Tim Oren points me at a well-written comment over at the Belmont Club that ties – indirectly – to Chester’s excellent post of the other day. On wretchard’s great post on Blowback, commenter Wanda says:
Going back to Geraghty’s comments and Wretchard’s followup, I think that if this shift in Western opinion is happening (and I think it is) much more than just the ports deal is dead. President Bush is in imminent danger of finding himself left behind by the American people, and he doesn’t seem to realize it. He could soon be in the same position as the leaders and spokesmen of the EU – a font of noble-sounding platitudes and maxims that nobody pays attention to anymore.
Meanwhile, he will have lost his ability to sway his own people’s hearts and minds, because he invested everything in the cause of winning the enemy’s hearts and minds. All the emphasis has been on persuading Muslims to change; how was it possible that nobody thought that WE might change too? That never entered into the calculations; it always seemed to be a given that the West would be eternally patient, open, and willing to woo the reluctant Muslim world. But while President Bush has been anxiously hovering over his delicate Islamic plant, watching for any promising little green shoot that might repay all his efforts, behind him his own garden has changed into a dangerous, bristling jungle. When he finally turns around, he won’t know where he is anymore.
Now, does this suggest that Tom, Trent, Charles Johnson and the LGF community are bellweathers for a future national majority? Can we expect antimuslim rants on Kos and MyDD?
Maybe not so soon.
Let me suggest a likely outcome, based on a humble metaphor. Food. Specifically, my favorite food, BBQ.Here in Los Angeles, we periodically get upscale BBQ restaurants in fashionable locations – The Pig on La Brea is an example – But I tend to look down on the food in places like that (because it usually sucks) and prefer places like Phillip’s, Woody’s, and The Pit.
I’ve got an eclectic group of friends, but one core group who live on the Westside (yes, they’re all far wealthier and more successful than I am but I love them anyway), and we wander around and do friend-type things that often involve food or culture. Many of them are stereotypical, LAWeekly-liberal in their politics; they have a kind of reflexive progressivism. On matters of race policy, they’re probably more progressive than even I am.
But none of them will come to South–Central with me to get BBQ.
And I can watch them go on alert like pointers when we’re walking in Santa Monica and they see a group of two or three fashionably-thugged out black kids.
Their kids go to private schools, rather than the racially mixed schools of Venice or Santa Monica.
So for them, progressive, egalitarian views are great – at arm’s length. Imagine if you would a Michael Moore who lives in an exclusive co-op, and sends his children to private school – wait a minute, he does.
This isn’t about dissing their views; because I don’t (another post on that soon), I understand them. But it is a model to consider as we talk about the notion that a sea-change in “the Western Street” could take place which involves a fundamental belief that we can’t deal with the Arab world, and that what we need to do is to disengage fast and hard.
In essence, it’d be a position that said “we’re washing our hands of you”, bulked up border and internal security, and made it a point never to drive through ‘those neighborhoods’ without locking the doors, and never, under any circumstances, to stop there. It solves that whole messy “war” thing, and makes sure that no one says bad things about us in our hearing. We’d be clean-handed liberals, and feel secure.
And it would be a disaster.
It would first and foremost be a moral disaster, because we’d be condemning billions of people to a battle with a homicidal tyranny that we had a hand in creating (indirectly, through our policies in the Middle east from the 1900’s onward). We’d be condemning Israel to become even more of a besieged outpost than it is today. We’d be condemning Europeans to a bitter struggle with an increasingly empowered minority.
And while we’d have told them all ‘not our problem’ – to quote Atrios:
Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn’t mutually assured destruction, it’s you fuck with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!
Not our problem, because we’d hide behind our wall of nukes.
And it’d be a practical disaster.
It’d be a practical disaster, because the war within the Muslim world would wind up being won by either brutal oligarchs or by homicidal fascists. If the oligarchs win, we’ll have trading partners, for a while, until they need an outside enemy to whip up their population against. If the fascists win, we’ll have a war right away.
Now Atrios may he happy with bombing the Arab world into oblivion. But I’d really like to avoid that if I can.
The last person to propose anything like this in detail was Jim Henley. My response to him pretty much sums up my response to this whole idea:
Maybe I’m just too tired right now; it’s been a heckuva week, on many fronts. But when I was pointed to Jim Henley’s Grand Plan, I just lost the capacity for reasonable thought; it was so dumb, such a dorm-room, bong-hit driven idea of how the world ought to be that I almost left it alone. Then I got a link to it from a non-blog person, and realized that I had to Go Back In There and wrestle with it.
Because for many of the folks on my team – the left – this is what foreign policy ought to look like, and in a big way my fear is that this could become something actually thinkable. And I’m not sure if I’m more scared that Trent’s vision of the world or this one will come to pass. Actually, it’s because I believe that this one leads, almost inevitably, to Trent’s.
It’s a fantasy that we can all move to a gated community and leave our troubles behind. If nothing else, what would we do for good BBQ?
A couple of thoughts:
I have been hearing extremely limo liberal friends and relatives quietly confiding that they have “stopped trying to be politically correct about Islam. They will say it to me but not in public in their social circles. Not yet.
The most “liberal” are the most isolationist. I’ve asked how they square that with their progressivism” and I have not heard any coherent answers yet.
As long as the West decides it’s not going to take it anymore, I don’t care if they leave Bush behind. I continue to support democratization and I agree with this post wholeheartedly, but if my choice is between a West which disagrees with that position because we are imperialist racist bad guys, and a West which disagrees because we are being too nice and what has it gotten us, I’ll take the latter. With relief.
This is another one of those cases where extremists on both sides serve as recruiting agents for each other. What a lovely cooperative scheme!
Back in 2002, when the voices of moderation said to wait, let’s get more information, let’s figure out how to strengthen whatever reasonable people might be there in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, we were told that you are either with us or against us. Unilateral military invasion to overthrow Saddam in Iraq was the only way.
Well, it turned out that moderation, rationality, planning for a long process of nation-building might have been a good idea back then.
But that was then, and this is now, and now we’re caught in a terrible quagmire, where the only thing worse than staying is pulling out, or maybe vice versa.
And meanwhile, the voices of moderation have been consistently beaten up by both sides. The Left is unhappy because we might want to stay engaged, and the Right is unhappy because we’re criticizing what this administration has actually done.
