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May 21, 2008
George Bush Is Not A Leader
By Jerry Frey
Driven by his simplistic beliefs and callow intellect, George W. Bush's policies have produced disastrous consequences that have established a legacy whereby our nation may not long exist as we have known it. He will not be impeached by a legislative body but history has begun condemning him as a flaming failure. The magnitude of the Bush administration's incompetence is unprecedented. In sum, Dubya lacks common sense.
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Spring. 2008. The final throw down: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton take pokes at each other's candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination to the detriment of their party and tulips poke through the soil, while the power of the George W. Bush presidency wanes and Dubya's personal influence diminishes.In the twilight of a failed presidency, a Gallup poll disclosed that the Texas soufflé's approval rating had settled at another all time low: 28%.
Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, however, provided a better intelligence indicator of Bush's national opprobrium.Writing in the April 25 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Noonan revealed that in "the heart of Texas conservatism," Lubbock, Texas, the Decider-in-Chief had become disliked. "He has lost them. I was there and saw it. Confusion has been followed by frustration [and] has turned into resentment, and this is huge.
Everyone knows the president's poll numbers are at historic lows, but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that likes him....The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say first, growth in the power and size of government, Iraq."Perhaps that good ol' boy Karl Rove shares some of the responsibility for his former patron's fall from grace.Speaking to a Republican gathering in New Hampshire, Rove informed Bush's disciples as reported by the June 18, 2006 edition of the The Manchester Union Leader:
KARL ROVE might not have lied to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about his role in publicly identifying CIA employee Valerie Plame, but he told one heck of a whopper when he stopped in Manchester on Monday. Speaking of what separates Democrats from Republicans, President Bush's top political adviser said, "They're for more spending. We're for less spending."Republicans for less spending? Less than what?
President Bush has overseen the largest expansion of federal spending since Lyndon Johnson - even if you exclude defense and national security spending.
Considering that George Bush has increased the national debt by more than $3 trillion and finances his war of choice by obtaining overseas loans from Asia and the Middle East, Rove's hypocrisy is only surpassed by Dubya's pretensions at being a leader, who increasingly exercises the power of his office through photo-ops, sound-bites, and fruitless overseas forays.Leaders inspire soldiers, athletes, or employees to strive, sweat, and sacrifice for victory, a championship, or market share. Leadership is the ability to inspire with words and deeds, not electronic images.
Following the death of the arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006, President Bush visited Iraq to show the flag and meet Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, and gain a "firsthand feel" for the nascent democratic government. Returning to the White House, President Bush held a robust news conference in the Rose Garden, during which he described his understanding of leadership: "I understand leadership. You've got to have will. You've got to have desire to succeed. You've got to have a plan. And that's what I found in Iraq."The apparent focus of the President's understanding of leadership rests with the notion that an unwavering commitment to a course of action represents leadership. In that view, a teacher with a lesson plan who will teach or a student who will study to become an engineer stand as leaders.
Web-sites are devoted to the speech of George Bush. These clusters of his remarks reveal his true intellectually vacuous self.
Wait a minute. What did you just say? You're predicting $4-a-gallon gas? ... That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.
George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Feb. 28, 2008The solution to Iraq -- an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself -- is more than a military mission. Precisely the reason why I sent more troops into Baghdad. George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 3, 2007
My job is a job to make decisions. I'm a decision -- if the job description were, what do you do – it's decision maker.George W. Bush, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007
We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans. George W. Bush, Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000
Lieutenant Bush got it half right. Successful leaders make decisions based upon sound judgment, after assessing the available information.George Bush lacks an auto-data base of knowledge. Bush's conclusions and actions seem to derive from the college principle of S.W.A.G. (scientific wild-ass guess). His lack of intellectual curiosity is a given fact of his presidency, as fixed as his daily exercise regimen.
