Neocon Neocon Neocon Neocon Neocon Neocon
By Mitch Berg
Karl Rove writes a butt-kissing mash note to his boss’ administration:
This may knock me off some Christmas card lists, but I can see a case for history being kinder to Bush than might seem imaginable now.
Yes, there are any number of better decisions he could have made. Foremost among them would have been to bring a quick and decisive end to the war in Iraq shortly after it began.
And yes, he appears to have been soft on big business, especially the oil and energy sector.
There are areas, though, where Bush has excelled.
He has faced a number of crises that either no president or at least few have had. First, he was commander in chief when the United States was attacked at home on September 11, 2001. He was decisive in his response and showed admirable leadership both at home and abroad.
The nation now appears headed for disastrous financial calamity, the worst since The Great Depression. His administration has been forceful in trying to bring calm and to allocate money to industries fighting to survive.
And the economic woes of this country — just like other monumental, sea-change problems — did not simply appear one day or go away the next. Sure, this happened under his watch but the seeds for our mortgage, home loan crisis and those of the domestic automobile industry collapse were sown long before Bush first took office.
His administration rid the world and a nation of Sadaam Hussein, a despot whose sordid, tortuous crimes against humanity are well documented.
He paved the way for democracy in Iraq and other countries. It is still too early to tell if democracy will stick in any of those places, but people who have never voted are voting and, among others, women have new found rights to education and liberation.
Well, that’s the best you can expect from a racist neocon neocon Israeli-tank-driving neocon torturemongering neocon neocon like Rove.
UPDATE: Whoops. It wasn’t Rove at all. It’s Richard L. Connor, at CQ.
I regret the misunderstanding.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:26 am
We had another president this unpopular, who got us into an unpopular war, & who’s very election tore the nation in two… Now the messiah wants to pretend he is that president!
Fact is, G.W. Bush has more in common with Lincoln than just about any other president, or president-elect. It’s only through the lens of history do we see Lincoln as a great president, because he was roundly hated by much of the country when he was alive.
Only time will tell.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:41 am
” . . . because he was roundly hated by much of the country when he was alive”
I can think of a particular region of the country where he was universally detested.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:43 am
OMG – what a load of turd Mr. Shirt.
First, Lincoln aspoused compassion, collegiality, and above all, cooperation.
Read his 2nd innagurual, where he lambasted those in his own party who championed retribution and deviciveness.
Your understanding of Lincoln appears inadequete at best. Bush will be regarded as an abject failure, a place he rightly and truly eanred.
He engaged us in a war of his own chosing, a needless war, a war upon a despot among a host of despots purely for political and economic gain for his party and his party’s supporters.
He wrecked an economy, he claimed to support democracy, but recently said that if a democratic government isn’t possible, that’s ok.
Lord.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:48 am
First, Lincoln aspoused compassion, collegiality, and above all, cooperation.
So did Bush.
Your understanding of Lincoln appears inadequete at best.
Even if that were true, it’d be irrelevant. It’s about Bush.
Bush will be regarded as an abject failure, a place he rightly and truly eanred.
Your record at clairvoyance is, to date, pretty dismal. We shall see.
He engaged us in a war of his own chosing,
Really?
So you’re saying he was behind 9/11?
Please explain.
a needless war,
Debateable.
a war upon a despot among a host of despots purely for political and economic gain for his party and his party’s supporters.
Tinfoil-hatted raving.
He wrecked an economy,
As always, you’re wrong.
He spent too much, but he also tried to fix the conditions that led to the mortgage meltdown. He reacted forcefully – and arguably wrongly, but he reacted – to the crisis.
he claimed to support democracy, but recently said that if a democratic government isn’t possible, that’s ok.
You mangle context so badly it’s the equivalent of a lie.
But you’ll never read this, will you?
January 16th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Ah, the old switcheroo. That never gets tired!
January 16th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Let me help – and please notice ‘with malice toward none’ – do you think Rove, or Bush, or any neocon neocon neocon neocon, can claim such an attitude. You neo-cons give up nothing to Oliver Stone. not one thing.
“Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 1
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. 2
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” 3
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. ”
These are some of the finest words spoken by any President – if you feel GWB reflects this kind of unity, decency, and intellect – well, history will certainly be the judge, but I suggest you are profoundly biased.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Is Bush the sort of orator that history records Lincoln having been? Obviously not.
Let’s do try to compare apples and apples, here. Nobody’s saying Bush is a Reagan, Kennedy, either Roosevelt or Lincoln as a communicator.
But then you’d have to understand what was being said to know that, right?
January 16th, 2009 at 10:54 am
No switcheroo, Clown.
