Truer Words Never Spoken

Juan Cole pretty much nails the problem of Bush -- but not only him -- pretty much every conservative think-tanker of the last fifteen years, all of whom from the shallow and silly like ClifFORD May to the venal like Richard Perle to the intellectual and woefully misguided like Paul Wolfowitz:

The assassination of Lebanese cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel on Tuesday has thrown that country further into yet more turmoil.

The crisis is a further testament to the bankruptcy of George W. Bush's Middle East policy. Under the dishonest rhetoric of 'democratization,' what Bush has really been about is creating pro-American winners and anti-American losers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Bush's vision is not democratic because he always installs a tyranny of the majority. The vanquished are to be crushed and ridiculed, the victors to exult in their triumph. It is like a Leni Riefenstahl film.

These clowns only have as there base reference that ALL prior American Foreign Policy is a failure -- which is patently false as well as ridiculous. They stupidly thought this prior to 9/11 and for those who were actually in power and who actually failed they have used it as the vehicle for their own crazy-ass policy choices. Decisions that have backfired each and everytime they have been applied.

The United States had more than ample ability to "blow shit up" for the years prior to Bush -- however, from FDR to Clinton -- both Parties had leaders that generally followed a foreign policy line where moderation worked for great success (the UN [oh how they hate it], NATO, nuclear arms treaties, victory in the Cold War) it is only when they ventured out of moderation that disaster occurred [Cuba, Vietnam, etc.]. But Bush has constantly deviated from this line...

...and constantly fucked up and made things far worse.

There is NEVER going to be a fucking utopia [or as the Cheney Administration defines it the United States ruling the World with an Iron Fist] you can only make things better by marginal degrees. That's realism, and that is the world we fucking have. To use 9/11 as this attempt to create this cockeyed and delusional vision underlies the great negligence and crimes of these idiots.