BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, December 29, 2004
THE WORST BUSH. Tom "Don't
Call Me Thomas" Frank has a useful corrective to nostalgia for George
H.W. Bush on the New Republic's website. But Frank gets
carried away, arguing - believe it or not - that Bush the father was
actually a worse president than the current occupant of the White
House.
It's too bad Frank's piece is
available only to subscribers (click
here to read it if you're a
paying customer), because Frank's thesis deserves better than
hit-or-miss summary. Although let me take a simplistic swipe anyway:
anyone who tries to argue that Bush I was worse than Bush II because
the former pushed a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning, as
Frank does, really needs to take another look at Alberto Gonzales's
torture memos. At the very least.
Frank also omits entirely one of
Bush I's signal accomplishments: the passage of the Americans
with Disabilities Act,
evidence that Bush's Yankee Republican impulses were not entirely
dead. I don't doubt that someone will e-mail me that Bush had little
to do with the ADA. I don't care. He supported it and he signed it.
Bush II has given the ADA lip service, but today's Republican Party
would just as soon get rid of it. Indeed, in 2001 our only president
nominated
to a federal judgeship a
man who'd said the ADA was "not needed."
But Frank reserves the bulk of his
essay for Iraq, tying himself into knots in attempting to show that
Bush I's largely successful intervention to liberate Kuwait was, in fact, a bigger
disaster than Bush II's current war. Frank builds his case mainly
around Bush I's outspoken support for Iraq's Kurds and Shiites to
rebel against Saddam Hussein in 1991, which led to slaughter after
Bush refused to back up his words with force. He writes:
[W]hat is worse:
telling the world that you are sure about WMD when you are only
pretty sure - or telling a group of people that you support their
efforts to rebel and then standing by as they get killed? Killing
thousands in an attempt bring democracy to a brutal dictatorship -
or allowing many thousands more to be killed in the name of
holding together a coalition and maintaining regional stability by
preserving a brutal dictatorship? If we are ashamed of the actions
Dubya has taken in our name, why are we not even more ashamed of
the actions Poppy took in our name?
Oh, come now. Bush I engaged in
amoral realpolitik, and for that he deserves some criticism.
But was it a bad thing that the Kurds and the Shiites rebelled? Did
anyone really think we were going to rush in and support them? There
was every reason to think the rebellion might have succeeded; it
failed, as Frank himself notes, because the Iraqi army turned its
guns on the rebels rather than on Saddam. Tragic as it was, these
things happen, and it's hardly a reason that Bush I shouldn't have
encouraged a coup. Bush II, on the other hand, is merely responsible
for the single worst foreign-policy debacle since Vietnam, maybe even
including Vietnam. Bush I's cynicism enhanced our alliances
with the world community. Bush II's idealism has destroyed those
alliances.
Frank does concede that he's got a
difficult case to make. At one point he writes of Bush II:
Perhaps torturing
prisoners at Abu Ghraib wasn't such a brilliant idea. Perhaps
deceiving the public on the grounds for war and squandering the
nation's credibility for at least a generation will be judged to
have been impulsive. And perhaps we'd be better off not having
gone into Iraq, even if it meant that Saddam held power still.
America would probably be financially healthier and less hated
abroad, 1,300 Americans would still be alive, and 10,000 more
would have been spared devastating injuries.
Well, duh.
Here is Frank's mistake. He starts
out criticizing pundits like Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria for
building up Bush I as a way of tearing down Bush II. In the end,
though, Frank does just the opposite, building up Bush II as a way of
making the case against Bush I. He does it sort of half-heartedly; he
acknowledges that Bush II has some shortcomings, to put it mildly.
But there you go.
It's really pretty simple. Both
Bushes, father and son, were and are lousy presidents. But the son is
worse - much
worse. Is there really any
doubt about that?
posted at 2:43 PM |
4 comments
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4 Comments:
Dan --
I'd read the Frank piece yesterday and even sent it around to some fellow blog-addicts and while I found it provocative you're on-target with your critique. Frank has to build up the son to tear down the father. Frank's piece is incredibly useful, though, in that it reminds us all of the myriad reasons we voted for Bill Clinton in '92. Just because Bush I built a broad international coalition for his war doesn't mean he should get a pass on his other horrific policies. (I'm reminded of Kitty Kelley's recent comment about the Bush dynasty, "You think you're watching the 'Donna Reed Show' and then you realize you're really watching 'The Sopranos.'")
Frank rightly takes Friedman and Zakaria to task, both of whom have invoked the father in their perpetual (read: tortured and dishonest) defense of Bush II's Iraqi misadventure. Personally, I'm sick and tired of all the pro-war pundits who still cling to their phony visions of what this Iraq mess all means. All this insurgency tough talk from the likes of Friedman, Zakaria and Beinart, safe in their Washington offices, suggests a kind of foreign-policy "Revenge of the Nerds" or better yet, the often-parodied Marlon Perkins from the old "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom": "I'll stay here behind this tree while Harry wrestles the forty-foot Anaconda . . .")
In this sense I agree with Frank: if I have to read another one of Freidman's twee, self-righteous "aw shucks, a pluralistic, democratic Iraq will dry up the wellsprings of jihad and ultimately prove to be the best thing to keep Americans safe at home" columns, I'll gag on my bagel. I'd rather Congress re-appropriated the war supplemental for homeland seaport security.
Both Bushes, father and son, were and are lousy presidents. But the son is worse - much worse. Is there really any doubt about that?
Where does one start? It's as if Dan has pitched a tent in Harvard Yard, limited his reading to Howard Zinn, Chomsky and Buzzflash; in the process convincing himself that the Cheese eating, SUV Driving, Metrowest liberal hypocrites who own the Boston media are his only possible audience. Dan has become an expert in the strange world of "declarative questions" see above.
I'm still waiting for George III to enlist. If I were named after my grandfather [and uncle,sort of] and they were responsible for sending 1000's to fight and die in the middle east in the last decade, I would think I'd feel a bit of an obligation to go down an sign up for duty. George P.Bush [of Florida] is out of school. Let him do what TR and FDR's kids did and go into battle. Why shouldn't one Bush be asked to carry out the policies of his forebearers.
Dan,
At least expose the Bush family's miserable Iraq failures accurately. It was Gen. Schwarzkopf, not Poppy Bush who comitted the deadliest blunder which enabled Batthists to slaughter the Shias & Kurds in 1991.
The rebellion unfolded during post-surrender negotiations when all Iraqi aircraft were ordered grounded. Saddam's commanders specifically asked Schwarzkopf for permission to fly armed helicopters and, to their astonishment, he agreed. They then proceeded to slaughter and put down the rebels, something they could not do without the birds.
And, no, Dan --lying about WMD's, Pvt. Jessica Lynch, poison factories, Saddam-bin Laden collaboration, bio labs, yellowcake, and mushroom clouds while torturing & killing an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians and allowing N. Korea and Iran to develop nuclear weapons is not "idealism."
Anthony G.
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
