Jack's Blog

Let's nip this whole "Bush is shifting to a more enlightened foreign policy" theme in the bud, shall we?

Time calls it "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy" in this week's cover story. A David Sanger piece in tomorrow's New York Times is headlined, "Bush's Shift: Being Patient With Foes."

The sad truth is that the Administration's foreign policy has run aground on the shoals of its own incompetence. As Kevin Drum noted last week, "the Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore."

Afghanistan is reverting to the Taliban. Iraq is beyond the point of no return. North Korea is acting with impunity. Iran controls its own destiny.

Worse, for an Administration that has instinctively favored military action over diplomacy, the nation's military resources are depleted, bogged down, and largely unavailable for any further foreign adventures.

Yet we have stories emerging that suggest the current foreign policy dilemma is a deliberate course of action chosen by Bush. Time, in a mishmash of its news and style sections, calls it a "strategic makeover" led by Condi Rice.

The fact is Bush has boxed himself in, frittering away lives and treasure, and leaving himself with few options. He deserves no more credit for a policy shift than the man serving a life sentence who declares that he will henceforth be law-abiding.

Uhh, Gosh, what does this have to do with soccer, exactly?

This is really cute: "Afghanistan is reverting to the Taliban. Iraq is beyond the point of no return. North Korea is acting with impunity. Iran controls its own destiny."

Yeah, sure. That's all purely objective fact, not spin, hyperbole, or perverse wishful thinking.

Afghanistan is not "reverting to the Taliban." The Taliban has been severely crushed, for three years every day saw more and more of them killed and captured. At some point they managed to find tactics to stop the trend, and are now able to conduct inneffective and potentially unsustainable attacks on population centers. Somehow, in your frantic rush to condemn Bush, you've conflated "not dying as fast" with "totally in charge."

Iraq is not "beyond the point of no return." What point of no return do you even think they're past? To civil war? To an extremist theocracy? Or are you just leaving that open so that you can have your dramatic sounding buzz phrase, but still claim to be right later on? All you've got are deceptive phrases that sound like impending doom, but are totally false. The death of Zarqawi is a clear demonstration of the slow but definite progress in Iraq. The Iraqi Sunni leadership was clearly getting tired of his brand of resistance, and saw that they need a place at the table. Hundreds of seperate raids coincided with the attack that killed Zarqawi. Clearly somebody ratted out large sections of the Sunni insurgency as a good faith measure. Sure, the bombing continues. But the evidence of slow compromise and progress is clear. Maybe not clear to somebody who operates in buzz phrases and preformed conclusions, but it's clear to actual analysts and thinkers.

North Korea is acting with impunity? You know what? They sure are. And somehow you've managed to pin that all on GW Bush. I have to ask, are there any other parties involved in negotiations with the DPRK? China? Russia? Japan? South Korea? European nations? Yeah? But it's Bush failing, right? Those other nations are doing everything that can, and Bush is failing. Right. And also, when Clinton was in office, KJI was as well behaved as can be, not making any threats, not demanding grain, oil, light water nuclear reactors... None of that stuff. Clinton had him totally under control, and didn't at all encourage him to think that sabre rattling is a currency we will trade for nuclear technology and raw materials. ABB. ABB. ABB. Just keep telling yourself that's political thought.

Iran controls its own destiny? Uhh, yeah? I think your buzz phrase generator is running out of gas. Clearly Iran controls its own destiny. All nations do. I know you can only speak in anti-Bush bumper stickers, so clearly you think this somehow impugns Bush's credibility, but I'm not sure how.

Let me be clear with you. The NYT is full of shit with pretty much everything they say, ever. My impression with Bush is that he feels burned by his Iraq mission, and that's made him less optimistic about public support for military action. He doesn't have the military resources anyway, so he's being diplomatic.

It is a policy shift, its not driven by any amazing enlightenment, it's just what happens when you spend years working a military solution that absorbs your attention and resources.

You can't think in any terms besides ABB. You've managed to make yourself believe that NOT BUSH is all the leadership this nation needs.

You seem to think that you're choosing between Bush and some other, yet unnamed, but totally awesome alternative.

You're not.

You're choosing between Bush, who represents 'doing the right thing clumsily,' and the Democrats, who represent 'doing nothing at all, and even more clumsily.'

All in all, though, excellent left wing blather. I was sure google would find your whole post somewhere out there on the web, but it didn't. Did you actually write it all by your self? Who would have even thought you knew what shoals were, much less how to use them in a nautically themed metahor? Bravo, Gosh. With skills like these, a show on Comedy Central, or a job speechwriting for a Democrat Senator, can't be far off.

not to get in the way of the always entertaining polemics.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,28783-2263995,00.html

http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/10/the_green_lantern_theory_of_geopolitics

re Green Lanterns: It's very easy to defeat somebody's argument if you reduce it to a comical and inaccurate paraphrasing. As Gosh well knows, this is called a "strawman" argument.

To suggest that we've tried "willpower" and now people are urging us to try "even more willpower" is just ridiculous. What we tried is being almost completely gutless, and conservatives are begging the nation to stop, and have some resolve.

Do you really doubt this nation's potential to effect positive change if all 300 million of us are behind something? Certainly some things are impossible militarily, but I don't think a functioning democracy in Iraq is such a thing. I think it requires a fairly phenomenal level of pessimism and racism to believe that Iraq is incapable of democratic self-governance.

I think it's telling that the left has trouble understanding the value of will. The entire ideology is defeatism, excuses and catering to failure, wrapped up in faux intellectualism. The left isn't shiftless cowards, they're "thoughtful" and "realistic."

I think "it's too hard" should be the motto of the left.

You're thinking of GW Bush during his 2004 debate with Kerry.