There are rational voices to be heard here, certainly, but there’s also an awful lot of commentators who jump on anyone who has anything critical to say about Their Side. Everyone who thinks that Their Side has made no mistakes, please raise your hand. Now leave the room, because you have declared yourself sufficiently out of touch that you’re unqualified to participate further in the discussion.
Perhaps the remaining handful of people, who realize that lots of mistakes have been made by everyone — and that the people with the most power have probably made the most mistakes, if only because they are the ones who could put their opinions into action — perhaps those remaining people can have a real discussion about how to fix things.
But if all you want to do is criticize “liberals”, then you are just taking things farther from a solution. Ever heard of taking the beam from your own eye before criticizing the mote in your brother’s eye? This is mostly a conservative blog. So criticize the conservatives! They need it just as much as liberals, and they might actually listen to you. (Don’t worry that liberals won’t criticize themselves. They (we) love to do that anyway.)
How about giving up using “liberal” as a swear word? And how about listening, rather than reflexively lashing back, when someone criticizes what our government is doing in Iraq.
Some of you are already behaving exactly as I ask, and I thank you for that. This is meant for the rest of you.
My dear Mr. Watson there is a bigger game afoot!
There is a growing consensus in some corners of the Blogos that Saddam’s WMD went to Syria with Russian assistance before GWII.
What we may be witnessing is a good ole game of Texas Hold’em. Pieces of this puzzle have been around for awhile but for obvious reasons and also a case of too blind to see, the LL and the MSM have not followed the leads to track down this story e.g. The Plame Affair, Bush Lied, People Died, Cheney Quailgate, the Iraqi “non” civil war a reverse case of Wag the Dog, The CIA Leaks (Gee the CIA is openly at war with the CNC), and now Katrinagate.
It may be expedient by the Bush Administration to allow the LL and the MSM to run with this rope while this trump card [Saddam’s WMD with Russian and Chinese fingerprints] is in play in the back diplomatic channels to get the Russians and the Chinese to put pressure on the Iranian Mad Mullahs to play ball re nukes.
I think there is a little chance that President MAD and his religious mentor Yazdi will be likely detered by pressure from the Russians and/or Chinese in their quest to acquire nuke weapons.
After all from their warped sense of reality they truly believe in the return of the 12th Imman. And they won’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they believe it will hasten the 12th Imman to emerge from the Iraqi water well sooner. This is completely logical to them unlike the MAD policy of the Cold War that detered the Russians.
For further and links to Kobayashi Maru’s Part IV summary of the recent Intel Summit where the Saddam Tapes, WMD, papers, and the revelations in Iraqi Gen. Sada new book, Saddam’s Secrets, see:
Intelligence Summit, Part IV – WMD to Syria With Russia’s Help
RBT
In case my broadside above was too broad, I support AL’s point in his primary post, and I don’t really disagree with Yehudit’s comment, though it was his use of “liberal” that prompted this flame. It’s really aimed at the sensibility I see in many threads.
As soon as I hear “unilateral” and “quagmire” I tune out, because the first is simply false to fact and dismissive of our hard-working allies, and the second is very debatable and I have been collecting evidence to the contrary for some time. And I still think of myself as a liberal, as do many of the regular contributors to this blog.
On another topic, here’s my report from the NYC rally for Denmark, which may provide support for the “tipping point” argument. It seems lots of people came out who had never gone to a protest or demo before.
Sorry, use this URL instead.
Great post, Armed Liberal! I think you are right, and this may be the emerging liberal alternative view on terror:
So for them, progressive, egalitarian views are great – at arm’s length. Imagine if you would a Michael Moore who lives in an exclusive coop, and sends his children to private school – wait a minute, he does.
And yes, this paragraph is an emotional fantasy and not a policy:
Atrios: Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn’t mutually assured destruction, [edited to remove “questionable content” so I could post this]
When sarin gas is used effectively in one of our cities – AUM already used it in a Japanese subway – will we nuke a city? No.
When weaponised anthrax or some other lethal biological weapon is used – oh wait, it already has been, with no consequences. Well imagine the attack was a bit more effective this time. Still no consequences? I think so.
When a radiological weapon is first used in one of our cities, the Muslim world will likely go into its 11 September, 2001 gloating dance again. Yes! Allah-hu Akhbar!! We are innocent, we didn’t do it, you can’t touch us – and there’s plenty more where that came from, ha ha ha! We hate you! You were warned, extermination was on its way, but did you repent? No, you sons of pigs and monkeys! So die, you filthy infidels! Die! Die!! Die!!!” You know, the familiar kind condolences.
So, then will we pick out a random city of innocents and nuke it? Of course not. Nor should we. Establishing, if it was not already clear, that there is no “weapons of mass destruction” line of death, or not one that works against Islam.
Suppose the first simple gun-type nuke is not on an American city but a mine that catches some of our armed forces – and a lot of Muslims too but they don’t care about that. (I was shocked after 11 September, 2001 that the Muslim states that lost people in the world trade centre didn’t take our side – but then neither did the Germans or the French, so I guess I was naive about that.) What a victory for Allah – now the fighting power of the crusader forces can be bypassed due to our holy bombs! So do we nuke a city for that? Of course not. So there’s no nuclear line of death either.
I don’t think I need to go on. Though the jihadis will go on – and on, and on, and on, till we are done or they are.
We have to attack, and wholly destroy what’s out to kill us, before it does. There is no other way.
But who or what is out to kill us? (And who is “us”?) There is no agreement on this. That’s why people are writing manifestos. Each manifesto is a potential war-banner.
One view – the official one – is that what’s out to get us is only some thousands of thugs, the mafia of terror, which – pretending to be religious – has been trying to hijack the good and peaceful religion of Islam. (And anyone who says otherwise is a bigot racist.)
It makes your heart bleed for those poor Muslims: they are all hijack victims too! I’m sure George W. Bush knew what buttons he was pushing when he used this line right after 11 September, 2001.
I think this war-banner is looking frayed and tatty. The attempted hijacking has been going on for years now. The hijackers are all still Muslims, and they can’t easily be put out of the faith because they don’t deny any of its essential articles in what they say or break any essential rules in what they do, even though what they preach and practice year after year is bloodthirsty malignity, terrorisation and aggression. If Islam really was a religion of goodness and peace, that would have been impossible. And the faithful have made a global display of hate and intolerance, not for terrorists, but for us, and for cartoons.
