Roundup of "Bush was right" admissions

[RonOnGuitar]

A pretty good roundup of notes re: was Bush right? f

From:

International Herald Tribune

========================

Still think Bush was wrong?



Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe

Friday, March 11, 2005

BOSTON



'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."

.

Thus spake Richard Gwyn, columnist for The Toronto Star and author of such earlier offerings as "Incurious George W. can't grasp democracy," "Time for U.S. to cut and run," and, as recently as Jan. 25, "Bush's hubristic world view."

.

The Axis of Weasel is crying uncle, and much of the chorus is singing from the same songsheet.

.

Listen to Claus Christian Malzahn in Der Spiegel: "Could George W. be right?"

.

And Guy Sorman in Le Figaro: "And if Bush was right?"

.

And The Independent of London, in a Page 1 headline on Monday: "Was Bush right after all?"

.

And here at home, National Public Radio's Daniel Schorr in The Christian Science Monitor: "The Iraq effect? Bush may have had it right."

.

Even Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "Daily Show" and an indefatigable Bush critic, has learned the new lyrics. "Here's the great fear that I have," he said recently. "What if Bush ... has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may ... implode."

.

For those of us in the War Party, by contrast, these are heady days. If you've agreed with President George W. Bush all along that the way to fight the cancer of Islamist terrorism is with the chemotherapy of freedom and democracy, the temptation to issue I-told-you-so's can be hard to resist.

.

"Well, who's the simpleton now?" crows Max Boot in the Los Angeles Times. "Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?" On the radio the other day, Rush Limbaugh twisted the knife: "The news is not that Bush may have been right," he chortled. "It's that you liberals were wrong." The gifted Mark Steyn, in a column subtitled, "One man, one gloat," writes: "I got a lot of things wrong these last three years, but, looking at events in the Middle East this last week ... I got the big stuff right."

.

Well, I'd say I got the big stuff right too. And as a war hawk who backs the Bush doctrine, I find the latest developments in the Arab world especially gratifying. But this triumphalism makes me uneasy. This is the Middle East we're talking about, after all. And we have been here before.

.

It was only 22 months ago that Bush flew a U.S. Navy jet onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and emerged to tell the world: "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." War hawks and Bush supporters were ecstatic, but thousands of U.S. and Iraqi deaths later, it is all too clear how premature that "Mission Accomplished" exultation was.

.

Likewise the rapture that greeted the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993. When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands, they unleashed a euphoric certainty that Israeli-Palestinian peace had been achieved at last. In retrospect, that euphoria looks not just ridiculous, but tragic.

.

None of this is to minimize the extraordinary changes unfolding in the Arab world. Iraq's stunning elections have given heart to would-be reformers across the region.

.

In Beirut, tens of thousands of anti-Syrian demonstrators brought about the fall of Lebanon's pro-Damascus quisling government, a momentous accomplishment despite the Lebanese Parliament's moves to restore the ousted prime minister.

.

Saudi Arabia held municipal elections, the first democratic exercise the Ibn Sauds have ever allowed. On Monday, hundreds of activists demanding suffrage for women marched on Kuwait's Parliament. The Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has promised a genuine (i.e., contested) presidential election. And Syria's military occupation of Lebanon is drawing such international condemnation that Bashar Assad, the Syrian dictator, has begun to pull his troops back to the Bekaa Valley.

.

It is being called an "Arab Spring," and Bush's critics are right to give him credit for helping to bring it about. What his allies need to bear in mind is that cracks in the ice of tyranny and misrule don't always lead to liberation.

.

In 1989, a global wave of democratic fervor brought tens of millions of anti-Communist demonstrators into the streets. In Eastern Europe, that wave shattered the Berlin Wall, freed the captive nations and eventually ended the cold war. In China, by contrast, it was stopped by the tanks of Tiananmen Square and the spilling of much innocent blood.

.

"At last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun," Bush said on Tuesday. Let us all pray that it continues and that the long winter of Arab discontent is finally giving way to a summer of liberty and human rights. There will be time enough for gloating if it does.