Do you think there’d have been an invasion of Iraq without a 9/11?
January 16th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Bush = Lincoln. Haha, you kooks get ever more delusional!
Lincoln won his war.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Please grasp the import of the words, he commented that BOTH sides were due blame, that the price of all the monies earned by slaves as a cost of economic woe, was not too much a price to end slavery, but above all, that BOTH sides, north and south, needed to show compassion.
I wonder, really, do you get that? Do you GET that his message would mean that the US had to take a long hard look at the causes of TERRORISM, like it did slavery, that it would have to accept it’s own responsibility for inequity in the world.
Do you GET that? Do you get that you’d call him an American Hater, a molly-coddler?
Lincoln had as much in common with GWB as GWB does with Ghandi or Sojourner Truth.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I was referring to the rhetorical device, Mitch:
“UPDATE: Whoops. It wasn’t Rove at all. It’s Richard L. Connor, at CQ.
I regret the misunderstanding.”
I think you’re going to have to look a little further down the list when looking for Bush parallels, btw. Reagan, Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Lincoln are right out. More like Buchanan, Grant, Hoover, Harding, Andrew Johnson….
On a good day? Millard Fillmore.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Peev. Lincoln was almost everything you detest in Bush.
He waged war without congressional approval, he suspended habeous corpus, he took the concept of a ‘unitary executive’ farther than Bush ever dreamed of taking it. Here, for example, is Lincoln defending his Emancipation Proclamation:
January 16th, 2009 at 11:19 am
PENI,
Once again, your vast wealth of ignorance has astounded me!
I read the first line of your first post & determined, as usual, you are full of SHIT, & I’m not wasting my my time on complete idiots like yourself. Enjoy your sunshine & lollipops, you hateful self deluded dolt!
January 16th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Bush = Lincoln. Haha, you kooks get ever more delusional!
Lincoln won his war.
AC proves his lack of reading comprehension again! No one said Bush=Lincoln, moron! I said he had more in common with Lincoln than any other president or president to be. Unless being A senator from Illinois, or getting shot is the criteria, then I guess JFK & Obama are pure Lincoln-esque. But if you actually look at his actions & the situations he had as president, only Bush has had those situations.
Oh & I know it goes against your meme, but despite set backs, the war in Iraq has been successful. We’ll see if your guy manages to blow it in the next 4 years.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:27 am
From Bush’s speech last night:
Sounds downright Lincolnesque to me.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:28 am
& I know, if Obamessiah does blow it, it will be Bush’s fault!
January 16th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Your understanding of Lincoln appears inadequete at best.
Yet ANOTHER category where peev claims expertise. Will it never end?
Or maybe he lives next door to a professor of American History who talks a lot.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:53 am
His “knowledge” of Lincoln almost mirrors an an article from Newsweek trying to compare the Obamessiah to Lincoln. Like Peni, the article totally missed the reality of Lincoln’s life & situation & instead went for the fairy tale version that fits nicely into a 4 year old’s 10 page picture book called “Honest Abe”.
Facts like, He mismanaged the war through 1863, & almost didn’t receive the party’s nomination for reelection due to his unpopularity, That he denied ACTUAL constitutional rights to Americans during the war, that his election in 1860 caused the country to literally split in two. That the “Great Emancipator” only freed the slaves in the states “in rebellion”, where he had no real power, while leaving slavery intact in the state where he was still considered president, & could have freed those slaves, Etc. etc.
Lincoln reunited the country… by the barrel of a gun. The causalties of the reunification 1,030,000 over a 4 year period, or about 3% of the US population. The casualties from Shiloh alone, a 2-day battle, was 23,000!
But hey Lincoln is from Illinois, Obama’s from Illinois, Lincoln rode on a train, Obama rode on a train… frickin’ idiots!!!!
January 16th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Neocon Neocon Neocon Neocon Neocon Neocon
Wow, talk about Peev bait.
Peev, in re “neocon,” as the man said:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Here’s a question — who were the first neoconservatives, and when did they come on the scene? I’d be willing to wager that Mitch knows the answer.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Peev-
Lincoln didn’t look into the “root causes” of slavery. He ended it.
Please explain why President Bush invaded Iraq “purely for political and economic gain.” At the time, his popularity and that of his party was at almost record levels. The best thing to do politically at that point would have been to follow Clinton’s path and NOT do anything about Iraq.
There was little reward and huge risk politically in doing what he did and he and his party paid a price for it. You may not agree with the decision, but if you have a reasonable bone in your body, you have to realize that he did it because he thought it was the best thing for the country at that time. Again, you can argue that he was wrong, but to say that he did it for purely political and economic reasons is silly.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I was referring to the rhetorical device, Mitch
Doh.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
but if you have a reasonable bone in your body
Doh.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Ooo, can I play!