My view is that what’s out to kill us is a collection of religious ideologies, including and not limited to Wahabbism and the clerical fascism of Shi-ite Iran, with one thing in common: Islam. It’s a hydra with many heads. Some are much worse than others, but none of them are really friendly and deserving of our support.
The religious ideologies of supremacy and hate that we face are not all “the truth about Islam” – or they wouldn’t exhibit the differences from each other that they do, and they would not have come into their full power in their modern forms only relatively lately, which they have. But they can be – and are being – backed up from the Koran, the hadiths, tradition, history, and mainly the horrifying example of the Prophet (pbuh) himself. Tyrants and terrorists who want to appeal to this example have all the support they could want.
Genuinely peaceful people are in the position a good man would be if he wanted to argue for pacifism and multi-racial harmony, but was allowed credence for his arguments in the parts where he could back them up with specific quotes from genocidal race-hate literature (including the largely irrelevant poetry pages). You can do it, but it’s a weak, unstable thing at best, and always liable to successful challenge by ambitious, intolerant, violent haters. And alas, that is not the Islam we are facing at the moment.
What we are facing at the moment is Islam as boosted by oil money, a demographic surge, Nazi propaganda which was highly palatable and seems to have been included as a permanent part of folk Islam, and the infuriating stimulus of Israel, a nation of Jews who refuse to lose. How dare they, when good Muslims ought to possess their necks!
Militant Islam has also been invigorated by our weak responses to Muslim clerical fascism from 1979 on. That’s a long time ago. Generations have growing up knowing we can be had; proving to themselves as in Somalia that their birthright as Muslims – our capitulation – is there for them too if they are fierce enough to take it, and shaping their ambitions accordingly.
This is about as nasty as Islam has been, in its intentions, except in the time of the Prophet (pbuh) himself. (In practice, modern Islam’s casualty count is low for now because its relative military power is small compared to Islam at some points in the past and likely in the future.) This religious/ideological hydra has identified us (civilians and military alike, as Islam makes no distinction) as the Great Satan, the Lesser Satan, allies of same, and (emphasised in Jemaa Islamiya, which makes no bones about racism), whites. (Apparently including Negroes. We’re all whites, and we all have to go. Don’t ask me how that is supposed to add up. Violently, I guess. We’ll all look the same after we’re blown up.)
This is not the sort of thing that will leave us alone if we close the gate and the garage, lock the doors, turn off the lights and the radio or television, and keep quiet, ignoring the roars and hateful ululations, the crashes and bangs and screams for help outside.
We need to get a gun and get out there. (And preferably try to exercise discrimination in who we shoot.)
Well, we’re doing that, and with some worthwhile results to report.
No matter what misconceptions I think he has, I thank George W. Bush for that
AL —
I disagree that the US had a hand in creating the conditions of the Middle East. That’s Mohammed’s doing, and his successors. The West wasn’t even the West then.
Secondly, wealthy Westside liberals and Malibu Communists (no kidding Steve Gaghan of Traffic and Syriana believes Communism the wave of the future) can afford the gated community approach. That doesn’t work for the middle class and it doesn’t work for people who live around or work in a city that gets blown up. Even the fear of a city being blown up along with Muslim intransigence has led most of the country to become “Angry Jacksonians” and want a good dose of Curtis LeMay to sort Muslims out abroad, and the Patriot Act which got a bigger Senate Majority this time round, to sort out Muslims at home.
NYC rallies with Muslims having signs saying “Freedom go to hell,” and “Islam will dominate” are Exhibit A as to the conflict being unavoidable. Muslims HERE demand Sharia and that’s a non-negotiable fighting point. By caving in the Media only encourages more of this stuff, Muslim Girls schools “demanding” that Public HS forbid males from attending games with their Girl’s basketball teams. That sort of thing.
I agree with Wanda’s assessment that the people have left GWB behind, however in my view they do not see a retreat behind a gated community as possible, nor are they liberal, since liberal attitudes and platitudes have been shown up by Cartoon Jihad (PC, multi-culturalism, non-violence and pacifism, along with “the International Community” have been shown to be useless). Rather, it is the attitudes expressed by Toby Keith or Tom Tancredo that are gaining strength, with the expressed intent to make Muslims fear us, rather than love us.
Sadly I think the old constructs of left-right; Cold War politics, and the like are as obsolete as buggy whips.
Marc,
First off, never trust the thinking of somebody who won’t go to S/Central for barbq! Either they don’t like barbq, blasphemous, or they are bigoted prigs who couldn’t find their as with both hands tied behind their backs.
Second, said pretty much all I had to say in comment to “shop and awe” and the follow up email to you and Joe.
Anybody who wants to know what email said, has my address here.
Mike
Comment The First: So Armed Liberal is basing his current view of reality on a group of friends who are wealthier and more successful than he is who live in West LA. Just exactly what percentage of the American demographic as a whole do you think this group of 10 to 30 people represent? It seems to me that the majority of Americans have *not* given up on the idea of fighting a war on terror, and while we may be unwilling to give Dubai the keys to our ports, that does not mean we’re pulling back into fortress America, either. (Interesting that no one ever mentions Mexicans or the Rio Grande border in these discussions…)
Comment the Second: It seems to me that just as our views of Muslims and Islam have been morphing since 9/11, so have the internal views of Muslims, too. Whereas on 9/12, you could not find a single Saudi who was willing to believe his/her country was involved, it’s a given now and they’re very prickly about still being blamed about it when they’re running around in Riyadh blowing up terrorists to prove it. Therefore, it seems really disingenuous to claim that America/the West had anything to do with “creating” the current state of the Muslim world since it’s not what it was then, and we don’t know what it will be tomorrow but we’re pretty sure we won’t like it.
Comment the Third: There’s a third option I’ve read recently but can’t put my finger on right now. The idea is to quietly announce that we will no longer support or fund governments that promote terrorism and that do not have free elections. And then stop funding the Palestinians as long as they are lobbing missiles into Israel, stop funding Egypt as long as they are jimmy-rigging their elections, and in general quit spreading American largesse or good-will around to all the dictators, thugs and tyrants holding us up for ransom or else they will say bad things about us and “ruin our image”. See also Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and the UN. It would be a middle way of doing something without going to war. I don’t think we can or should go back to the Bad Old Days of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and I do agree with the commenter who thinks that Dubya has lost the pulse of the country and we’re moving on without him. He SERIOUSLY needs to look at the issue of immigration, and to me, the Dubai/Ports things is a reflection of that frustration as much as it is an Arab/Muslim thing.
