Bush, Greatness and the End of the Liberalism

So here's something I've been thinking about lately: What if President Bush ends up being remembered by history as a great President?

What if the Neocons were right about the Middle East, that it was at a tipping point just waiting for someone to give it a shove toward the modern world?  What if Iraq really was the key?  What if, in the next couple of years, Iraq achieves some kind of stable political self-determination, Lebanon regains its independence from Syria, and everyday Palestinians decide they want peace more than they want to cling to self-destructive points of pride?  What if, as part of the bargain, the encouraged youth of Iran rise up and overthrow the mullahs, Egypt holds some real elections, and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad departs under cover of darkness for a long, wealthy, embittered exile?

What if, at the end of his term, President Bush has by force of his own will transformed the Arab World into something modern, a region ready to make a run at joining the 21st Century?

History isn't good with details.  If the Mideast takes a great leap forward, history won't remember how many American soldiers died or whether the President and his crowd fudged the facts in leading the country to war.  (Franklin Roosevelt, of course, fudged a bit, too, in edging the U.S. toward World War II, and no one remembers that because World War II was a war that brought such good results.)  All history will remember is that a quarter of the world changed wildly for the better, and that it happened because of the President's will.

I don't like President Bush on a personal level.  I don't think he's honest, first of all, and the smugness of Bush Republicans just makes me want to vomit.  But I supported the war because, in the end, I figured a world without Saddam was better than a world with.  Also, I'm a believer that sometimes, when things are really bad, the best thing you can do is shake them up. After 9/11, it didn't seem to me as if we could do anything to make the Arab world worse than it already was, so what the hell: Get rid of a scumbag and see what happens.

Since then, I've gone back and forth between feelings of immense optimism and feelings of darkest pessimism.  But the last few days I've seen something that makes me think this might be real.  Right now, in the news from the Mideast, I sense something that's not unlike the feeling just before communism collapsed.  Things are happening that never happened before; people are doing things that used to get them killed, but no one seems to have the belly for pulling the triggers.  It seems we may be encountering a turning point in history.  It's a feeling that is fleeting, a feeling not of the inevitable, but of the tantalyzingly close.

I've said for years that if the Palestinians adopted the tactics of Ghandi they'd have their own state in a year.  The moral force of non-violent protest is not something a nation like Israel can resist.  The only thing that keeps the Palestinians from achieving their goals is their acceptance of people who blow up city buses and pizza joints. 

While we're not seeing peaceful protest in the Palestinian Territories, we are seeing the Lebanese rising to the occaision.  The whole country has risen up to protest the occupation of their country by the armies of Syria, and instead of rolling tanks over the protesters Syria has announced that it will, indeed, pull out of Lebanon.  The dictatorial moron who runs Syria, who inherited his country the way hillbillies inherit mules, sees no other option.

The reason all of this is happening, without doubt, is the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Afghanistan showed everyone paying attention that Islamic dictatorship, while perhaps attractive in theory, enjoys little support at ground level.  The Taliban in Afghanistan were like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua: Popular with overseas theorists, but unpopular with their own people.  When the Taliban crumpled and headed for the hills, the Arab world no doubt took note.  Militant Islam no longer seemed the region's destiny.

Iraq showed something else completely: That the United States doesn't believe dictatorship to be the natural state of the Arab world.  Freedom for Iraqis was the liberal argument for the war in Iraq, an argument that most liberals failed to embrace.  Instead, the Democratic mainstream opted for morally indefensible isolationism, willingly condemning Iraqis to suffer -- theoretically forever -- under both Hussein and torturous economic sanctions.  We Dems made that non-decision decision simply because the thought of sacrificing American lives is more than we can bear, even if our soldiers are all volunteers and their deaths are in the service of liberty.

So, as a Democrat, I'm wondering: What do we do if President Bush was right?  What do we do if the Mideastern dominoes start falling and President Bush goes down in history as Winston Churchill, while we go down as Neville Chamberlain, howling weakly that diplomacy works and military force is no longer necessary?  What if our most conservative President goes down in history as a great contributor to the liberal ideals of freedom and tolerance, while we Democrats -- we liberals -- go down as cold-hearted and fearful, unconcerned about the suffering of our fellows while we sit contentedly in our affluence?

If that happens, are we even liberals any more?

Comments

[richard mcenroe]

JD — The current seeekrit neocon schedule:

Damascus
Tehran
Pyonyang
Berlin
Paris
Studio City (aw, c'mon, gimme something...)

[Dean Esmay]

What'll make you a real liberal will be the ability to swallow hard, look reality in the face, and say, "Damn it, I was wrong. I'm going to try not to make that mistake again."

Let's hope this works out the way it looks like it's going...

