George Bush and the Clash of Civilizations

A friend recently asked me what I thought the world would be like today if President Bush had not followed the path that he has. His question was posed in the context of the so-called Clash of Civilizations; that is, Islam vs. the West in all its benign to bloody forms, and was a polite nudge to try to get me to acknowledge that things would be a whole lot more screwed up than they are without Dubya at the helm.

KikoKimba wasn't buying. No siree. Here is my reply to my friend:

I have only a little time to speculate on where we would be in the third month of the sixth year of the 21st century had Al Gore not been robbed of victory in 2000 and then re-elected, let alone Kerry turning Bush out of office in 2004. As you yourself say in addressing "what ifs" generally, there is no definitive answer, but I'll take a stab at a semblance of one a bit later on.

You and I can probably agree that given the Democrats' perceived softness on national security and defense issues, we'd be in even bigger trouble had there been Democratic presidents since Clinton, but that argument is neutralized by the reality that the 9/11 attacks had more to do with Al Qaeda's anti-U.S. agenda than who happened to be occupying the Oval Office.

This is what I can say:

At best -- at very best -- George Bush has been a mediocrity who does not have the horsepower (intellect, passion, commitment, disicipline, knowledge, historical interest, focus, ability to put aside politics in the service of a greater good) to lead effectively and deal effectively with the Clash of Civilizations and other enormous challenges on his watch.

Bush has surrounded himself with men like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz whose own potential for greatness has been subverted by their slavish addiction to their own agenda, blindness to other ideas and perspectives, and worst of all, determinedly piggybacking their philosophy and the preconceptions that flow from that philosophy onto national policy and the course of world events no matter how awkward, inappropriate, shortsighted or dangerous the fit is.

The war in Iraq is Exhibit A. You cannot tell me with a straight face that the focal point of the U.S. pushback on the Clash of Civilizations generally and Islamic terrorism specifically -- the theater where the vast majority of the men and women, sweat and tears, and materiel and money would go -- should have been Iraq. But as the ample and growing historic record shows, that was predetermined years before Bush was elected and was set into motion even before the fires at the World Trade Center had been put out.

I choose these words extremely carefully: That policy decision was so wrongheaded, so perversely off target, so obscenely shortsighted, so disastrous and such a betrayal that it verges on the criminal.

I know that you and your shrinking coterie of like minds say a little prayer each night that you'll get out of bed the next morning and read that Saddam and Osama were indeed connected at the hip and that caches of WMDs have been found somewhere in the vast Iraqi outback. Then you finally will be able to say, "See! Cheney, Rumself and Wolfowitz were right all along."

I can also say this:

Although botched responses to hurricanes, outting CIA agents to reporters and ill-considered port management deals are, as you infer, the background noise of history, they are indicators of the gross mediocrity of which I speak. More importantly -- and frighteningly -- they reveal not a stronger U.S. but a weaker one at a time when pushing back against that Clash of Civilizations has never been more urgent.

Furthermore:

One of the tenets of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz mindset has been "My Way or the Highway." Opponents are traitors. Being touchy feely is, of course, not a suitable weapon for the pushback arsenal, but acknowledging the opposition and reaching out to allies are vitally important.

As the so-called "second take of history" in the form of the first books on the invasion and occupation of Iraq roll out, I am repeatedly struck by how disinterested the Bush administration has been in trying to understand the Muslim mindset, let alone Iraq and Iraqis. They have violated a cardinal dictum: Know your enemy.

Ruthlessness has its place in the War on Terror. But these men also have violated something profoundly fundamental and fundamentally profound: They have turned basic American freedoms on their ear -- the very freedoms that we presumably are fighting this war to defend -- by unapologetically flaunting the Rule of Law, including condoning the use of torture. When over 90 percent of the members of the U.S. Senate, half of them members of Bush's own party, voted to outlaw the torture of enemy combatants, the president threatened to veto the legislation. He then backed off ever so slightly in signing the bill, but attached an executive memorandum to it saying that he felt no compulsion to follow the rule of this particular law.

Yes, Germany and even France have come around after a period of frostiness to Washington because, as you also note, America is the only nation standing between them and even worse trouble. Still, the Bush gang is anything but diplomatic, and its neutering of the State Department as an effective partner in foreign policy and installation of a yes woman as its secretary by the name of Condi Rice (who was still fighting the Cold War until the morning of September 11, 2001 and didn't give a rat's ass about OBL and Al Qaeda) has had its own unfortunate consequences.

At home, George Bush has been a divider and not a uniter. This is yet another indicator of his shortcomings as a leader. Inflammatory Rovian rhetoric has been the coin of this king's realm. It is extraordinary and terribly tragic how Bush has squandered his magnificent post-9/11 mandate.

And still further:

Gore and Kerry would not have been hamstrung by the pretzel logic of the Bush administration's "best and brightest." They would not have twisted agenda and circumstances to fit philosophy and preconceptions. Gore (who unlike Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz actually served in a war, as did that Kerry fella), would not have taken us into Iraq; Kerry would have been stuck with trying to get us out with honor and dignity. Gore would have made real efforts to improve homeland security, not the smoke-and-mirrors and politics-before-preventives that were are saddled with -- and the next president, whomever it might be and whichever party he will hail from -- will have to fix.

Returning again to the Clash of Civilizations, in that context the last several years have been an enormous waste of energy, goodwill and lives for dubious and ill-conceived ends. Even the Bush administration's praiseworthy passion for spreading democracy has had unintended and sometimes draconian consequences, such as in Iraq itself and mostly recently Palestine, and of course does not extend to nations like Pakistan, Kazikistan and Egypt when being pals with and selling arms to repressive regimes is more important than imparting democratic values.

While I would never suggest that Gore, Kerry or any other president would have acted more wisely and pushed back more effectively, it is quite obvious -- and historians will quite agree -- that Bush and his "brain trust" have been the wrong people at the wrong time, and we will be paying dearly for that for many years to come.