Bush a Genius Says NY Times

More Bush Achievements. Truly, history will paint him as one of the great historical figures:

Go, George!

This reminds me of the famous quote by Schopenhaur:

The truth goes through 3 phases:

First it is ridiculed

second it is violently opposed

third it is recognized as being self evident

Bush has been ridiculed.......violently opposed.........what comes next?.......do I see a long line of Dunces running to jump on the wagon???

Well, you have to account for the level of stupidity involved, but eventually, yes, that is just what you will see. It has, in fact, already started in a small way.

Thirty Seven pages and they're still trying to convince themselves that bu$h is a genius!

This is good!

More like it
This is more like the truth!

Looks like the libs and the Europeans are coming around. In the end, Bush will go down in history as a great leader whose vision led the world into a new century.

From the Washington Post: Source

Is Bush Right?
President's Critics Reconsider Democracy's Prospects in the Middle East
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 8, 2005; 6:00 AM

In countries where President George Bush and his policies are deeply unpopular, online commentators are starting to think the unthinkable.

"Could George W. Bush Be Right?" asked Claus Christian Malzahn in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel. Essayist Guy Sorman asked last month in the Paris daily Le Figaro (by subscription), "And If Bush Was Right?" In Canada, anti-war columnist Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star answered: "It is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right."

The tipping point came last week when Lebanon's pro-Syrian government fell. The international online media, much of which had been critical of Bush during his first term, had to acknowledge democratic developments on the American president's watch. Many commentators also cited free elections in Afghanistan last fall, Palestinian elections in early January followed by the Jan. 30 Iraq elections. Then came local elections in Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement of constitutional changes allowing his opposition to challenge him electorally.

Given Bush's insistence that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would lead to a democratic political order in the Middle East, many Europeans are "somewhat embarrassed" by these developments, Sorman wrote in Le Figaro.

"Hadn't they promised, governments and media alike, that the Arab street would rise up [against U.S. military forces], that Islam would burn, that the American army would get bogged down, that the terrorist attacks would multiply, and that democracy would not result nor be exported?"

"These dramas did not occur," Sorman says. "Either Bush is lucky, or it is too early to judge or [Bush's] analysis was not false."

Rüdiger Lentz, Washington correspondent for the German broadcast network Deutsche Welle, wrote, "There have been many good reasons to criticize the messianic political style of Bush's first term. But isn't it time now to stop finger-pointing and bickering?"

"After all, one has to acknowledge that Afghanistan and Iraq might have been catalysts for what we see now happening in Lebanon, in Egypt and even between the Palestinians and Israel."

In Germany, the economic daily Financial Times Deutschland accused Europeans of ignoring events in Lebanon. "It is bizarre that here in Germany, where the Berlin Wall once stood, this development (in Lebanon) is greeted with hardly a shrug," according to a translation by Der Spiegel Web site. The paper borrowed a phrase from New Yorker columnist Kurt Andersen saying that Europe is engaging in political "short selling -- hoping for bad news to back up the continent's 'ideological investment'" in opposing Bush.

"Short selling," the paper concluded, "is an honorable strategy on the stock exchange but in terms of democracy, it is looking more and more like a major mistake. Indeed, it isn't honorable at all."

Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent for London's Independent (by subscription) begged to differ on Monday. Writing from Beirut, Fisk predicted that Bush's call for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon would only hurt the Lebanese.

"Have we forgotten 150,000 dead?" he asked referring to the estimates of the number of people killed in the Lebanese civil war of 1975 to 1989. "Have we forgotten the Western hostages? Have we forgotten the 241 Americans who died in the suicide bombing of 23 October 1983? This democracy, if it comes, will be drenched with blood -- but the blood will be that of the Lebanese who live here, not that of the foreigners who wish to bestow freedom upon them."

Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab is not so pessimistic.

"The Lebanese intifada has provided a strong model for the Arab world," Kuttab writes in the West Bank-based Arabic Media Internet Network."It has sent shock waves throughout the Arab world," he says, noting that many Arabs had given up on the possibility of peaceful and patriotic democratic movements.

As though more argument were needed, here is a piece from the USA today opinion page:

Strategies or diversions?

By Peter Schweizer

Critics have assailed President Bush for his strategy on terrorism, calling the war in Iraq a diversion from the main task of defeating al-Qaeda. But just days after the 60th anniversary of victory in World War II, it is striking to note how Franklin D. Roosevelt faced very similar critics and how President Bush has adopted a grand strategy very much in the Roosevelt tradition.
With a logic that Bush would find familiar, FDR was lambasted by his critics for his WWII military strategy of defeating Germany first before focusing on Japan. They considered Germany a diversion. Wasn't it Japan and not Germany that had attacked us at Pearl Harbor, asked Sens. Arthur Vandenberg and A.B. Chandler? One foreign minister called the idea "suicidal heresy."

