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?
5 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.
Had to get one comment in. Re:
"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."
PERHAPS?
Geez, I guess I should be happy with ANY concession from the right, but PERHAPS torture is a bad idea? PERHAPS intentionally deceiving the world is wrong? PERHAPS needlessly killing tens of thousands is bad?
No perhaps about it. It's wrong. All of it.
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