For Bush's critics to have to admit that his vision has even caught on in France would likely be too much to take.
George W. Bush is the Winston Churchill of our time. Don't see it? Keep an eye on that rear-view mirror.
Myopia and simplistic ideology are absolutely the two easiest political stances to adopt. George Bush represents both in spades.
However, it isn't the end of Marsden's column that is so pathetic, it is her rabid defense of right-wing extremism in politics (especially US politics) that is particularly revolting:
Poor GOP Senator Joe McCarthy was persecuted and vilified for audaciously suggesting the U.S. government was rife with communist spies at its highest level. Now that the VENONA Project has successfully decoded encrypted Soviet communications, we know his assessment was bang-on.
Yes, let's consider McCarthy for a moment. It was his "investigations that created an era of fear and oppression the waves of which are still rippling through society today. Just as the US no doubt had its "moles" lurking in the Kremlin doing their business, most sane people would have expected the USSR to have moles in the Washington D.C. corridors as well. Investigating such prospects is admirable and valid. Using that same supposition to vilify people (McCarthy went after homosexuals with a unique degree of paranoia and viciousness) is not admirable or valid.
Ronald Reagan hit a 42% approval rating in 1983, as unemployment peaked prior to his visionary Reaganomics policy kicking in. When he died, you'd think the previously critical liberal media had spent a lifetime partying with the guy.
Yes, trickle-down economics was such a smashing success, wasn't it. While I realize that the neocon crowd idolize both Thatcher and Reagan, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are above reproach. Reagan's economic policies were a disaster for people at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Reagan's policies were also the beginning of the explicit undermining and devaluing of publicly-funded education in the United States. The price of that is only just becoming apparent with now a full generation reaching adulthood with significant deficits in their education.
She goes on to snidely dismiss Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Laureate as follows:
Even president Jimmy Carter -- who let American hostages rot in Iran for 444 days and was drop-kicked from office with a 39% approval rating that year -- went on to win a Nobel Prize for his, um, efforts.
Of course, she ignores Carter's ongoing activity after his presidency, as well as the fact that he actually did rather more constructive foreign policy work than most presidents do.
She claims that the events which will make "Dubya" great in history are things like executing Saddam Hussein, and other events in Iraq:
Sammon, a registered Independent who brings the usually foreign concept of fairness to journalism, also suggests that events like the execution of Saddam Hussein and the capture of al-Qaida's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the man largely responsible for triggering sectarian violence in Iraq -- will eventually loom larger in retrospect than, for example, Dick Cheney shooting his pal during a hunting trip.
I disagree. Cheney shooting his friend during a hunting trip is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the Bush Administration. In their desperate desire to rush into an unnecessary, and arguably illegal war in Iraq the Bush Administration shot the American people with their own gun. The ongoing costs of that war have resulted in the biggest deficits a US government has ever experienced, and now threaten not only to devalue the US dollar further, but could easily provoke an economic collapse.
As important as history is, you do not run a country by looking backwards, any more than you drive a car through the rearview mirror. Bush has done both, and worse, has repeated the mistakes of the past - the world is just waiting for the off-screen sound of crashing bits.
5 comments:
One of Churchill's big strengths was his absolute belief in parliamentary democracy, the freedom of the people and of the press. This is something that neither Bush nor Harper have any real concept of. Both of them should read "The Will of the People" by Martin Gilbert to see how democracy really works.
It's hard to believe that anyone, even the Toronto Sun, would give space or airtime to Rachel Marsden. I wonder if that means I can become a "political pundit" and get paid for it if I pull random nasty thoughts out of my hindquarters.
Funny how she went from sending demented e-mails to her swimming coach and leveling accusations of sexual abuse at him, charges of which he was acquitted, to spewing neo-con idiocy that some apparently take seriously. I thought she was firmly entrenched in the States, but I guess the Sun is desperate.
I'd forgotten that Marsden had admitted to being a stalker as well. And was fired by FOX News a few months back? She might be considered pitiful if she weren't so busy trying to cause harm.
The Sun newspapers also give airtime to such illustrious whackjobs as Michael Coren, Ezra Levant, Paul Jackson and Ted Byfield.
Lovely lot, aren't they?
Comparing 'Dubya' to Churchill is like comparing white bread to Beef Wellington. Churchill was never perfect, he'd admit it himself if he were still alive. And even though he was a staunch conservative he knew that you had to take care of the people 'under' you or you and your society paid a high price. He had a backbone and served in the British army during the Boer War at the front where he was captured and then successfully escaped. His life was spent in the service of his nation, not for some select bunch of industrial lobbyists. And he can say that no one was there to pull his strings.
'Dubya' I'm sure can be a very nice guy with a sense of humour, but no real substance. He (or his party) made much of Clinton's 'ducking' military service in 'Nam but unless I'm mistaken Junior didn't do any time over there either. I can't see much there to admire.
As for the latest neocon spewings being printed in the Toronto Sun, I think they're smelling the latest ladling of chum in the water and they're coming out for a taste and the promise of more, especially with the latest 'tax cuts'. I don't know where these figures are coming from but as a nation we're still not out of the woods, we're over committed in Afghanistan, deep in DEBT (don't look at deficit, that's just the shortfall after expenses) and the nation's infrastructure is nothing to boast about. Medicare is still sorely overworked, and education underfunded. The public service is understaffed and headed for even tougher times. The six plus weeks for a mailed in application for your passport is just one indicator.
E.
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