A few points, AL-
One, nice little subtle jabs at your lefty friends – they think they’re so progressive, but they’re really hypocrites when it counts, and that hypocrisy spells DOOM FOR THE MUSLIM WORLD!!!!
Right.
Two, for all your concern about how morally horrible “turning our backs” would be for the Middle East, isn’t this essentially what we’ve done to all of Africa and a good bit of Southeast Asia for decades? I say this not to accuse you of hypocrisy – I’m sure from a moral standpoint, you value all disadvantaged people equally, in all seriousness – but to point out that the US just doesn’t have the resources to help everybody, especially not in the way that you’ve pushed us to help Iraq.
Three, while there are some arguments to be made about the problems of isolationism, I don’t necessarily think liberals – or even Jim Henley, a _genuine_ libertarian (a rarity on the net) – are so much pro-isolationism as anti-Iraq war. Jim wants us to kick the shit out of Al Qeada, so do all the liberals I know. When mainstream liberals start calling for us to get out of Afghanistan, _then_ we’ve got a disengagement problem.
And lastly, your post – all your posts – pretty much continue to ignore the fact that the guy administering your preferred course of action is incompetent. Last I heard, you were emailing Bush that he should get his act together… had any luck with that yet?
The bottom line is that, while there’s probably a really good argument to be made in favor of fighting a successful war of liberation and rebuilding Iraq into a model of Muslim democracy, rather than hiding back in the States and doing nothing, that’s not the choice we’re actually faced with. The war as conducted by GWB _isn’t_ advancing the objectives you want to see advanced, according to substantial majorities of the American people, and arguing that we need to continue it because it would be a great thing _if it were done properly_ is beside the point – it _isn’t_ being done properly, it seems highly unlikely it’s _gonna_ be done properly, and saying “Kerry would have been worse” isn’t really an answer either.
Chris – a few fast ones, more tomorrow:
1. I don’t think they’re hypocrites (and I don’t think hypocracy is the worst sin); I specifically said “This isn’t about dissing their views; because I don’t (another post on that soon), I understand them.”
2. Why ignore Africa? becuase it isn’t the home of a mass movement that has defined itself in opposition ot the West and has the social integrity and means to bring the fight to us in a meaningful way.
3. Chris, it’s just silly to think that soemhow we’re going to violate the soverign territory of foreign countries – in the course of ‘kicking ass’ and not have wars. I blogged it before & will dig it out and bring it forward.
4. Incompetent compared to who? Absolutely there are immense gaps between who Bush is and who I wish were in the chair. But it’s not Hollywood, and I don;t get to script a President. Is Bush better than Kerry would have been? Hell, yes. Did you read the Newsweek series on Kerry in the campaign? Did you follow Kerry’s pathetic excuse for a campaign? He lost to an unpopular President waging an unpopular war.
SO sometimes we go to war with the President we’ve got; and sine I think the war was the right thing to do – for reasons we’ve beaten to death – I’ll take someone who’s pushing it forweard rather than someone who is ducking it…
A.L.
The Walter Russell Mead shorthand for what A.L. is talking about: Jacksonianism dressed up as Jeffersonianism. Peter Beinhart “explains the taxonomy”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060313&s=trb031306 and where things with the Democrats. (Free registration required.)
I think the real issue here is that people are afriad to really come to grips with the fact that this is a REAL war. I knew this the day I saw those planes crash into the buildings. A few months later we would be snipping at each other politically, and a few years later we’d be talking about “weapons of mass distraction” — anything to keep that pork-bellly political machine moving along.
But it’s not going to be so easy this time, and I think in their heart of hearts, most people know this. That’s why you see such a movement to wall up and shut out the rest of the world. It’d be nice to hide and mind our own business and let the world do what it wants. It’s always nice to be in denial. And there are a lot of politicians lining up to tell people exactly what they want to hear.
I’ve always predicted that America will go through phases over the next 50 years or so of trying to blame it all on ourselves and shut the world out, or the other extreme of trying to root our Islamists wherever they reside. Eventually, however, we’re going to have to stay on the hard-ass side. But that might take a generation or so, and it will require a much more sophisticated level of political discourse in America than is going on right now. Most dems I know really want the whole thing to go away, and most pubs haven’t thought through the nuances yet.
But who or what is out to kill us? (And who is “us”?)
If ‘us’ is defined as the five-sixths of the population of the planet that does not want to live under Islamic (Sharia) law, then our enemies are the supporters of those Islamic (Sharia) laws.
Sharia laws are, in all their forms, apartheid and authoritarian. As practiced in states like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Sudan, they’re also totalitarian, pro-slavery and genocidal. Our policy of so-called “moderation” requries us to ally with to ally with totalitarian, pro-slavery, genocidal states. It’s impossible to see how an alliance with states that are not only totalitarian, pro-slavery, and genocidal could be called moderate or liberal. These states also support the terrorist groups that have murdered many of “us”. They’re doing this because they’re at war with us.
It’s also impossible to see how an alliance with states that are totalitarian, pro-slavery, genocidal and at war with us is ever going to work. Our current arrangement is not pragmatic, liberal or moderate.
Since we don’t have Manchurian-candidate-like powers of mind-control, it’s also impossible to see how we can reform these fascists through our benificence and goodwill.
Our enemies include that states that are ruled by Sharia (the Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran), the terrorist groups that support Sharia (like al Qaeda, al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, Pakistani Islamist groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, Thai Muslim separatist groups, Chechen ‘rebels’, etc.) and ‘peaceful’ groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Like Europe during the late 1930’s, some Muslims support totalitarian groups and some don’t. That doesn’t really matter, because we never would have won a war if we declared war on all Europeans. There is no effective way to fight an entire culture or religion. The option is too stupid to even contemplate.
There’s a real false dichotomy being offered here – we’re given two very bad choices:
– following our already-established policy of appeasing and allying with fascist genocidaires
– or, fight “Islam” and withdraw into isolationism. Both choices are absurd.
