Richard Clarke has thrown down the gauntlet. Now comes clobbering time for GWBush.
The Bush 43 White House has been able to hide behind Iraq for a good amount of time. I have been willing to say that Iraq was a good idea, if not a timely one. I am not one of those who find magic in UN sanction, but the president decided to go it alone, and he has to face up to that decision. So the question is whether or not the experts on terrorism really do agree with the president and what has he done to push them off or follow their lead.
I do buy Colin Powell's arguments that states still matter and that state sponsored terrorism is part of the threat picture these days. But I don't know what makes Donald Rumsfeld or any of the PNAC people experts on terrorism. Which is to say while I still look forward to a great American empire, it still must make the clear distinction between the wars against tyrants and the wars against terrorists. It has mushed up its rationales and is not coming clean. This is unacceptable.
A war against Iraq, regime change in Baghdad, is a good idea. I think it was inevitable. I think when all is said and done, America took the right path. But this is a path that others most certainly could have done more responsibily. Kerry has yet to prove to me that he would have taking the right road, much less more responsibly, but that still leaves Bush with a black mark which gets harder to ignore as time goes forward. He has taken advantage of the crisis (not as shamelessly as the Spanish Socialists - btw if anyone is still complaining about France, shut the hell up and look further south for your Quislings) and the time of crisis is over.
What positions Bush has put us in is not a bad one geopolitically, but it is a horrible one with regard to using the intellectual resources of this government properly. More and more he appears to me to be a single-issue, single-minded singleton. That's not presidential.
Recent Comments