‘Bush doesn’t understand Iraq, or Lebanon, or Gaza, or…’

August 23, 2006

The best part of presidential press conferences in which Bush talks about foreign policy? The next day, when Slate’s Fred Kaplan explains how the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In his latest piece, Kaplan really doesn’t hold back.

Defeating terror by promoting freedom — it’s “the fundamental challenge of the 21st century,” he has said several times, especially when it comes to the Middle East. But here, from the transcript of the press conference, is how he sees the region’s recent events:

“What’s very interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy.”

What is he talking about? Hamas, which has been responsible for much of the violence in Gaza, won the Palestinian territory’s parliamentary elections. Hezbollah, which started its recent war with Israel, holds a substantial minority of seats in Lebanon’s parliament and would probably win many more seats if a new election were held tomorrow. Many of the militants waging sectarian battle in Iraq have representation in Baghdad’s popularly elected parliament.

The key reality that Bush fails to grasp is that terrorism and democracy are not opposites. They can, and sometimes do, coexist. One is not a cure for the other.

I think that’s true — if we followed Bush’s logic, we’d probably have to invade Great Britain — and in just three paragraphs, Kaplan decimates the entire philosophy underpinning the president’s foreign policy. For at least two years, the Bush gang has treated it as a given that democracy = peace. I know we’re dealing with a group that creates its own reality, but they’re bound to give up on this argument eventually, right?

And then there’s the debate over whether Bush understands the meaning of “strategy.”

“[H]elping Iraqis achieve a democratic society” may be a strategic objective, but it’s not a strategy — any more than “ending poverty” or “going to the moon” is a strategy.

Strategy involves how to achieve one’s objectives — or, as the great British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart put it, “the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy.” These are the issues that Bush refuses to address publicly — what means and resources are to be applied, in what way, at what risk, and to what end, in pursuing his policy.

Instead, he reduces everything to two options: “Cut and run” or, “Stay the course.” It’s as if there’s nothing in between, no alternative way of applying military means. Could it be that he doesn’t grasp the distinction between an “objective” and a “strategy,” and so doesn’t see that there might be alternatives? Might our situation be that grim?

I’m afraid so.

Terrific piece – I read it this morning and it was so simple and devastating I forwarded it to some friends. Just shreds Bush with so little effort.

I’d love to see the media discuss this, but I’m not counting on it.

  • It’s not just that Boy George II doesn’t understand the Middle East. All his Bushites are ignorant too. His Secretary of State is a specialist on an extinct country. The rest of his policy establishment doesn’t seem to be much better. And they universally and publically despise anyone who is knowledgeable about these matters.

    It’s the revenge of the Frat Boys over the Policy Wonks and we are suffering the consequences.

  • The more you hear about how little Bush knew, the worse it gets. As I noted here, A recent movie mocked George Bush by showing a President who was surprised to learn there were different types of people living in Iraq. It turns out it was no joke. A book by Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith claims “President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq.”

  • Let’s back this thing up a couple centuries or so, and look a story about an example of democracy in action vis-a-vis armed turbulance:

    Once upon a time, a group of people decided they didn’t care for the form of government placed over them by a foreign head of state who sat several thousands of miles away, on the other side of an ocean, in a different country, a different continent, and who held a completely different set of social, theological, and political values. This group of people didn’t like being dictated to by uncaring politicians, and they didn’t really care all that much for the “distant ruler’s” military coming in from afar, and trying to enforce the laws and beliefs that the group of people didn’t want any more.

    This group of people burned the ruler’s image in effigy; they created mean things to say about him, and they did a whole lot of not-so-nice things to the representatives of this across-the-sea ruler. Eventually they wound up shooting at each other.

    Now, the ruler’s name, you already know. George. But the angry men who were fighting his rule? Their names weren’t Hussein—or al-something-or-other.

    From New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, Joseph Hewes, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton;

    From Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry;

    From Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery;

    From Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott;

    From New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris;

    From New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark;

    From Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross;

    From Delaware: George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean;

    From Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton;

    From Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton;

    From North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn;

    From South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton;

    And, from Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.

    Those guys put everything on the line, rather than “staying the course” of an inept, incompetent, negligent government.

    They chose not to stay the course—and they rejected the idea of “cutting and running.” They fought, and they won both the day—and the field. They beat the tyrant.

    So—who says there’s only two choices in this thing called Iraq?

  • Would someone please just shut off the tape looping endlessly in Bush’s brain? Why does the press even bother showing up at these press “conferences”? Do we need endless reminders that Bush screwed up by invading Iraq and the US screwed up by not holding him to account in Nov. 2004? Too bad we can’t put a recall referendum on this fall’s ballots.

  • In everything I’ve read for the last two three years. I’ve never heard that argument or rational before. For some stupid reason that logic flew totally under my radar. How true can true get.

  • I think CB misses the nuance that is the Bush Doctrine. His facts about strategy are correct and he has some impressive sounding quotes from supposed scholars. CB missed the point tree in the forest of suppoorting documentation. Bush actually means “stragegery” not strategy. He tried using strategery but was endlessly corrected by the grammar police as they are not familiar with the word strategery. Now he uses strategy in place of strategery to keep the focus on the policy and the issues instead of distracting from the important affairs of government with pointless arguments about semantics.

    Let me help explain it. Strategery is anything that helps Bushies and the PNAC folks get what they want. It is a hybrid of a strategy (action plan) and creating your own reality (bullshit). It often involves simply stating your end goals as steps to achieving themselves. Sample – “We will win the game by scoring more points than the other team, that is our strategery.”

    It is similar to Steven Colbert’s “Truthiness” but betterer.

    Please try to pay more attention next timew CB. Thanks.

  • I think that you are missing an essential point. While Bush is certainly wrong that democracy = peace, a more difficult question is if democracy is a prerequisite for long-term peace. Consider that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both rather stable U.S. allies and neither one democracies, have been exporting their dissident radicals leading to the formation of al-Qaeda. Thus, we have a strategic interest in reducing discontent around the world and democracy seems to be a good way to do so. The challenge is how do you manage the transition from authoritarianism to democracy? Even England required a civil war before the Crown submitted to the authority of Parliament.

  • yes please! start by liquidating the totally disgusting media, and the soi-disant service industry

  • thanks steve. that was nicely put. a good historical reminder.

    for governmental authoritarians like the bush administration, any democracy is a threat.

    and this includes american democracy at the present.

    think how many times we have read of an individual or group that has been banned from or ejected from a bush public appearance for wearing a t-shirt or having a sign. it must number in the dozens of incidents in these six long years.

  • “The key reality that Bush fails to grasp is that terrorism and democracy are not opposites.”

    To Bush,of course,they are. His worldview is a prime example of Manicheism — the belief that everything is either good or evil, with no in-between.

    Bush was simply born about a thousand years too late. He would have fit in well during the early Middle Ages.

  • Of course Bush (or his people for that matter) don’t understand strategy because strategy requires planning, a word this administration doesn’t seem to be familiar with either, as well as all the facts, as opposed to the cherry picked ones that support his beliefs/desires. Also, strategy is complicated and takes work, neither of which he is capable of.

    And lou I agree with you, why does the press bother? I assume it is an effort to be fair and/or they don’t want to miss something on the off (very off) chance he does actually say something important. Of course he never has so why they think this time would be any different is a complete mystery. Of course muscle memory or pavlovian training may be better reasons.

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