Conservatives criticizing Bush Doctrine
I am no conservative, but it is nice to see all these conservatives taking the question of Bush's war strategy head-on. This is where the political conversation should be -- not wasted on the left's inability to cast objective moral judgement.
I can't make out why Victor Davis Hanson is suggesting Bush's strategy is preferable to the "old calculus," circa WW2, of achieving absolute victory before setting up the government of our choice. I do know what motivates this view in general: the altruistic feeling that it's our duty to sacrifice ourselves for the masses in the Middle East, and the refusal to believe that mysticism and statism are as popular with those masses as proven to be by their actions across several decades. This last is further demonstrated by the Bush Administration's now famous miscalculation on how long there would be bombs and bullets flying in Iraq. The Middle East is not inhabited by a Jeffersonian Virginia public which just happens, through no fault of its own, to be controlled by Koran-thumping or AK47-raising tyrants.
Hanson: That contemplation and forbearance [of Bush's strategy in Iraq] are both too complex and too much to ask of a post-September 11 public...
In other words, the American "public" is too stupid and emotionalistic to grasp how all this sacrificing of 20-year-old enlisted men and women -- for a people who put adherence to Islam right in their constitution and who continue to despise Israel -- is in our interest.
Hanson: On the Right the politicking works out with cynicism and disgust...
How is it "politicking" to be disgusted that more American lives have been spent than absolutely necessary to secure American liberty?
The unspoken notion that US soldiers rather than, to the greatest extent possible, just Middle Easterners should die in the course of defusing the Middle East's many nefarious power centers repulses more than a few Americans, and that is, I believe, a great deal of what Bush is up against in US public opinion.
(As usual, I found these articles about the war by subscribing to PrairiePundit.)
I can't make out why Victor Davis Hanson is suggesting Bush's strategy is preferable to the "old calculus," circa WW2, of achieving absolute victory before setting up the government of our choice. I do know what motivates this view in general: the altruistic feeling that it's our duty to sacrifice ourselves for the masses in the Middle East, and the refusal to believe that mysticism and statism are as popular with those masses as proven to be by their actions across several decades. This last is further demonstrated by the Bush Administration's now famous miscalculation on how long there would be bombs and bullets flying in Iraq. The Middle East is not inhabited by a Jeffersonian Virginia public which just happens, through no fault of its own, to be controlled by Koran-thumping or AK47-raising tyrants.
Hanson: That contemplation and forbearance [of Bush's strategy in Iraq] are both too complex and too much to ask of a post-September 11 public...
In other words, the American "public" is too stupid and emotionalistic to grasp how all this sacrificing of 20-year-old enlisted men and women -- for a people who put adherence to Islam right in their constitution and who continue to despise Israel -- is in our interest.
Hanson: On the Right the politicking works out with cynicism and disgust...
How is it "politicking" to be disgusted that more American lives have been spent than absolutely necessary to secure American liberty?
The unspoken notion that US soldiers rather than, to the greatest extent possible, just Middle Easterners should die in the course of defusing the Middle East's many nefarious power centers repulses more than a few Americans, and that is, I believe, a great deal of what Bush is up against in US public opinion.
(As usual, I found these articles about the war by subscribing to PrairiePundit.)
Labels: politics
posted by Brad Williams @ 3:39 PM
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