[Birkel]

First time visitor via a link from VodkaPundit. And I would like to encourage your thinking even further about how Bush may be proven correct.

Is it possible, good sir, that you were misled by those you trusted to provide the truth, unfettered and unvarnished by ideology or partisanship? Is it possible that Jim Lehrer, Tom Brokaw, WaPo, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and NYT (listed in declining order of responsibility, IMO) presented a less than accurate accounting of the situation? And is it possible that all their views would be distorted in one direction without some inherent bias?

One more question: Is it possible that things could have gone from as bad as was reported pre-January 30th to as good as things are reported today (less than five WEEKS) and the reporting be accurate and well-rounded in both cases? I would answer no! I would answer that I am ill-served by the herd mentality of "it's all bad" reporting and "it's all good" reporting too. And not knowing whether the quality of the news I receive is a terrible blow to a free society.

I challenge you, as you find the time and inclination, to question whether you were well-served by the MSM. And then sir, I would ask you to help press the MSM to perform their duties more fully. With more balance. And with more accuracy.

My best to you and your readers.

[Real Liberal]

Well another one bites the dust. Have fun Tom being a reactionary fascist you dirty bush-sucking bitch. The Dems don't need traitors like you anyway.

[kethepoo]

"If that happens, are we even liberals any more?"

Why not become a conservative? It feels good, and you don't even have to act guilty about your country all the time.

[Rob]

Good post. I think it takes great courage and moral fortitude to examine your basic beliefs - especially in public.

In the end, I think the best political "theory" to work under is "they are just like us". If you were living under a regime as evil as Saddam's, what would you sacrifice to see that your children became free? I think most people would say, "anything, even my own life". Not just Americans, but any people, anywhere. Here in the US, we just just have a failure of imagination when it comes to thugocracies: we just can't imagine how terrible it is to live in despair of ever leading a happy, normal life. We've known freedom so long we are no more aware of it than a fish is aware of water.

Good luck to you.

[Barry H]

Richard M-
"That's like damning Wilbur and Orville Wright for not inventing Jet Blue."

I love this. The simple analogies are the most effective. I'm a first-timer to your blog as well, and also by way of Vodkapundit. I am impressed not only with your article, but the thoughtfullness of all the posts that follow. I will definitely visit regularly. The discussion here, and the discussion around Iraq in general, bring to mind this quote by John Stuar Mill.

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
- John Stuat Mill

[craig]

History's a bitch. President Bush has carried JFK's torch of freedom into a new century- while McGovern's progeny ran for cover in the name of tolerance. As Stephen Green observes, 40 years ago, they would've led the charge... and 60 years ago, they DID lead the charge. It's about sacrifice and leadership- just like it was in 1961.

[kevino]

First time reader (link via VodkaPundit).
Libertarian on domestic issues, Kennedy Democrat, waiting for the party to regain it's senses. Didn't vote for Reagan, but I'll admit that he did a great job.

This is a good post, Tom. Well done.

The US and its allies have become catalysts for change in the Middle East.
On one side are the bigots; the other side favors equal rights.
One side likes dictatorships; the other favors representative government.
One side is murdering innocent people; the other tries to minimize loss of life.
One side is oppressing women; the other side embraces equal rights for women as a way to ensure peace and justice.
One side is trying to bring back the Dark Ages -- literally.

The US isn't all-powerful, and it isn't always perfect. We've made our share of mistakes, and we've even had to make deals will bad people. But come on! Is it really that hard to choose which side you're on?

There are people in the Middle East right now that are looking to us to help them step out of the darkness.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." President Kennedy

[Ahrey]

First off, excellent discourse. I do admire everyone's honesty.

Quick pimp-slap to Birkel. Come on. If owning up to one's errors/misjudgements makes onea traitor, then all thinking people are guilty. This is exactly what the Dems have bashed W. most for ... the unwillingness to admit mistakes.

Final point-I had a huge problem with Bush's WMD arguement.

I understand the post by Brian H. completely, "If Bush had said, "I think Saddam is a murderous bastard, I think he's got WMD, but I'm not sure because the Intel is unclear, and he tried to assassinate my daddy, so we're gonna take him out," do you think Congress would have gone for it? Would you have gone for it?"

But what follows is my version of a compelling and honest argument following 9/11.

1) Saddam has a motive to harm us. We know that Saddam hates America and would like to see nothing more than a continuation of these types of attacks. Between the Gulf War and his being held meaningless for the past 10 years ... the man is pissed.

2) He has means. We believe that he would be willing to at least provide financial if not material support to those who whould harm us. He is operating outside of the UN-Sanctioned Oil for Food program and has enough money squirreled away to cause serious damage. Furthermore, it is possible-although far from proven-that he is developing WMD.