We have a lot of allies in the Middle East and in the Muslim world – our allies include the victims of the current Arab/Islamist campaign of ethnic cleansing – genuine moderate or liberal Muslims and Arabs, Copts, Jews, African blacks, Kurdish Muslims, non-Muslim Kurds, etc. If we identify our enemies, we can either fight them by
– directly confronting and contradicting their beliefs
– outlawing apartheid, genocidal Sharia laws
– enforcing our own laws against intimidating threats (fatwas), destroying embassies, killing our diplomats, and generally waging war against the world’s population.
Currently, we’re ignoring our own laws and our own rights in an effort to appease these fascist states and groups. If we don’t respect our laws and the lives or our own citizens, why should they?
Cathy Siepp has an interesting piece up that extends nicely on Marc’s description of his friends: “Segregated Screenwriters”:http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200603030825.asp is pretty funny, and a good slice of life in LA.
Winning the War of Information
Mary,
You get it!
The only way to fight the rise of darkness in the world, e.g. The Ring Trilogy (analogy), is to out Islamofascism for the Big Lie that it is.
In short to win the GWOT we must first win the War of Information. This a global war of ideologies as to which one best provides for the needs, desires, and wants of its followers.
Hint: The Islamic Empire that once stretched from Western Africa to the Eastern Pacific fell into darkness when it’s leaders began to reject critical debate from its followers. It has been in decline ever since. This is contrary to what the neo-Islamofascists believe and wish to restore with the return on The Caliphate.
Dr. Phil has a probing question for his guests when they need to evaluate their personal circumstance and need to change, “Now how’s that work’n for you?” We need to challege the followers of Islamofascism with the same question.
The key fundamental difference in our ideology as recognized in our Constitution is the universal truth of the FREE WILL OF MEN AND WOMEN!
This is the message that must be beamed via all manners of communication mediums into these evil regimes of darkness. The LIGHT of the freeworld will be their undoing.
Through the Net and the Blogos these tyranical totalarian rulers must be outed for the hypocrites and false prophets that they really are.
And for the true religious cultist leaders e.g, Iranian President MAD and his mentor Yazdi, their followers must be deprogramed from their spell. These cultist are no different than what we have firsthand knowledge e.g. David Koresh and the Branch Davidians (disavowed sect of the SDAs) and Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid bunch.
The only difference with the Islamofascist cultists is that they are funded with petrol dollars to spread this religion hate and evil.
RBT
The decisive campaign in the war on terror is the “information war”, and the decisive field of that campaign is America.
But the information war in America is the one fight President Bush won’t wage. He does not understand, and cannot understand, how he is screwing up here. It’s outside his frame of reference.
Because he does not perceive that the American people exist as an entity.
But they do, and they know that President Bush is not their leader. He’s not a leader period. And the American people are acting on this knowlege. Walter Russell Mead called it in his Jacksonian article, as did I on Strategy Page (“The Bush Administration’s peril here lies in the fact that the American people may themselves spontaneously attack domestic threats if it won’t, and then vote it from office”). Long quotes from my past articles appear below as I called, years ago, what is happening now, and my past articles explain why it is happening. Links to the sources cited, principally books, are given so you can check those for yourself.
The Giants of Flight 93
“American actions in the war on terror can be better understood if the unique role of the American people in American nationalism is considered. They feel they alone constitute the nation. This is quite contrary to other countries’ nationalism where the “people” are considered one of many domestic factions, and often an illegitimate one (“the rabble”). This distinction arose because the American people have always deemed America’s sovereign power to reside in themselves, while most other nations began their national consciousness with a hereditary monarch expressing the sovereign power. Other peoples identify themselves with their nations. Americans instead identify the nation with themselves, feeling they collectively are the nation.
Many distinctive American traits grow from these feelings – exaggerated self-reliance and individualism, disdain for elites, self-confidence, etc. The American phenomenon of “populism” is a perfect example – a feeling that factions are illegitimate usurpers of power properly exercised solely by the people through governments which are supposed to be their servants. The American people are rightly confident they collectively can bend their governments, including the national government, to their will when necessary, but don’t hesitate to act on their own, as individuals or in spontaneously formed groups, to address issues as those arise. The unique vitality, power and independence of American local and state governments compared to those of other countries arises from the fact that sovereignty and power reside in the American people collectively and flow from the bottom up.
These and other consequences of the American people’s role in American nationalism are directly relevant, and critical, to the war on terror. Public willingness to initiate and continue conflicts are in most countries the only arenas within which their peoples can affect their governments’ conduct of hostilities, but not in America. The American people’s proprietary attitude towards their country and in particular, its national government, leads them to additionally demand and get a say in the objectives, scale, scope and ferocity of hostilities. This has been true throughout our history, as well depicted in the American Revolution chapter in Michael Pearlman’s Warmaking and American Democracy …”
Two American Traditions in the War On Terror
“Many commentators familiar with American history are rightly concerned that the American people might not be willing to continue the war on terror long enough to perform a thorough attitude adjustment on an Arab tribal culture which well pre-dates Islam. They err in feeling that the result might be cessation of the effort and reversion to isolationism. This arises in part because of a short-sighted focus on America’s most recent major war, in Vietnam, but also because these commentators don’t understand the bloody obvious (i.e., they assume that the terrorists will stop attacking us just because we stop fighting them), let alone long-term American traits in war.
They are not alone – the Bush Administration and foreign governments make many of the same mistakes. The latters’ are understandable – they necessarily have to view events in terms of their domestic concerns or they risk losing power. The Bush Administration’s neglect of these issues is, however, a potential threat to its goals and existence, and unjustifiable given the heroic events on United Airlines Flight 93. The latter and the atavistic public response to it – expressed in a spontaneously created shrine at the crash site – was unmistakable proof that some exceptionally powerful American traditions remain very close to the surface.