.

(Jeff Jacoby’s column appears in The Boston Globe.)

.

See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune.

.

< < Back to Start of Article BOSTON '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."

.

Thus spake Richard Gwyn, columnist for The Toronto Star and author of such earlier offerings as "Incurious George W. can't grasp democracy," "Time for U.S. to cut and run," and, as recently as Jan. 25, "Bush's hubristic world view."

.

The Axis of Weasel is crying uncle, and much of the chorus is singing from the same songsheet.

.

Listen to Claus Christian Malzahn in Der Spiegel: "Could George W. be right?"

.

And Guy Sorman in Le Figaro: "And if Bush was right?"

.

And The Independent of London, in a Page 1 headline on Monday: "Was Bush right after all?"

.

And here at home, National Public Radio's Daniel Schorr in The Christian Science Monitor: "The Iraq effect? Bush may have had it right."

.

Even Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "Daily Show" and an indefatigable Bush critic, has learned the new lyrics. "Here's the great fear that I have," he said recently. "What if Bush ... has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may ... implode."

.

For those of us in the War Party, by contrast, these are heady days. If you've agreed with President George W. Bush all along that the way to fight the cancer of Islamist terrorism is with the chemotherapy of freedom and democracy, the temptation to issue I-told-you-so's can be hard to resist.

.

"Well, who's the simpleton now?" crows Max Boot in the Los Angeles Times. "Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?" On the radio the other day, Rush Limbaugh twisted the knife: "The news is not that Bush may have been right," he chortled. "It's that you liberals were wrong." The gifted Mark Steyn, in a column subtitled, "One man, one gloat," writes: "I got a lot of things wrong these last three years, but, looking at events in the Middle East this last week ... I got the big stuff right."

.

Well, I'd say I got the big stuff right too. And as a war hawk who backs the Bush doctrine, I find the latest developments in the Arab world especially gratifying. But this triumphalism makes me uneasy. This is the Middle East we're talking about, after all. And we have been here before.

.

It was only 22 months ago that Bush flew a U.S. Navy jet onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and emerged to tell the world: "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." War hawks and Bush supporters were ecstatic, but thousands of U.S. and Iraqi deaths later, it is all too clear how premature that "Mission Accomplished" exultation was.

.

Likewise the rapture that greeted the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993. When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands, they unleashed a euphoric certainty that Israeli-Palestinian peace had been achieved at last. In retrospect, that euphoria looks not just ridiculous, but tragic.

.

None of this is to minimize the extraordinary changes unfolding in the Arab world. Iraq's stunning elections have given heart to would-be reformers across the region.

.

In Beirut, tens of thousands of anti-Syrian demonstrators brought about the fall of Lebanon's pro-Damascus quisling government, a momentous accomplishment despite the Lebanese Parliament's moves to restore the ousted prime minister.

.

Saudi Arabia held municipal elections, the first democratic exercise the Ibn Sauds have ever allowed. On Monday, hundreds of activists demanding suffrage for women marched on Kuwait's Parliament. The Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has promised a genuine (i.e., contested) presidential election. And Syria's military occupation of Lebanon is drawing such international condemnation that Bashar Assad, the Syrian dictator, has begun to pull his troops back to the Bekaa Valley.

.

It is being called an "Arab Spring," and Bush's critics are right to give him credit for helping to bring it about. What his allies need to bear in mind is that cracks in the ice of tyranny and misrule don't always lead to liberation.

.

In 1989, a global wave of democratic fervor brought tens of millions of anti-Communist demonstrators into the streets. In Eastern Europe, that wave shattered the Berlin Wall, freed the captive nations and eventually ended the cold war. In China, by contrast, it was stopped by the tanks of Tiananmen Square and the spilling of much innocent blood.

.

"At last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun," Bush said on Tuesday. Let us all pray that it continues and that the long winter of Arab discontent is finally giving way to a summer of liberty and human rights. There will be time enough for gloating if it does.

