October 02, 2004
A Tale of Two Editorials
Two men with coveted jobs in the world of those who spend time thinking about the things we bloggers write about and get paid for it passed one another swiftly in the night; even though they were half a world away. Nicholas Kristoff in Afghanistan on his search for Usama bin Laden and David Brooks in his search for answers to why to vote for his President, George W Bush are those two men. Both have columns in today’s New York Times editoral page
I recommend both columns, they are rather eye-opening. Kristoff clearly is getting an earful in Afghanistan where he is searching for Usama in person. I pray he fails to find him; his death would be a loss. Brooks on the other hand is searching for reasons to vote for a President who he says is steadfast and resolute but lacks the statecraft to accomplish his goals. He says that the faithful and moralistic among us vote for Bush because his simple answers resonate with them. Kristoff finds that the same people, the moralistic ones, in Afghanistan have turned to the Taliban.
The problem with reelecting a President who lacks statecraft in a wartime environment is the tradeoff for lack of skill at statecraft is then body bags full of dead Soldiers and Marines who died in vain. Even the craftiest men of our generation’s leaders were not able to turn Vietnam into a victory. Johnson and Nixon both were the most effective statesmen in their parties at the time; neither was able to succeed in Vietnam. That may sound like an argument for retaining Bush but I would like to acquaint everyone out there with a fact, Bush has weakened our nation since 9/11, both at home and abroad. His simple moralistic approach to governing bears more scrutiny than Brooks spends on it. His domestic policies are not simple nor are they moralistic, they are greedy and reprehensible. They defy the idea that this is a simple moral leader who always follows clear principles.
The violence done to environmental policies established by bipartisan action over the last half of a century by this administration is monumental. Is that the act of a great moral leader? These changes have been made at the behest of industries that support Bush financially in his campaigns, are those acts the acts of a high-minded moral man. They are not! In the area of Medicare this Administration lied, both to Congress and the public in order to get its bill past Congress. Was that the act of a high minded moral man? That bill will harm the nation and the very elderly people that it was purported to help, does the support for it by this administration make Bush moral? It seems rather easy to conclude that the opposite is true.
Of course Bush is presented as moral, by Brooks and others among the punditry. Particularly by those who owe their careers to the support of the right wing for intellectuals with a bias toward leaning to the right. Some of us see Bush as neither simple nor moral but we are viewed as cynical and hard-bitten. On the other hand Kristoff is out there searching for Usama, a man he should hope he never meets. I am not afraid of Usama, but I am rather safe here at home in the bosom of the USA, Kristoff is wandering around in a nation that supported Usama’s attack on us at 9/11 on the reality dial. He is finding, not to my surprise, that the attitude there toward Americans has deteriorated since we won the war and banished the Taliban.
Kristoff quotes a government official from Uruzgan as saying, “The Taliban are much stronger than before.” Bush proudly announced to the world that ten million Afghans have registered to vote during the debate. He did that without noticing that there are not ten million eligible voters in that nation of a very few million more than ten million people. Children are far more than fifty percent of the population of Afghanistan. The ten million figure is not just specious but outrageous. Of course this moral man never bothered to check the facts before he uttered them in a national forum. That is clearly a pattern with him, and this is moral leadership? Bush is neither simple nor moral, at the core of the man lies a soul steeped in the Machiavellian fantasy that the end justifies the means. That is moral relativism at its roots and is rotten to the core with lies and the disdain those lies show for the very people who vote for him.
Brooks actually says in his article’s lead sentence; “I think the best ticket for this country would be Bush-Kerry.” The problem with that approach to nullifying Kerry is that no one who would vote for Kerry would want Bush in the lead position on that ticket. The other problem is that all through the article Brooks talks about how Kerry can’t make up his mind and Bush makes up his without knowing the facts. Bush apparently acts from some nebulous principled reality where he doesn’t need facts to make up his mind. God help us if that is true, Stalin had that level of moral certainty, Hitler had that level of moral certainty, Mao had that level of moral certainty. They are not the role models I prefer our leaders to resemble in the area of moral certainty. The man who cannot argue on the points but knows the right course when he sees it is the quintessential demagogue. Is that who Brooks is voting for this time out?
