Bush Is Running Out of Alibis

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Fri, 3 Feb 2006 22:51:30 -0800 (PST)

Bush Is Running Out of Alibis

 

 

 

 

Bush Is Running Out of Alibis

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted Feb 03, 2006

 

 

 

" The road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and

inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline, " railed President

Bush in his State of the Union. Again and again, Bush returned to

his theme.

 

" America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. ...

 

" Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies, it

would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need. ...

 

" American leaders from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy to Reagan

rejected isolation and retreat. "

 

Why would a president use his State of the Union to lash out at a

school of foreign policy thought that has had zero influence in his

administration?

 

The answer is a simple one, but it is not an easy one for Bush to

face: His foreign policy is visibly failing, and his critics have been

proven right.

 

But rather than defend the fruits of his policy, Bush has chosen

to caricature critics who warned him against interventionism. Like all

politicians in trouble, Bush knows that the best defense is a good

offense.

 

Having plunged us into an unnecessary war, Bush now confronts the

real possibility of strategic defeat and a failed presidency. His

victory in Iraq, like the wars of Wilson and FDR, has turned to ashes

in our mouths.

And like Truman's war in Korea and Kennedy's war in Vietnam,

Bush's war has left America divided and her people regretting he ever

led us in. But unlike the world wars, Korea and Vietnam, Bush cannot

claim the enemy attacked us and we had no choice. Iraq is Bush's war.

Isolationists had nothing to do with it. To a man and woman, they

opposed it.

 

Now, with an army bogged down in Afghanistan and another slowly

exiting Iraq, and no end in sight to either, Bush seeks to counter

critics who warned him not to go in by associating them with the

demonized and supposedly discredited patriots of the America First

movement of 1940-41.

His assault is not only non-credible, it borders on the desperate

and pathetic.

 

" Abroad, our nation is committed to a historic long-term goal. We

seek the end of tyranny in our world, " said Bush. " Some dismiss that

goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America

depends upon it. "

 

Intending no disrespect, this is noble-sounding nonsense. Our

security rests on U.S. power and will, and not on whether Zimbabwe,

Sudan, Syria, Cuba or even China is ruled by tyrants. Our forefathers

lived secure in a world of tyrannies by staying out of wars that were

none of America's business. As for " the end of tyranny in our world, "

Mr. President, sorry, that doesn't come in " our world. " That comes in

the next.

 

" By allowing radical Islam to work its will, by leaving an

assaulted world to fend for itself, we would signal to all that we no

longer believe in our own ideals or even in our own courage, " said Bush.

 

But what has done more to radicalize Islam than our invasion of

Iraq? Who has done more to empower Islamic radicals than Bush with his

clamor for elections across a region radicalized by our own policies?

It is one thing to believe in ideals, another to be the prisoner of

some democratist ideology.

 

Bush has come to believe that the absence of democracy is the

cause of terror and democracy its cure. But the cause of terror in the

Middle East is the perception there that those nations are held in

colonial captivity by Americans and their puppet regimes, and that the

only way to expel both is to use tactics that have succeeded from

Algeria in 1962 to Anbar province in 2005.

 

Given the franchise, Arab and Islamic peoples from Pakistan to

Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and Egypt have now voted for

candidates with two credentials. They seemed to be devout Muslims, and

they appeared dedicated to tossing America out of the region and the

Israelis into the sea.

 

With opposition also rising to his free-trade policy, Bush

reverted to the same tactic: Caricature and castigate critics of his

own failed policies. " Protectionists, " said Bush, pretend " we can keep

our high standards of living, while walling off our economy. "

 

But it was protectionists from Lincoln to Coolidge who gave us the

highest standard of living on earth. And the record of Bush's merry

band of free-traders? The largest trade deficits in history, a $200

billion trade surplus for Beijing at our expense in 2005, and 3

million lost manufacturing jobs since Bush first took the oath.

 

If America is angry over what interventionism and free trade have

wrought, George Bush cannot credibly blame isolationists or

protectionists. These fellows have an alibi. They were nowhere near

the scene of the crime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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