George Packer established this verity in his 2003 New York Times piece Dreaming of Democracy when he informed readers that during a meeting with Iraqi exiles in January, they "spent a good portion of the time explaining to the president that there are two kinds of Arabs in Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites. The very notion of an Iraqi opposition appeared to be new to him." Shiites rebelled in the aftermath of the Gulf War and were suppressed by Sadaam's helicopter gun ships, a fact our less than curious George overlooked or ignored in his calculus for war.In 1968, George Bush graduated from Yale with a degree in history. Studying European history, Our George's courses must have included 1066, 1492, Martin Luther, the French Revolution, and the reign of Napoleon, which would have taught him that the emperor's design to establish a new government in Spain, promulgate a new constitution and bring modernity to that country, failed, because the Spanish hated the French. A sampling of lessons that can be gleaned from the French experience in Spain that parallel the American experience in Iraq include: weak central authority, disbanded military units that resulted in individual economic hardship due to loss of income, unemployed young men, banditry, and smuggling, disdain for and suspicion of foreigners, along with religious antipathy.
Napoleon conquered most of Spain but failed to subdue the country for a variety of reasons, the chief one being the strong support offered by the English who provided gold, men, and Wellington, a general superior to any of Napoleon's marshals. The brief appearance of the emperor in 1808 resulted in the evacuation of the English army from the Iberian Peninsula.
Like the American effort in Afghanistan, which was distracted by the invasion of Iraq, Napoleon left Spain to again confront Austria, which had been defeated in 1797, 1800, and 1805. Another formidable parallel fact is that initially, Napoleon attempted to dominate Spain on the cheap, by not devoting enough military force. Writing in The Campaigns of Napoleon, David Chandler observed: "Napoleon the statesman had set Napoleon the soldier an impossible task. Consequently, although the immediate military aims were more or less achieved, the long-term requirement of winning popular support for the new regime was hopelessly compromised.The lesson was there for the world to read: military conquest in itself cannot bring about political victory."
The Ivy League graduate's understanding of history within living memory is grossly suspect. He firmly believes Japan is the model for democracy in Iraq.On September 3, 2004 he addressed his flock at West Allis, Wisconsin to justify his invasion and to rally support for his war presidential credentials.
I believe in the transformational power of liberty [a Rove talking point?]. I've seen it happen throughout history, and so have you. We've seen nations in our own hemisphere become free nations [Cuba? Venezuela? Colombia? Guatemala in 1954?] and allies [Mexico?] in the sake of peace.
Our parents' generation saw the transformational power of liberty when, after World War II, Japan, because we believed in democracy, Japan became a friend [trade barriers?].You know, I sit down at the table with Prime Minister Koizumi and discuss North Korea and other issues, on how to keep the peace. I'm able to do so because my predecessor and other citizens of this great country believe that liberty could convert an enemy [Pearl Harbor] into a friend [The Bomb].
There was [sic] a lot of cynics and doubters in those days -- you can understand why. Japan was a fierce enemy. I mean, people couldn't envision how liberty could transform a society. But there were fellow country people of ours who did believe that then. And today we sit down with an [a former] enemy and talk about the peace. See, that's what's taking place. Liberty is powerful. Some day an American President is going to be sitting down with a duly-elected leader of Iraq talking about keeping the peace, talking about -- (applause.) A free Afghanistan and a free Iraq will set powerful examples in a neighborhood [from the Pillars of Hercules to the Himalayas?] that is desperate for freedom.
George W. Bush's statement concerning Japan's imposed democracy following utter defeat in comparison to the hoped for goal of establishing a democracy in Iraq with the rule of law, freedom of the press, and independent courts, defies logic. Japan was a homogenous society ruled by an emperor who lost his power yet retained his influence over his erstwhile subjects. Hirohito's acceptance of the new status quo meant that the Japanese people acquiesced to the new order in their country. In contrast, Iraq is a fractured society along Sunni versus Shia lines, accompanied by Kurdish, Arab, Turkoman, Assyrian, and Christian divisions.Most Iraqis identify with their clan or tribe, which ensures a weak sense of nationhood. Bush refuses to acknowledge the stark difference between tribal Iraq and militaristic Japan.