I was greatly encouraged by Kerry’s victory in the first debate, and hope that he can struggle hard enough to win this election. He will need to fight the erroneous idea that the man of moral courage must deny facts and serve undefined “principles” regardless of what is happening in the real world. That is a particularly pernicious prevarication promoted particularly by the right, in these odd and unusual times. Perhaps the party of Lincoln can find its roots in the morality of its support for great humanitarian causes, but only if it can drive a stake through the heart of its current leadership. They have usurped the GOP and demolished its conservative roots through which the seed of liberty was well nourished. I am sad for Brooks and all of the other intellectually curious men of the right; their world view is constrained by the folly of being led by lesser men with a weaker grasp of the truth that lies only in the real world. God bless you all and help you cling to your hold on what is real, nothing else will serve this nation so well in the end. ©Henri Reynard/GoldenBrush Interactive
Posted by Henri Reynard at October 2, 2004 07:02 AMHenri, I continue to be amazed that DNC, Kerry, all the way down to the President of the College Democrats, fail to counter the most damaging charge coming from the RNC in terms of voters. Specifically, the charge that Bush’s Iraq war is justified by the fact that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq instead of New York.
C’mon. This is the most damaging argument to the DNC that the RNC is making. And it is so easily turned back on Bush. The CIA and the State Department support the fact that al-Queda cells, terrorists, are spread out around the world, including here in the U.S. and Canada. Why in God’s name are the DNC and Democrats incapable of countering this argument by pointing out that the terrorists who will strike us here, ARE NOT IN IRAQ. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that supports the idea that the terrorists we need be concerned about here at home are corralled in Iraq. It is simply not true and yet, Kerry, the DNC, and Democrats across this land don’t seem to comprehend this fact and use it.
Whassup? Nader realizes it. Is Kerry too busy trying to keep Nader off the ballots that he can’t listen to the wisdom of Nader even when it could mean a Kerry win? Amazing!
Posted by: David R. Remer at October 2, 2004 08:34 AMBush proudly announced to the world that ten million Afghans have registered to vote during the debate. He did that without noticing that there are not ten million eligible voters in that nation of a very few million more than ten million people.
Kerry corrected Bush a couple times on stuff like that, but he missed a few, too.
Referring to Iraqi security forces, Bush said “We’ve got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year.” but that’s not true.
[Pentagon] documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as “untrained,” and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.Six Army battalions have had “initial training,” while 57 National Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or “awaiting equipment.” Just eight Guard battalions have reached “initial (operating) capability,” and the Pentagon acknowledged the Guard’s performance has been “uneven.”
Bush also said, “We’ve allocated $7 billion over the next months for reconstruction efforts.”
But that $7 billion won’t actually be spent for “anywhere from 15 to 30 months, based on Congressional and administration estimates.”
Bush might as well have said we’ll be spending it “over the next days” or “hours” to make things look even better.
Then Bush said, “One of his campaign people alleged that Prime Minister Allawi was like a puppet.”
In context Lockhart was talking about Allawi’s speech sounding as if it had been written by Bush’s speechwriters. Lockhart said, “The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States.”
Well, guess what. Allawi’s speech was written by one of Bush’s speechwriters.
Senator Feinstein sums it up when she says,
“I want to express my profound dismay about reports that officials from your administration and your reelection campaign were ‘heavily involved’ in writing parts of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s speech,” California Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote in a letter to President George W. Bush.“You may be surprised by this, Mr. President, but I viewed Prime Minister Allawis speech as an independent view on conditions in Iraq,” she wrote.
“His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule.”
“To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks,”
I guess it’s pretty tempting to stretch the truth when things aren’t going so well, but that’s not the act of a moral leader. Twisting facts to make them “clearer than the truth” is the hallmark of a person who will do and say whatever it takes to win.