Failure to recognize these traditions, and address the factors which might rouse the American people to direct involvement in the war on terror, could result in America and the world becoming a much uglier and more dangerous place. This almost happened in 1945 when the U.S. government decided, if Japan did not surrender after being nuked, to commit genocide by spraying Japan’s cities with poison gas. And then invade while continuing to gas all Japanese possible – civilians included. Japan survived only because it surrendered …
This appalling prospect is made possible by a major element, or “meme”, in American nationalism called “Jacksonian” in Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence, named after President Andrew Jackson. Development of the Jacksonian meme is well described in David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed. Most Americans are blends of the memes identified in these and related books – few are all one or another and the blends vary according to the situation. The Jacksonian meme has historically tended to become dominant during war among individuals and the nation overall. Its major wartime expressions include utter ruthlessness towards enemies perceived as not abiding by accepted rules of conduct (by bloody-minded Jacksonian standards), insistence on conclusive victory and impatience.
Jacksonianism was definitely dominant in the war against Japan (see John Dower’s War Without Mercy), though the decision for genocide incorporated additional factors, not least that suicidal Japanese attacks and resistance had dehumanized them to us. Terrorist suicide attacks could get us into that dark place again. The possibility of genocidal events in the war on terror should not be dismissed given these similarities – few in 1939 perceived 1945.
The tradition epitomized by Flight 93 is quite different and 2500 years older – of classic Western Civilization at its dawn – free citizens who, together, comprise their “polis” and defend it with their individual lives as the expression of their corporate selves. This tradition has and does lie closer to the surface in America than elsewhere in the West due to a combination of deeper traits in American nationalism – self-reliance, individualism, etc.
The most common expressions of America’s version of this Western tradition have been voluntary associations to defend against community threats, both temporary (posses & vigilantes) and organized – militias and volunteer firemen. Flight 93 showed that such associations arise from deeply held American traits and can be aroused in ordinary Americans by the appearance of domestic threats which their governments are unable or unwilling to confront.
The Bush Administration’s peril here lies in the fact that the American people may themselves spontaneously attack domestic threats if it won’t, and then vote it from office. Repeated examples exist of the American people acting to protect their communities and country without waiting for their governments. The most significant occurred in 1861 when the federal government asserted control over internal security after widespread attacks by pro-Union vigilantes on Confederate sympathizers in northern and border states. The 1942 internment of Japanese-Americans is ominously instructive. California historian Kevin Starr noted that federal motivations included fear of vigilante attacks on Japanese-Americans incited by a disgraceful hate campaign of the Hearst newspaper chain.
The Bush Administration’s repeated denunciations of hate speech and deeds against Muslim immigrants shows some awareness of this issue, but its domestic security actions show it is clueless about the potential danger’s extent. If the American people suffer truly major losses from foreign terrorism, they may well require that non-citizen Arab Muslim immigrants (rightly or wrongly perceived as sheltering terrorists) be interned and possibly expelled en masse, using a combination of political pressure and vigilante attacks to force a weakened government to do their will. Such internment/expulsion would have immense foreign consquences.
The Bush Administration can minimize this possibility by convincing the American people that it is not necessary for their protection. The best means is obviously prevention of further mass fatality attacks, with effective publicly demonstrated security measures being second. The latter is a disaster area. Public opinion here is primarily based on daily in-their-faces confrontations with ludicrously ineffective, offensive, demeaning airport security. Other, more dangerous but less obvious, examples exist of federal indifference to homeland security. These make the public more rather than less likely to expel Arab immigrants, while running over the Bush Administration, in the event of further mass fatality terrorism here.
The war on terror won’t end until the American people are safe at home, because they have the power and will to utterly end their enemies’ societies. Domestic and foreign governments ignore the American people at their peril.”
The Bush Administration and American Nationalism
“… America’s war with terror is unique in our history in that its people are directly involved. The high degree of their emotional involvement is best illustrated by the spontaneously created shrine to the passengers and cabin crew of United Airlines Flight 93. That has major political and sociological significance.
What most drives this unprecedented emotional involvement is that the American people are targets at home. Such attack is the overwhelming issue in the war with terror, and the heart of the threats and opportunities for the Bush Administration. It incites a converging response from three different major themes in American nationalism: (a) the militia tradition most recently exemplified by Flight 93 wherein citizens attack domestic threats themselves without waiting for government action, (b) uniquely American “populism” in which large segments of the population band together to force government action blocked by Madisonian factions/special interests, and (c) the “Jacksonian” tradition named after President Andrew Jackson in Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence.
…America’s enemies abroad can only be dealt with by our government, but foreign enemies appearing in our homeland can be and, on 9/11, were, attacked by the American people. They know full well that denying entry to 20-45 year-old Arab males would prevent most terrorist attacks here and that deporting those already present would prevent almost all such attacks. People do not understand why their government outright refuses to do either (it’s because too many special interests benefit from illegal immigration). Further terrorism here would create a significant possibility of a populist political uprising against the Bush Administration plus vigilante action against Arab and Muslim immigrants to get them all deported.
The Bush Administration’s conspicuous homeland security failures, notably in airports, are also setting it up for this. Much of the problem – illegal immigration and lack of controls over resident aliens – really is intractable, but the Administration need not solve this now. Merely addressing the issue through use of Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit” would provide some protection from blame in the event of future terrorist attacks in America, and offers significant partisan advantages if no such attacks materialize. It is also possible to do some effective things now.
… Such changes would enhance homeland security while giving the Bush Administration some political insulation in the event of more terrorism here. Public relations gestures would help with the latter too, especially concerning the Jacksonians, and that is where partisan gains are possible. Putting into words what is in peoples’ hearts and minds, but not their mouths, focuses public energy while being marvelous PR. The message should be denunciation of Islamofacism and exposure of the lies of its sympathizers, as shown by President Reagan’s successful confrontational speeches in bringing down the Soviet Union …”
But President Bush did not do any of those things, with consequences noted in this and related threads.
AL said: “Is Bush better than Kerry would have been? Hell, yes. Did you read the Newsweek series on Kerry in the campaign? Did you follow Kerry’s pathetic excuse for a campaign? He lost to an unpopular President waging an unpopular war.”
What a complete ass you are.
Either you are a shallow, impressionable reactionary who lives in a bubble, or you’ve left out your true sources of information that led you to form your RNC-sponsored Negative Impression of Kerry the Flip-flopper.
I wouldn’t go around broadcasting your certainty that Kerry would have been worse than Bush. That you could say such a thing weighing a Newsweek article against the mountains of evidence that is generated almost daily revealing the Administration’s deep incompetence, corruption and mendacity is enough to question your sanity.