3) We can only deny him opportunity. He has used chemical weapons against his own countrymen/subjects. He has slaughtered everyone who has opposed him. Based on this pattern of behavior, we believe that he would not hesitate to do the same to us if the opportunity arose.

Therefore, I believe the action to remove the Hussein regime is just and in the interest of the USA, the Middle East, and the entire world.

This is an arguement I would have believed ... because it is true and fully disclosed.

Just my two cents.

Ahrey

[Ahrey]

continued ...

pattern of behavior, we believe that he would not hesitate to do the same to us if the opportunity arose.

Therefore, I believe the action to remove the Hussein regime is just and in the interest of the USA, the Middle East, and the entire world.

Just my two cents.

Ahrey

[craig]

kevino- as a fellow traveling JFK Dem- I'm still waiting for the party to return to its senses. It's been a long wait- and judging from the '04 election, there's no end in sight. Nice job on the JFK's quote.

[Barry H]

I too was disappointed that President Bush emphasized the WMD issue so strongly. The humanitarian and other reasons were put forth, but not strongly enough -- this man was a butcher. However, I knew the reasons to go to Iraq were all of those stated by Ahrey in this excellent post. Whether the president emphasized them or not seemed irrelevant.

To me the WMD argument was like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion, not murder. Tax evasion was not why we wanted Capone behind bars, but it was the legal argument and means to jail a murderous thug.

[Pursuit]

Barry and others. Yes the WMD argument was always a bit much, but I think we forget that the goal was to do what had to get done. Lets remember that most people in the world believed that Saddam had WMD's. Bush's choice was to then go with this argument, that Saddam had weapons of such horrific potential that the civilized world could no longer tolerate it, and try to get enough buy-in to invade. He just barely made it. If this argument wasn't really enough to convince the world to take action, then its hard to believe that any of these other points like promoting freedom in the middle east, would curry favor with those who were engaged in "food for oil" corruption.

[gypsy]

An interesting post and interesting discussion. I disagree with a lot of it for reasons I'll go into elsewhere (on another blog), but I understand the thinking. One point of clarification, tho: the comparison of the Taliban to the Sandinistas is astonishingly wrongheaded. The Sandinistas were hardly saints, but they really did have a lot of popular support for a good decade-plus. They were re-elected to office in 1984 in elections that were considered free and fair by pretty much the whole world except the United States, which was busy funding (illegally, at some points) an insurgency made up largely of former members of the deposed authoritarian regime (sound familiar?). The Sandinistas were voted out in 1990 (right, voted out, not overthrown -- they established an actual democracy in Nicaragua, even in the face of Reagan's determination to eradicate them), in an election in which the United States made it perfectly clear that the choice was between returning the Sandinistas to office and ensuring a continuation of the U.S. war-by-proxy or voting for the U.S.-approved slate and receiving a resumption of American aid. After losing the election, the Sandinistas regrouped as an opposition party (not as roving bands of terrorist thugs, like the Taliban) and remain active, though diminished, in Nicaraguan politics. (Some thoughts on their legacy here.)

And speaking of the Taliban and liberalism, I'd also like to note (as I often do, because somehow no one remembers this) that before Sept. 11, about the only Americans or Westerners raising alarms about the Taliban were assorted human rights and feminist groups. I first read an account and warning of Afghanistan's dangerous slide into fundamentalism in The New York Times Magazine sometime in the mid-'90s. I'm glad that people elsewhere in the political spectrum have belatedly awakened to the necessity and wisdom of promoting human rights and democracy worldwide, but that just means they've moved toward liberalism, not the other way around.

[Chris]

Y'know, I agree with a lot of what you said, right up until you jumped the rails with the statement:

"The reason all of this is happening, without doubt, is the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Certainly that's how Bush would love to spin what's happening, but if you look at the actual events which led up, to, say, Egypt's announcement, it doesn't have much to do with Iraq at all. Rather, the Secretary of State condemned Mubarak's jailing of a political opponent, and the Egyptian government made a PR move to make themselves look better. That's not to say that this move might not be the first small step on a long road to democracy, but the causative factors were largely diplomatic, rather than military.

Likewise, Palestine seems to be moving towards peace not because of Iraq, but because Arafat, a corrupt, dishonorable man with a death-grip on power, is finally gone... again, something that had nothing to do with Iraq. Think about it for a moment - couldn't we expect the same rapid turnaround in Cuba if Castro died tomorrow? And would Cuba's change to democracy, in that event, have anything to do with Iraq?