“So you’re saying he was behind 9/11?””
No, are you saying Sadaam was?
“”Do you think there’d have been an invasion of Iraq without a 9/11? “”
Absolutely no doubt. My reasons for supporting the War in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and I believe that trying to tie them together was one of the biggest mistakes Two Term President Bush made. There was more than enough of a case to depose that zealot without making up stories about 9/11.
Flash
For the war for the right reasons, not the Right reasons
January 16th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Flash-
The greatest mistake Bush made re Iraq was attempting to get UN approval for military action.
The only way it was even remotely possible to get that approval was to make Sadam’s possession of WMD the casus belli. Nothing good and much bad came from this.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
You’re all missing Mitch’s point.
The point is that if an authoritative source, like Richard L. Connor, the publisher of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, can recognize President Bush’s visionary genius, that proves what great accomplishments President Bush had in ridding the world of Bin Laden, Saddam’s WMDs, Yalta-like concessions to useful tyrants, in raising incomes and standard of living for all Americans, guiding us magnificently through natural disasters, and all those other things those Bush-Deranged Skeptics said would never happen.
When we look back on the Bush years, and we will, the name that will stand out is Richard L. Connor.
Heckuva job, Dickie.
/jc
January 16th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Still avoiding, Precious Peev???
January 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Slash, you forgot the part about the Democrats uniting behind Bush and recognizing that in these difficult times there are no Republicans, no Democrats, only Americans.
It brought a tear to my eye every time I heard a Democrat proudly say “He’s my President, too!”
January 16th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Richard L. Connor, the publisher of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader
As opposed to Slash. Anonymous commenter.
Usually appears to or against authority are considered a logical fallacy. In this case, I think we can make an exception.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“Absolutely no doubt.”
What possible scenario could have caused GWB to invade Iraq without the occurance of 9/11?
We had no inspectors in Iraq post Clinton’s bombing. International pressure was building to lift or at least ease the embargo. Even support for the no fly zone was fading as France was leaving the effort.
What could have prompted an invasion sans 9/11?
January 16th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
> It brought a tear to my eye every time I heard a Democrat proudly say “He’s my President, too!”
That is soooooo 9/12 thinking.
Grand Master Rove proved that was exactly how to throw that Defeatokrat Daschle out on his sorry arse. Gore said it and where is he now?
President Bush sent those Terrorist-Loving nobodies into the wilderness where they belong.
He’ll go down in history for that if nothing else.
/jc
January 16th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
What possible scenario could have caused GWB to invade Iraq without the occurance of 9/11?
I thought we invaded Iraq to liberate the people and topple Sadaam. 9/11 wasn’t the reason at all.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
If Saddam had actually managed to shoot down a coalition plane that was patrolling the NFZ that would have done the trick.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
9/11 was the impetus to force Sadam and other regimes to disclose and dismantle their WMD programs, and to crack down on state sponsors of terrorism.
Without 9/11, the US would have struggled to continue a policy of containment, as the UN and some allies were calling for the lifting of the embargo. Even attacks against coalition aircraft resulted in nothing more than a mild response.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Syria shot down two US planes in ’83 and we never invaded Syria. I seriously doubt that would have been enough.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Slash, you are a fool. The voters of S Dakota bounced Daschle, not Carl Rove.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Syria was not party to ceasefire with the US in 1983. There was no peace treaty signed at the end of Gulf War I, just a conditional cease fire.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I still doubt that downing a plane would have sparked a full scale invasion. More likely there would have been some retalitory bombings, perhaps a few cruise missiles into Bagdad.
January 16th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Yeah! Unless we wanted to invade! Go all Joe Pesci on him!
The way I think it would have gone down (pure speculation, of course) is that if Saddam taken down one of the planes patrolling the no-fly zone, we would have demanded compensation and also Saddam would have had to agree to allow future overflights. He would have refused. We would then pour troops into Kuwait to increase the pressure on him. Saddam, being a very stupid guy when it comes to this kind of play (I think history proves this) would not have backed down and the party would be on.
The biggest flaw in the argument that Bush would have invaded Iraq no matter what is that Bush set conditions that Saddam could have met if he wanted to avoid war. If he would have allowed Blix & co to do their job Iraq would have been certified WMD free and support for war would have evaporated. In the final days before the invasion Bush said that if Saddam and family would go into exile he would call the invasion off.
Now that would have been a nightmare scenario. A civil war would almost certainly have broken out. The US would be held responsible and we would not have troops in the country to try and stabilize the situation.