View From the Bushes

Nice to see some really good comments on my last blog (better than the blog itself, actually). As far as the commentary article, my basic point would be that there are plenty of things about Bush's conduct of the war to take issue with. I personally feel that he could have done a better job preserving the international goodwill the U.S. had after 9/11. I am also of the opinion that he did rush the start of the war. Adding these together, I think we would have had a better chance of getting Turkey to allow the 3rd Army to come in from the north, which I think would have made a bigger difference than most people think. Other objections may include the administration's soft stance on torture and its casual regard for the rights of detainees. Of course, the opposition has chosen to focus on the idea that Bush lied.

There are some very good reasons for doing this: "lied" rhymes with "died," it's easy to say and remember, it's got a mantra-like quality. Basically, it works very well with the great mass of people who have no time or inclination to spend on a subtle examination of the details and just want something simple to hang their ideological hat on. But the point is that it's just incorrect -- lying would assume that they knew or at least suspected that there were no WMD. This is very, very, very difficult for me to believe for two reasons. The first, which everyone mentions, is that everyone thought he had WMD, every intelligence agency, every senator, everyone, and second, a point which I haven't heard anyone mention is that he based the entire justification for the war on the presence of WMD because they thought that was their surest footing. If the White House ever doubted that they would find great big steaming mounds of WMD's they wouldn't have made that the cornerstone of their justifcation strategy.

The moral is that there are plenty of accurate bad things to say about Bush without resorting to inaccuracies solely because they are easy to understand and appeal to the ignorant masses. Moving on, I'll be in Park City with the in-laws for the rest of this week, so the earliest I'll be blogging again will be Monday. I have high hopes for this little trip. It's the ideal vacation: nothing actually planned, just a really nice condo where I can kick back, read, watch movies, play games and sleep late.

Already on vacation
Ross