Tokyo's bureaucracy survived while government continued functioning in rural villages and townships. Social cohesion remained intact. No ethnic or religious fault lines emerged in Japan following the formal surrender in Tokyo Bay.If the Commander Guy had been president during the rise of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, we'd be speaking Italian now.
Bush's distance from reality can be discerned from the following metric. The day before the 2006 mid-term election, he asked J. Dennis Hastert (R-Il) the GOP leader in the House to serve as speaker again in order to shepherd the White House's agenda. Common sense concluded before the election that the president's unpopularity would cause the Republicans to lose control of the House, at the least, yet, according to Robert Draper in his work, Dead Certain: The Presidency Of George W. Bush, the Decider-in-Chief actually believed that his party would hold the House and add seats in Senate. A bright flare in the air benchmark regarding Bush's relationship to the truth was displayed at the end of April when he criticized Congress for not allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, it would take ten years for oil to be produced from ANWR. Refining capacity, speculation, and the falling dollar impact the price of finished petroleum products more than supply. Before Bush's War began, a barrel of oil sold for less than $30.The Bush administration and its neo-con embeds concluded the world had changed after the 9/11 tragedy but they forgot that nations at war require allies --- competence trumps ideological loyalty in the real world.Without Islamic allies, the Americans in Iraq are viewed by Arabs on the street as Crusaders thirsting for oil. In remarks reported in The New York Sun, Paul Wolfowitz, the so-called architect of the Iraq War and deputy defense secretary, acknowledged that the government did not foresee an insurgency and was "pretty much clueless on counterinsurgency" in 2003.
Despite the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumvirate did not anticipate the possibility of 4th generation asymmetrical warfare in Iraq that has no Forward Edge of the Battle Area.
Though all the senior policy-makers, including generals, share blame for the Iraq fiasco, President Bush alone bears responsibility for the falling dominoes of bad decisions. From their initial emphasis on missile defense and their dismissal of Clinton administration concerns about homeland terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has demonstrated non-pareil cluelessness since it took office.
Moreover, the man of principle, who lauds the spread of liberty, ignores sham democracies in Zimbabwe and Venezuela or the agony of Darfur.
George Bush's decision to invade Iraq could be history's greatest blunder since Napoleon's decision to march on Moscow after the Battle of Smolensk in August 1812. The chief beneficiary of Bush's invasion policy has been the Iraqi government which no longer fears an attack from Sadaam Hussein's Iraq. Tehran's government exercises increasing influence especially in southern Iraq, which is the main source of the Baghdad regime's oil wealth. In contrast, without the corset of American firepower, their lack of artillery, tanks, and helicopter gun ships prevents the Iraqi Army from defending its borders against Iran or Syria.Results of the 2006 mid-term election, the desire for change among the majority of the electorate, will be confirmed by the forthcoming presidential election when either Clinton or Obama is elected.
Democrats and independents should be prepared, however, for the truth. American combat brigades cannot be withdrawn completely from Iraq. The Gulf War ended in 1991. We still maintain a robust troop presence in Kuwait. World War II ended sixty-three years ago; we still maintain bases in Europe and Japan. The Korean War ended in 1953 and our military is pledged to defend South Korea. Without crew-served weapons such as tanks, the Iraqi Army is no better than a militia.An American withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq could tempt the Iranian government to invade as a challenge to the new president. In that event, the quagmire could become a whirlpool that sucks Israel, the Sunni-Arab states, and more precious American troops into the mistake known as Bush's War.
As the era of the electronic mass communications industry dawned, during the presidential primary of 1920, Baltimore journalist and nitric acid wit H. L. Menken wrote: The larger the mob, the harder the test.In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality.
But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
On January 16th, 2008, Bush's Brain spoke in Houston to the Republican National Committee about the upcoming presidential election. During Karl Rove's 3,200 word speech, he never mentioned George Bush: not once. George Bush, the kinda guy you'd like to have a beer with, except he's an alcoholic.What, me worry?