.

(Jeff Jacoby’s column appears in The Boston Globe.)

.

[NRKofOver]

So lying to the citizens about WMD's and forging connections to terrorist groups to justify an invasion of a soveriegn nation is 'right'?



Ack, I'm going to have significantly change my personal ethical structure.



Maybe the outcome will be good (which I've always supported once our gov't threw us into this nonsense) but that doesn't mean the actions that took us there were right.



With that logic, if I rob 200 banks but feed 10,000 children, then my actions are right.

My music for the disenchanted masses

[bitwhys]

so Richard Gwyn is a bobblehead. big deal.

[bitwhys]

pardon me. he isn't a bobblehead per se, just bobbleheaded enough to give Jacoby enough line to take him out of context.



the whole Star article

Quote:

---

Here 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.



President George W. Bush wasn't right to invade Iraq. His justifications for doing so were (almost all of them) either frivolous, in comparison to the scale of the venture, or were outright fraudulent.



Having conquered Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, Bush and his officials and generals then made every blunder that could be imagined by an occupying power, adding several original ones of their own.



But on the defining, fundamental question, Bush was right.



He understood that to defeat an idea, no matter how perverse and brutal it might be, it was necessary to have an opposite and superior idea.



He understood, in other words — instinctively rather than intellectually — that the only way to win a war against terrorism was to turn it into a war for democracy.

---

I agree championing democray is the right thing to do but newsflash for your buddy George if you ever get that chance to actually kiss his @#%$ you so richly deserve...



There Are Realistic Alternatives

Quote:

---

There Are Realistic Alternatives is a short, serious introduction to nonviolent struggle, its applications, and strategic thinking. Based on pragmatic arguments, this piece presents nonviolent struggle as a realistic alternative to war and other violence in acute conflicts. It also contains a glossary of important terms and recommendations for further reading.

---

class act, that Jacoby.

[MIKE BURN]

Well, all I know is that you can't trust the U.S. administration.



As it turned out today, but not readable in the U.S. so far, the story of Saddam Hussein's capturing (the story of him sitting in an earthhole) was a lie (another one adds to the list).



Hussein instead did shoot from a window in the house towards the U.S. military and killed one soldier before he was captured.

[ans]

"not readable in the U.S. so far"



U.S. news radio reported this story yesterday morning.

[DreamTone7]

"So lying to the citizens about WMD's and forging connections to terrorist groups to justify an invasion of a soveriegn nation is 'right'?"



So you're siding with those who believed WMDs NEVER existed in Iraq? Boy, you're better than the CIA if you can prove that...but you can't, and you know it...and neither can anyone else. However, if it turns out that Saddam shipped them to Syria just before the well publicized invasion to create such an attitude towards the US (and perhaps to reclaim them in the future), then you fall into the group that fosters an ill attitude towards the US with no justification to be found in this issue. In addition, ties to Bin Laden himself have already been proven...I suppose you missed that one, conveniently.





"Well, all I know is that you can't trust the U.S. administration."



...or Mike Burns "reporting" to be unbiased.

[Galmin]

Quote:

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However, if it turns out that Saddam shipped them to Syria just before the well publicized invasion to create such an attitude towards the US (and perhaps to reclaim them in the future), then you fall into the group that fosters an ill attitude towards the US with no justification to be found in this issue.

---

Look. Had Saddam shipped any stockpiles of WMD material to Syria he would have been caught on tape doing so. Sattelite, jet and probe survelliance is not there to merely show the weatherconditions or the consistance of random dogpiles.



When sattelitepictures can show nonexistant tanks moving towards the Saudi border to sway public opinion, I am positive that Rice, follower of the former secretary of state Powell who tried to build a case against Saddam on rudimentary-to-falsified-to-nonexistant-evidence-that-was-shot-down-within-24-hours once upon a time, can produce picture material showing trucks (driven by Chirac, Schröder and Putin) loaded with WMDs heading for the Syrian border.



