In a sneering piece on Bush the Younger’s view of his likely place in history, Dan Froomkin attributes to him a Messiah Complex. At the same time, it is clear from the contrast between the qualified language of the President and the certainty of the journalist, that Bush speaks with more humility than Froomkin. And one may say, “as well he should,” reflexively, without considering in what way we are supposed to believe that Mr. Froomkin has made the world a better place. He imagines, I suppose, that his ability to find sources willing say nasty things about Bush constitutes research.
Would it be fair to accuse Edwards of a Messiah Complex? Hillary? Obama? Jimmy Carter, I wonder? Does Chavez seem to evince one? Well, apparently not in comparison to Bush.ÂÂ
Did Froomkin so characterize Bill Clinton’s doomed desperate efforts to forge a Middle East peace in the last days of his presidency, even with Arafat? Now that was delusional.
In contrast to Froomkin, we have Fouad Ajami’s piece in the WSJ, and he has this to say:
Suffice it for them that George W. Bush was at the helm of the dominant imperial power when the world of Islam and of the Arabs was in the wind, played upon by ruinous temptations, and when the regimes in the saddle were ducking for cover, and the broad middle classes in the Arab world were in the grip of historical denial of what their radical children had wrought. His was the gift of moral and political clarity.
In America and elsewhere, those given reprieve by that clarity, and single-mindedness, have been taking this protection while complaining all the same of his zeal and solitude. In his stoic acceptance of the burdens after 9/11, we were offered a reminder of how nations shelter behind leaders willing to take on great challenges.
We scoffed, in polite, jaded company when George W. Bush spoke of the “axis of evil” several years back. The people he now journeys amidst didn’t: It is precisely through those categories of good and evil that they describe their world, and their condition. Mr. Bush could not redeem the modern culture of the Arabs, and of Islam, but he held the line when it truly mattered. He gave them a chance to reclaim their world from zealots and enemies of order who would have otherwise run away with it.
David Thompson has up a terrific related piece, though the Bostom links aren’t working for me:
…In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in London with the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of jihad piracyâ€â€murder, enslavement (with ransoming for redemption), and expropriation of valuable commercial assets – emanating from the Barbary States (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya). During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:
… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their [Qur’an], that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
Stephen Coughlin understands and enunciates what was stated openly to then Ambassadors John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – and what they apparently understood – by the Tripolitan Ambassador Adja. During his September 2007 presentation… Coughlin updated this timeless Islamic formulation into its modern context:
If the enemy in the War on Terror states that he fights jihad in furtherance of Islamic causes that include the imposition of Shari’a law and the re-establishment of the Caliphate; And Islamic law on jihad exists and is available in English; Then professionals with WOT responsibilities have an affirmative, personal, professional duty to know the enemy that includes all the knowable facts associated with the law of jihad.
Stephen Coughlin has been fired for reminding his peers of this basic obligation.
Whoops, Dan. Two links, both to the same articls.
And DAMN me for the typo.
Thanks, Slart.
Wow. And all this time I thought someone who would spend two years begging for money and votes to become the most powerful man on earth, has to be suffering from a debilitating lack of self-esteem. Obviously Chimpy is some kind of dangerous aberration.
C’mon McGehee, you know darn well he was selected by the corporations and the Supreme Court at birth to bring the American Working class to their knees.
Skull and Bones, man!
Anyone that thinks that they should be President should be immediately disqualified.
Here’s the WaPo link.
Why are the goals of jihadists the truth that cannot be told? Why is it so necessary to pretend not to notice?
“Why are the goals of jihadists the truth that cannot be told? Why is it so necessary to pretend not to notice?”
Ummmm…Because of the ultimate crime – we might hurt somebody’s feelings?
SarahW: Well, that’s a deep question. It has a lot to do with Pentagon culture.
If you want to make flag rank (General), the Pentagon is a necessary stop in a military career. In addition, military culture is a “one mistake and you’re done” deal. Finally, Islam is The Religion of Peace – from the lips of our own Commander in Chief.