By 1942, American generals were complaining that precious resources were being diverted to fight Germans in North Africa, hardly a direct strategic concern. All of this should sound familiar in the debate over Iraq and the war on terrorism.

Conspiracy theories abounded then as they do today. Jon Meacham, in his book Franklin and Winston, writes about how FDR's critics believed that his Germany-first strategy was a result of excessive British influence. It wasn't a conspiracy involving Israel-loving neocons back then, but Anglophiles, who were manipulating the White House to serve British ends.

Both presidents also faced wild conspiracy theories that they manipulated intelligence to start a war: If Bush distorted intelligence to invade Iraq, FDR purposely ignored evidence that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor.

Then and now: Cries of politics

Democratic Sen. Millard Tydings essentially accused Roosevelt of ignoring his military advisers. Republican heavyweight Thomas Dewey, sounding like some of Bush's critics today, claimed that FDR's strategy of Germany first was really about domestic politics: FDR wanted to make sure that Pacific commander and potential GOP presidential candidate Gen. Douglas MacArthur didn't get the glory.

In a very strict and narrow military sense, FDR's critics were correct, just as Bush's are today. Germany did not pose an immediate military threat to the United States the way that Japan did.

In a fascinating parallel to Bush and Iraq, part of FDR's motivation for defeating Germany first was fear that the Nazis were working on atomic weapons. Alas, postwar intelligence revealed that Germany (like Saddam Hussein's Iraq) did not have much of a program. But military victory led most to ignore this massive intelligence failure.

FDR was not concerned with just the narrow military question of threats. Like Islamist extremists and secular Saddam, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were opportunistic allies. Though the Nazis considered the Japanese racially inferior, no better than mongrels, they were part of a worldwide movement. Using the same logic that Bush does today, FDR understood the need for a grand strategy that destroyed the movement, not just certain military aggressors that were part of it.

Grand strategy is not only about defeating enemies, but also defeating them in a sequence and a manner that leads to a favorable postwar situation. Can anyone seriously doubt that defeating al-Qaeda but leaving the political situation in the Middle East the same is at best a temporary victory? Bush, as FDR did, understands that only with political transformation will the postwar prospects for peace improve.

A worldview

The threat we face today is more amorphous and less easy to define than it was during World War II. But the strategic principles remain the same. Bush's critics, like Roosevelt's, are flawed in their thinking because they lack a grand strategy. Concerned only (or so they say) with the military defeat of al-Qaeda, they have nothing to say about defeating a worldwide movement or how to build a foundation for a successful postwar world.

There have been numerous tactical mistakes made in the war on terrorism, just as there were under Roosevelt 60 years ago. Nonetheless, we cannot let tragic, tactical setbacks, like the recent deaths of 20 Marines from one unit, lead us to abandon the grand strategy. Allied errors at the Battle of the Bulge didn't mean the sweep across Europe was wrong.

Bush is in many ways FDR's strategic soul mate. His war on terror is a total global war against a movement comprised of terrorist groups and their state sponsors. By ousting both Saddam and the Taliban, he has removed two important components of the worldwide terrorist movement. And his grand strategy is slowly achieving results.

The forces of reform in the Middle East have been strengthened; the terrorist movement has been psychologically shaken. By destroying Saddam's military machine overnight, he has completely changed the psychology of the war on terrorism. Bush's strategy is one that FDR would understand well.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book "Do as I Say (Not as I Do)."

I just come back here occasionally to read the title of this thread for light relief.

Which fellow genius at the NYT said that about Bush? Jayson Blair?

Needless to say, you never attempt to dispute any of the points made, but just to make fun of the conclusion. Must be sad to have such an indefensible position that you try to avoid actually making it.

Nice to see you back Brandon.
Where ya been?

I decided that this was just taking too much from my performance at work. In some ways, membership here is kind of like an addiction. Thanks for the welcome.

Good call!

And Tony Blair is nearly as smart. On the subject of terrorism, he said:

If Blair was so smart he would not have followed Bush into the quagmire of Iraq.

If everyone thought as you do, the rest of the world would laugh and take everything we've got, including, ultimately, our sovereignty.

Laugh about what exactly?

Fortunately, Britain is a democracy, where party members can say, post, think about their party leader what they want ... if this doesn't violate party regulations (which that definately didn't).

Nonsense Brandon. I mean I can make no sense of this, because it makes no sense. What are you trying to say?