You think Gore would have sat there and read My Pet Goat while Americans were burning up in the twin towers?
You think Kerry would be joking around and playing guitar while New Orleans residents were being washed away by Katrina?
You think either one would divert their attention away from tracking down bin Laden or rebuilding Afghanistan to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?
You think either one would have appointed Alito or Roberts?
You think either one would cut funding for medical research and social welfare programs to build-up the military?
I could go on but the more I type the angrier I get.
I’d rather have a syphillitic monkey in the White House right now instead of Bush…
#20
“…You think Kerry would be joking around and playing guitar while New Orleans residents were being washed away by Katrina?…”
“…You think either one would divert their attention away from tracking down bin Laden or rebuilding Afghanistan to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?”
These two sentences are mutually exclusive. If New Orelans flooding warranted the president’s attention, then by definition he would have to divert his attention away from tracking down Bin Laden to deal with it.
Emotional rhetoric is a great thing. Makes you feel all warm inside. If it is consistent, it can even be persuasive. This was not consistent.
Wizener, it’s nice to know that in your universe, Gore would have ripped off his suit, put on his red cape, and flown to New Your City ot personally hold the towers up while the people inside escaped; it’s nice to see an actualy, breathing example of BDS for all of us to wonder at.
No, I’m not at all happy with Alito or Roberts, but, simply, if the Democrats held the Hourse or Senate, they wouldn’t be in office. I spend a lot of time trying to suggest to my party why we keep losing, and I’ll keep doing that.
Running a ntional campaign is the best proxy we have for basic administrative ability; go read the “Newsweek article”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6414892/site/newsweek/
and tell me what a great administrator Kerry would have been. In reality, not on your planet.
A.L.
Wizener,
As one who was in the biz, Kerry’s persoanl skills as a candidate, and his demonstrated administrative skills concerning his campaign, did not rise to the level of “mediocre”.
What kept those from being visible at your end of the spectrum was an excellent campaign by the “independent” Democratic committees, notably in getting out the vote.
Kerry’s failings here were pretty much common to those of presidential nominees whose highest office has been legislative (notably U.S. Senators). Elective experience as a governor is pretty much necessary, or mayor of a really big city. A few terms as state Attorney General (which Kerry was in Massachusetts) are not enough.
Governors have always been the most successful presidential nominees.
Look at this way – Kerry beat the point spread. Normally a presidential nominee who has been a governor merits a five point spread against one who has been only a Senator.
BTW, this is Hillary’s biggest weakness. Her only elective office has been Senator.
I’m not talking policy or ideology here. This is pure nuts & bolts campaign stuff.
#22 from Armed Liberal: “Running a national campaign is the best proxy we have for basic administrative ability…”
I think so, and it’s a good one. The system works.
But in George W. Bush’s case, there’s a substantial difference between candidate Bush and President Bush.
I like candidate Bush. Bush-Cheney ’04 was a magnificent thing. Immense number of energised ordinary people, volunteers, understanding fully what was at stake, dragged Dubya over the line, and Rove and the Republicans helped and organised all the way. It was a victory of people power over billionaires and big media bias, even fraud.
President Bush doesn’t count on and involve the people. He says if you want to help the war on terror, go shopping. Just go back to sleep, the guys in the White House and in Washington will take care of everything.
There are areas where that’s right, and then Bush is great. He’s a good war-leader, and only listening to military professionals is a large part of what makes him good. His diplomacy with India was a great idea, and you don’t have to arrange that kind of stuff in private.
But there are other areas where that’s not true. People don’t feel the White House and Washington have taken care of it on spending, on border control, on corruption, and on other issues including homeland security in the airports. People are concerned, but President Bush gets surprised every time, and angry when people at the bottom bridle.
After so many turncoat Supreme Court Judges, conservatives and pro-lifers needed to know that they were getting nominations that were reliable and highly competent, not just well-connected and well-presented, but President Bush was deaf to this fear and tried to appoint a dubiously qualified old pal to the Supreme Court. He seemed angry people weren’t having that.
Border control is a joke, but President Bush was unsympathetic to the Minutemen, volunteers helping border control who were totally in the people-power mould of Bush-Cheney ’04.
After we knew who the 11 September, 2001 terrorists were, it was inevitable that people would see Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt differently, and expect action from the White House. No way: the Saudis seem to have a creepy amount of influence with Bush, he has never taken them on, and people like Stephen Den Beste – not a stupid man – can’t make sense of this. Egypt still gets paid its billions to forment hate. We’re not giving aid to a grateful people, we’re paying tribute to an unfriendly fake democracy where people hate us. Now it’s the UAE ports deal, Bush reacted to inevitable popular suspicion by threatening to use his first ever veto, and by signalling that it was OK for his supporters to accuse sceptics – who were two thirds of the country – of being bigots.
Candidate Bush, at minimum, was able to benefit from people power to get things done. President Bush ran a totally “nothing” campaign for social security reform. Legislators weren’t all that enthusiastic. People were nervous – naturally, this is social security! – but President Bush had no persuasive story ready to tell them. He never seemed to reach effectively outside the beltway, and so social security reform fell over and when it goes bankrupt that will be somebody else’s fault. That’s weak.
Obligatory on-topic bit:
#16 from mary on March 4, 2006 04:23 PM
[I said] But who or what is out to kill us? (And who is “us”?)
[mary said]: If ‘us’ is defined as the five-sixths of the population of the planet that does not want to live under Islamic (Sharia) law, then our enemies are the supporters of those Islamic (Sharia) laws.
That makes sense in principle, but in practice it’s different. China, to begin with, won’t define itself as part of “us”. It’s a Communist or by now a fascist oligarchy, and it is not our friend. The best we can hope for is its neutrality, till its modernising armed forces grow stronger.
But India might indeed be “us” – it’s democratic and well qualified in all sorts of ways, with healthy British traditions – the finest kind in my view. I heartily agree with George W. Bush’s India diplomacy. Hindu power!! (grin)
AL-
bq. 1. I don’t think they’re hypocrites (and I don’t think hypocracy is the worst sin); I specifically said “This isn’t about dissing their views; because I don’t (another post on that soon), I understand them.”