So, if you’re at the Pentagon, the last thing you want is some dude stirring shit about the Religion of Peace. Especially if he’s disagreeing with the guidance given on high from the political masters. Better to allow thousands to be killed (they volunteered, after all) while the consensus quietly grows that the current strategy isn’t working. Finally, one morning everyone comes to work having made a sort of overnight Copernican inversion, agrees it’s terrible that the shit-stirrers had their careers ruined, and agrees that what the shit-stirrers were saying is the new way forward.
I don’t regret my military service, but I’d never do it again. well, not as an officer, anyway.
Any idea when that morning might come? It’s long overdue, and clearly not here yet.
Rudy/Fred ’08. That ought to do it.
To clarify, the words quoted above are Andrew Bostom’s, not mine. The links to the original Bostom article, which is worth reading in full, should be working again shortly.
Pablo: I’ve no idea. I was just pointing to how things work, in my experience.
Dammit, folks, I don’t have time to compose the full essay this morning, but I need to remind all of you of two of the basic maxims of conflict:
Always leave the enemy a line of retreat. If you do not, it leaves him with nothing to lose and results in a pitched battle. You might win a pitched battle, but in doing so you’re going to take a lot of unecessary damage.
Ask yourself, what does he know that I don’t? If your opponent, or even an ally, is doing something that makes no sense to you, at minimum you should harbor the notion that it makes sense to him — and that since by definition you don’t know everything, it’s at least possible he’s right.
And to bring those thoughts together on the present subject, please observe that George W. Bush is not only a Protestant Christian, he’s a convert to Protestant Christianity. Is it not at least possible that this means he knows how to talk to people of strong religious beliefs, where you, lacking strong beliefs and with a strong tendency to deprecate them, do not?
Regards,
Ric
Yeah,
That’s Fred/Rudy ’08.
Who the hell is Dan Froomkin?
Donald – He is not a particularly talented writer that sports a wafro, and literally has the temerity to call President Bush delusional.
Hi Ric: Let’s reverse those principles and re-examine.
We’re dealing with an enemy that will never surrender. Truces and peaces are only times to heal wounds and rearm. This makes little sense to us, accustomed as we are to the Greek form of shock battle followed by peace negotiations and final resolutions. There is no final resolution, short of sharia everywhere.
Given that, it makes no sense to give the enemy a line of retreat. All you’re doing is guaranteeing more fight, further down the road.
They declared a war of extermination. I say we give it to them.
Ok, who broke the blog?
For the record, I was somewhere else.
Sorry.
I’ve heard others call him a radical Christian extremist. Of course, those are the same folks that toss phrases like “forced gestation” about with gay abandon, so par for the course.
I mean, just picture it: our President, a member of a secretive, fringe group of radical Methodists. The imagination boggles.
What — was he raised as a Catholic, a Jew? A Hindu?? In a Methodist family!!???
Ric, what is your definition, exactly, of “Protestant Christian”…?
FTR, I was raised as a Catholic and am now a Methodist. I AM “a convert to Protestant Christanity.”
Off topic: Fred isn’t running for VP.
Very well, Patrick. Your goal is to defeat an implacable enemy. To that end, which is more effective in the long run?
1) Array your forces in columns of droves and meet the enemy in fierce pitched battles;
2) Duck and weave around the front lines while bombing the enemy’s infrastructure, subverting his allies, and alienating his supporters.
One look at American military doctrine as taught for the last quarter-century should answer that question for you, but, if not, go back and examine the two alternatives with a view to defeating an enemy that is fully invested in Strategy Two against you.
“Islam” is not a single, monolithic structure. It can’t be; it’s a human social construct consisting of something like a billion and a half people, all of them members of a race whose outstanding characteristic is that if you get ten of them in the same room, at least one of them will disagree with the others on whether or not the Sun rises in the East — even as you or I. Some of them hold views that are in accord with ours in many ways; even more maintain sociopolitical constructs we can live with, opposing without violence. Allowing them room to agree and cooperate sucks support away from those we can’t live with, where a simplistic strategy of “kill all the murdering wrapheaded goat-fuckers” by definition forces potential sympathizers and noncombatants to ally with what is, after all, their own people, distasteful or no.