All that said, I do think you're right that Bush, in the long run, may get a lot of credit for democratizing the planet, not because his actions were so incredibly effective, but because he's simply on the winning side of history - democracy and free markets have been on the rise long before Bush, and they'll be on the rise long after. That doesn't mean that Bush is right, or that others were wrong to oppose him. It definitely doesn't mean that those who opposed Bush opposed freedom and democracy - it just means that Bush lucked out, as he has at so many other times in his life.

[Barry H]

I may not have been clear in my last post. What I was trying to get across was that at the time the belief of a WMD threat was real, but regardless how going to Iraq was "sold", the reasons we went were many. And, the spread of liberty was always among them.

To me, how these reasons were publicly prioritized is not nearly as important as the results. Results which hopefully include liberty reaching even farther and deeper than most imagined.

[Magnum Serpentine]

First of all, if there is only one party, thats facism(SP).

Second the democratic party is gaining ground. We have the Montana Senate we have numerous governor positions.

Third mr. bush's approval rating is plunging, just like his support for his plan to destroy social security is plunging... According to Gallop, only 36% approve of mr. bush's plan to destroy Social Security.

Fourth... I have not been stunned into silence.

Fifth... I have not yet begun to fight.

[gypsy]

I wrote a long post about all of this, if anyone cares. It's over here.

[holdfast]

Tom wrote

"We Dems made that non-decision decision simply because the thought of sacrificing American lives is more than we can bear, even if our soldiers are all volunteers and their deaths are in the service of liberty."

Umm, you might have believed that, but for a lot of other folks on the left, it's more like:

"If non-Americans (or non-Westerners if you prefer) kill each other, that's really too bad and we should donate to the Red Cross or something, but if AMERICANS KILL NON-AMERICANS (especially non-white ones), that's a horrific crime - Imperialism! Colonialism etc, etc."

Thus it's much better for our national conscience for Saddam to kill 300,000 than for America to kill 3,000 - most of whom are bad uys and the rest of whom are the innevitable innocent victims of war. For a lot of folks on the left, the loss of American service peronnel is just the hook they use to appeal to the latent streak of isolationism that runs pretty deep in America. In reality they are far more concerned about the lives of non-Americans, whom they view as victims of the omnivorocity that is America.

[kevino]

gypsy: Good point about the PLO: Arafat's death had more to do with it than anything Bush did.

However, in other areas, where the people in the Middle East are sensing the sea change and following the example set in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush has helped. History may well remember that he professed this belief in democracy as a powerful force in the Middle East, and his critics laughed at him. He may be right.

I remember when Reagan (a man I din't vote for) said, "Tear down this wall" and told the world that we could defeat the Soviets. I thought he was nuts. It turns out he was visionary.

[B. Durbin]

Your final question, good sir, about whether you are truly liberals in regards to judgements of history, intrigues me. We cannot know how history will treat us; the best we can do is to examine our motives and choose the course we think is right. Who was it who said "The unexamined life is not worth living"?

If you are worried about whether your motives are truly liberal, examine them, get to the roots of your beliefs. You may have to reconstruct them; you may not. But I hope that you will discover that reflexive hatred, whether of a person or of a party, is far more trouble than it is worth, and that it is always a good idea to periodically re-examine one's suppositions so as to ensure that they are still valid.

Good luck to you, and should you come to a position that is opposed to my own, I should hope that it is always as principled as this post.

[kevino]

BarryH:

The problem with the DNC isn't the will to fight. Stop fighting. Start thinking. Start listening.

There once was a time when the DNC -- my party -- was the party of big ideas. We dominated the agenda because we had principles, we had high ideals, and we had solutions to the problems of our time. Now the party seems to have one principle: "Stop the GOP." That's not much of a principle, and it certainly isn't something that most middle-of-the-road voters can vote for. The DNC has become the conservative party, fighting to preserve the status quo. The GOP is presenting themselves as the party with ideas. Recall what James Carville said after Bush's impressive off-year election win in 2002: "A [political] party has to stand for something."

Blindly following the principle "the GOP must be stopped" leads to situations like bad Middle East policy. The average American knows that the US is more secure if well-armed radical Islamic fundamentalists aren't running whole countries. And they are proud to see people doing better in the Middle East. While they may have doubts about the way that Bush can handle the situation or they may have concerns about Bush being too optimistic, they were willing to give him a try.

Many of Americans saw the picture of the parade of cars in Lebanon where the young woman is waving an American flag. That's a powerful image.

[Birkel]

Reaction to reported pimp-slap:

You missed. Your pimp-hand is weak, son.

If you can find the word traitor anywhere in my post perhaps I'll reconsider.

What a maroon.

[Birkel]

I think perhaps you meant to call out the person who posted just below my post.

That would be "read liberal" who was calling names.

I await my apology.