Unfortunately, your condescending tone – not to mention the actual content of your article – completely belies your remarks about “not dissing their views”.
bq. 2. Why ignore Africa? becuase it isn’t the home of a mass movement that has defined itself in opposition ot the West and has the social integrity and means to bring the fight to us in a meaningful way.
True, but it still undercuts the idea that the moral dimension, in and of itself, is a reason we “have” to engage the middle east, especially in the way you’ve argued for.
bq. 3. Chris, it’s just silly to think that soemhow we’re going to violate the soverign territory of foreign countries – in the course of ‘kicking ass’ and not have wars. I blogged it before & will dig it out and bring it forward.
When did I ever say we shouldn’t have wars? The issue at hand is the world of difference between the wars we can and do have – between Afghanistan and Iraq, to be specific.
bq. 4. Incompetent compared to who? Absolutely there are immense gaps between who Bush is and who I wish were in the chair. But it’s not Hollywood, and I don;t get to script a President. Is Bush better than Kerry would have been? Hell, yes. Did you read the Newsweek series on Kerry in the campaign? Did you follow Kerry’s pathetic excuse for a campaign? He lost to an unpopular President waging an unpopular war. SO sometimes we go to war with the President we’ve got; and sine I think the war was the right thing to do – for reasons we’ve beaten to death – I’ll take someone who’s pushing it forweard rather than someone who is ducking it…
But that’s just it, AL – Bush _isn’t_ pushing the war forward, and it’s abundantly clear to most people that we’re on the verge of losing this thing entirely, if we haven’t lost it already. And you using Kerry as a punching bag doesn’t change that fact. The question is not whether Kerry would have been _worse_ than Bush, the question now is whether Bush is good enough – from an absolute standpoint – to get the job done at all. And if he’s not, as increasingly seems to be the case, are we better off fighting a half-assed war that doesn’t get the job done, or not engaging it at all?
I also wanted to comment on this:
bq. Running a ntional campaign is the best proxy we have for basic administrative ability;
Really? More so than being a capable attorney general and lieutenant governor? More so than Bush’s legacy of being a failed, bailed-out businessman, do-nothing governor, and hands-off president who let his cabinet battle it out over the big WoT issues without any guidance from him? More than Bush’s stunning displays of cronyism that gave us the federal response to Katrina? Kerry gets “cranky” on the campaign, and _that’s_ why he would have been a worse leader than Bush?
It’s your frankly idiotic remarks like this that continually remind me why no sane Democrat’s gonna listen to your ideas about “reforming” the party. You accuse Wisner of having Bush Derangement Syndrome, but he’s far from the only person – from all over the political spectrum – who’s pissed at the President. The fact that you’re _still_ bashing Kerry, a year and a half after the event, and more importantly using these insipid examples to do it, means that you’re ground zero for the little seen Kerry Derangement Syndrome.
Daniel-
bq. These two sentences are mutually exclusive. If New Orelans flooding warranted the president’s attention, then by definition he would have to divert his attention away from tracking down Bin Laden to deal with it. Emotional rhetoric is a great thing. Makes you feel all warm inside. If it is consistent, it can even be persuasive. This was not consistent.
In contrast, distortion is not a great thing, and yet you apparently use it at will. I don’t agree with everything Wizner says, or the way he says it, but this is just ludicrous: he was talking about diverting the president’s attention away from tracking down Bin Laden “to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11”. That doesn’t translate – at all – to an implication that the president shouldn’t have paid attention to the Katrina disaster.
Chris, at BarCamp, but quickly to one point. The issue is that I had a binary choice in 04 – Kerry or Bush. In 08, we’ll have a binary choice as well.
So, the example of LBJ, who was a competent President and never a Governor doesn’t count…?
A.L.
China, to begin with, won’t define itself as part of “us”. It’s a Communist or by now a fascist oligarchy, and it is not our friend. The best we can hope for is its neutrality, till its modernising armed forces grow stronger.
I agree with George Bush’s India diplomacy too. China, on the other hand, isn’t a friend, but it can be a kind-of ally. How do we know China won’t define itself as part of “us”? Have we ever asked?
During the late ’30’s, Europe was dominated by totalitarianism. We didn’t consider the Communists or the Axis to be friends, but when the Axis attacked us, we wisely decided that we were at war with them. Instead of fighting “totalitarianism” or “European culture” we decided to ally with Stalin to fight the fascists.
In short, we decided who to fight and everyone knew what we were fighting. Now, we don’t. It seems that Bush is still using the Carter/Brezinsky strategy of using Islamists to intimidate the commies. We’re hostile towards the Chinese (who haven’t attacked us), yet our govt. treats the Islamists (who have attacked us) like family.
The Saudi government was as culpable as the Taliban were for the act of war that was 9/11, an attack that was equivalent to Pearl Harbor. They’re currently paying Islamist paramilitary groups to destabilize the goverments in Thailand and India. We call the state that murdered thousands of Americans our allies. We’re not willing to go to war with them over dead Americans, Thais or Hindus, but we are willing to go nuclear to defend Taiwan.
Our foreign policies are still very pre-9/11.
bq. So, the example of LBJ, *who was a competent President* and never a Governor doesn’t count…?
A.L.
>CoughCoughCough< Care to revise and extend your remarks?
bq. So, the example of LBJ, *who was a competent President* and never a Governor doesn’t count…?
A.L.
>Cough< Vietnam >Cough< Care to revise and extend your remarks?
*d’oooh*…OK, no more commenting from conferences for me…
A.L.
bq. Chris, at BarCamp, but quickly to one point. The issue is that I had a binary choice in 04 – Kerry or Bush. In 08, we’ll have a binary choice as well.
This is a half-truth. In the voting booth, arguably, you had a practical choice between Kerry and Bush (although you could have also voted for a third-party candidate, not voted, etc.) However, the election was over a year ago, and the state-space of who and what we argue for and against _now_ is virtually infinite. You countine to _act_ as if you have a binary choice of trash Kerry/support Bush/support the Iraq war vs. trash Bush/argue against the Iraq war, but in 2006, that’s a false and obsolete dichotomy.
And, as always, the fact that you didn’t vote for Kerry doesn’t make what’s happening in Iraq right now any less of a failure.
LBJ seems pretty irrelevant to the point I was making, although I’ll note that Johnson’s pre-presidency career showed vastly more drive, ambition, and outright success than GWB’s ever did.