We quite correctly react with snarls when Semanticleo unloads another strawman-burning attack against bigoted stereotypes that exist only in her own mind. Don’t be a mirror image.
Regards,
Ric
Hunter/Thompson ’08
write yer own punch line
Ric, I’m serious — I need you to explain what you mean when you say George W. Bush is a convert to “Protestant Christianity.” I can’t help but think you have a non-standard definition of that phrase, and the rest of us need to know what it is if we’re going to be able to discuss anything with you relating to religion.
Especially on this blog.
“kill all the murdering wrapheaded goat-fuckersâ€Â
I am proud that my goat-fuckers references have become mainstream nomenclature.
If you want some good laughs, google Froomkin and wafro
Ric: Perhaps I spoke too broadly. What I meant to say is that the guys who’ve decided to be jihadis are not going to give up. And any peace they get is time to rest and recuperation.
Giving *them* an avenue of retreat is not an option. Because any peace they get is time to rest and recuperation.
That said, I’d not be too unhappy to see the entire House of Saud go. It made a deal with their lunatics which amounts to “We give you as much money as you want, to fund all the jihad-preaching madrassahs you want, as long as you let us live an utterly decadent lifestyle.”
McGehee, I beg your pardon. After investigation it turns out I was mistaken. George Bush is a Methodist, and so far as I am able to determine has always been a Methodist. My excuse, if I am to be granted one, is that I was thinking more of cultural factors than of religious doctrine. The discussion is useful because (at least in my opinion) it goes to the heart of the origin of what we sometimes-laughingly, sometimes not, refer to as “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”
Methodist doctrine is consistent in ways that, e.g., Baptist doctrine is not, in large part because Methodists appoint pastors from a common pool rather than recruiting them locally. The customs and practices of congregations are less uniform, because each church is embedded in the local culture and, willy-nilly, absorbs practices and attitudes from it — also true of any other religion. The attitudes and behaviors of the members of the First United Methodist Church of Slidell, Louisiana are likely to be quite distinct from those of their fellows in Lowell, Massachusetts.
George W. Bush comes from old money, specifically old Northeastern money. His father has retired to a seaside home in New England; his mother is a Pierce, as in “President Franklin.” His early behavior does not deviate far from the norm for that subculture. Looking strictly at his family and upbringing, we observe a young man who could be expected, as an adult, to differ from John Kerry only in ways so subtle as to require close analysis to detect them.
But instead of following that well-worn path, George Bush abandoned all that to take up the culture and behaviors of “flyover country” — a culture which is so strongly disdained by those who regard themselves as sophisticated that they cannot even investigate its real qualities, preferring to subsist on stereotypes. It could not be more startling (and threatening) if he had married an African tribeswoman, thrust a bone through his nasal septum, and taken up the assegai. I say “threatening” because there is no more difficult concept for a True Believer than that of the apostate. A person who throws over his beliefs and practices and takes up with the other has necessarily seen something of value in the new that his former comrades do not, and believers must, of psychological necessity, reject the notion that the new actually has value, because if it does it calls their own beliefs into question. They prefer explanations for the change based on evil, insanity, or stupidity, because they must see it that way or challenge their own deep-seated conceptions. At root there is no essential difference between “Bush as Antichrist” and the Islamic command to kill those who abandon Islam.
Regards,
Ric
Bush is a Methodist? Robert Spencer mentions them all the time!
Fouad Ajami is a cooler name than many other names are cool.
“We scoffed, in polite, jaded company when George W. Bush spoke of the “axis of evil†several years back. The people he now journeys amidst didn’t: It is precisely through those categories of good and evil that they describe their world, and their condition.”
Anyone else reminded of Reagan and the Soviets? I am sure someday the Froomkins of the world will always have been in favor of a democratic Islamic society…
Froomkin’s place in history is secure. It’s right next to mine.
Hey, Insty quoted a comment I left on a blog somewhere and that has to count for something. I’ve still got fourteen minutes and 38 seconds of fame left by my count.