Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Ouch: The Liberals Again Admit that Bush May Be Right
We spotlighted several weeks back a gathering problem in liberaldelusionaland: some of the saner dimwits are admitting, quietly, that, well, George W. Bush and the neoconservative crowd just might be right on the war in Iraq. Well, it has happened again: this time it occurs in the far-far-far left British rag The Guardian.
Perhaps the neocons got it right in the Middle East
Every day we see some liberals realizing that their demonization of President Bush has met with gigantic failure. They lost; democracy and sanity are winning. And man, are we glad to see the shiv start to hurt in the liberal gut.
We spotlighted several weeks back a gathering problem in liberaldelusionaland: some of the saner dimwits are admitting, quietly, that, well, George W. Bush and the neoconservative crowd just might be right on the war in Iraq. Well, it has happened again: this time it occurs in the far-far-far left British rag The Guardian.
Perhaps the neocons got it right in the Middle East
Those of us who work on the gloomy side of the prediction industry about Iraq, the prospects for Middle East peace, and the sanity of the Bush administration, have been given plenty to think about lately. On the one hand, on Monday the 87th British soldier was killed in Iraq, while suicide bombs and armed clashes have accounted for more than 40 Iraqi deaths since last week. On the other, the Bush administration is in triumphalist mode. A friend who visited the White House recently described the president's buoyant account of his Iraqi crusade, which highlighted the fact that a national government has been formed. Some progress is claimed towards normalisation in Shia and Kurdish regions. Syrian withdrawal gives Lebanon a chance of making something of democracy. Washington asserts that it is involving itself more than ever in the Middle East peace process.
None of these claims should be dismissed out of hand. The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.
Such scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere.
Every day we see some liberals realizing that their demonization of President Bush has met with gigantic failure. They lost; democracy and sanity are winning. And man, are we glad to see the shiv start to hurt in the liberal gut.