Saddam isn't emperor Ming, Silvio Berlusconi not Dr Zarkow, Tony Blair is not Dale Arden and George W Bush not Blixt Gordon. Iraq isn't planet Mango and the clear and present danger of a deathbeam to melt planet earth didn't exist either.

[ans]

re "Look. Had Saddam shipped any stockpiles of WMD material to Syria he would have been caught on tape doing so."









Not necessarily. It was way back in 1991 that Saddam began repeatedly violating sixteen United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) designed to ensure that Iraq does not pose a threat to international peace and security. Specifically, Saddam Hussein was required to, among other things: allow international weapons inspectors to oversee the elimination of his weapons of mass destruction







UNSCR 687 - April 3, 1991



Iraq must "unconditionally accept" the destruction, removal or rendering harmless "under international supervision" of all "chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities."







There is no evidence to support a contention that the entire nation of Iraq has been kept under continuous satellite surveillance since 1991, even though Saddam was habitually ignoring UN resolutions. I'd bet that over the course of twelve years there were plenty of opportunities to sneak a few vials of anthrax into Syria.

[ans]

. . . but I'm not familiar with the term 'probes'. Are they more efficient than satellites and jets?

[ans]

"To insure that Iraq does not try to move or hide possible chemical or biological weapon stocks or facilities identified by US and other intelligence agencies, there should be continuous surveillance flights throughout Iraq. U-2 and other surveillance aircraft, drones, and satellites can provide detailed digital imagery of the entire area of Iraq, which can be rapidly analyzed by computer programs focusing on suspect locations, structures, and movements."



That's from 2003. Maybe there was continuous satellite surveillance 24/7 of every square inch of trunkspace of every vehicle in the nation, tho possibly useless to prevent said vials of anthrax from getting spirited away . . . if so, I stand corrected

[Galmin]

Quote:

---

Not necessarily. It was way back in 1991 ..

---

Well, my comment was a response of DTs: "if it turns out that Saddam shipped them to Syria just before the well publicized invasion".



I believe one can take for granted that once the invasion was a done deal (well before 9/11 according to some ex white house officials) a thorough surveillance was already in place. Be it from Sattelite (defenitely good enough to spot smaller motorcrafts) of Jet (motorized Hasselblad cameras in the nose that picks up anything, including the black under your nails) or any other way (LRRP, LRS, Diversion Units, etc).

[ans]

Mmmm. Hasselblad. Long I've lusted for one of those big boys. If I ever win the lottery . . .

[DreamTone7]

It wasn't widely publicized, but shortly after the invasion, and while US troops were still over 100 miles away from Baghdad, satellites picked up a convoy of trucks with unmarked barrels and boxes headed for the Syrian border at night. They were too far away for US troops to stop them before they reached the Syrian border. Satellites can do a lot of things, but they can't open barrels or boxes from orbit. Might have been Saddams laundry...or...



Now, what do you think Saddam would find so important to keep out of US hand? Yeah...sure...it could have been his laundry...

[NRKofOver]

So DT, if Bush was 'right' then we shouldn't even be bother with Iraq, because this was about WMD's, right? Or is it about freedom for Iraqis? Or is the freedom thing just a good byproduct of the WMD thing? Because if the WMD thing was the reasoning for invading Iraq, then we should be in Syria right now, not Iraq. But wait, it wasn't WMD's, it was terrorism, oh, wait, it was freedom for the oppressed, errr, wait, it was Osama, I mean the Taliban, or it was all of it, or oil, or stability in the Middle East, or something.



But the truth is we weren't told the truth regarding why we are invading a soveriegn nation. We were lied to, or in the very least kept in the dark about, regarding our gov't's plan in Iraq. You can spin it anyway you want, but days before the invasion we were assured by our leaders that Saddam Hussien and Iraq were continuing their chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and they were an immenent threat to America and American interests. That simply was not true.

My music for the disenchanted masses