One, Izetbegovic was an Islamic fundamentalist. He and his group wanted to eliminate the Serb Christians of Bosnia and were given a green light by Clinton and NATO to do so. The 'Serb paramilitaries' were merely a desperate, last gasp attempt to prevent the slaughter by Muslims of Christians in the region.
If they got a little over-exuberant at Srebenica, so what? The world is a better place for it.
Posted by: Bart at December 30, 2004 6:43 AMBack to vile, I see.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 30, 2004 8:00 AMRE: "If they got a little over-exuberant at Srebenica, so what? The world is a better place for it."
That's basically the attitude of the Old Europeans toward the 9/11 bombers.
Can you explain why anyone should pay attention to your amoral blatherings?
Simply put, any action by the Serb irregulars was richly deserved by the Bosniaks. The Serbs had themselves been the victims of brutalization by the Muslims during the Nazi period, when large numbers of Muslims at the urging of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem joined up with the SS. They engaged in predations all across Yugoslavia along with their Croatian allies murdering in excess of 800,000 Serbs. The Balkans are the land of the blood feud, no less than Rwanda.
Moreover, the Serb struggle is part of the greater struggle of the civilized world whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or secularist against the Muslim menace that has been ongoing since that pedophile Muhammad and his followers first arrived on the scene in the 7th century CE. It is of a piece with Lepanto 1571, Vienna 1689, COnstantinople 1453, Kazan under Ivan Grozny, Tours 732 etc. It is the same struggle that Christians in Timor, Buddhists in Thailand, Hindus in India are facing. It is not as some appeasers and self-dealers would paint it, a struggle between a few 'Islamists' and America, but is instead a struggle between the 1.2 billion diabolists who belong to that Death Cult of the Moon God and the remaining 6 billion or so people on the planet. It is a struggle that will not end unless Islam or civilization is eradiacated from the planet, and civilized men must not shirk from their responsibility to defend what is ours.
Posted by: Bart at December 31, 2004 6:40 AM