Roger L. Simon: Bush and the "Democratic" future of IRaq.

"It's different being a candidate and being the president," Bush said in an Oval Office interview. "No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."

What Bush is recognizing here is something that is becoming increasingly obvious - the left/right dichotomy in our society is a phony exploited by those who lust for power. This is an obvious problem for democracies in general, but we are at a dramatic crossroads in that regard.

In the future, everything will be situational, just as it has been in the past. Would Al Gore - now making fame and fortune on the global warming-oscar-nobel prize lecture circuit - have gone into Iraq himself if he had won in 2000? Of course, there's no way of knowing this side of the space/time continuum, but I wouldn't bet against it. Clinton was not hesitant to use power in Bosnia and who knows how he would have reacted after 9/11? Perhaps more "arrogantly" than Bush has. The likes of Glenn Greenwald, instead of complaining about the fixation on Ahmadinejad, could have been arguing for the Iranian's extinction. Ideology has become a form of bourgeois objectification in our society - a crutch for non-thinking.

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Would a Pres. Gore have taken down the Taliban? Maybe he wouldn't have had a political choice, but would he have gone beyond that, or lapsed back into "law enforcement mode".

Gore was hawkish on Iraq, and hawkish in general, right up to the eve of the invasion.

I suspect Hillary Clinton will be hawkish too if she's elected despite some of what she is saying right now (she has to win a primary), but it's a bit like reading tea leaves or entrails.

It will be intersting to see what Clinton says after the primary, assuming she wins it, when she has to cater to me instead of Moveon. If she caters to me instead of moveon today, she'll lose.

Bush takes a lot of flack for his 9-11 response --but it was deliberate and measured.

USA's relationship with moderate Araby gets a lot of sneers, but it's good to remember that KSA, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the gulf states, and others in N Afica & mid east are more or less on our side in this war, and that this is extremely valuable indeed, and that the "measured" response to 9-11 is at least partly responsible for it.

Suppose that Sen Clinton is elected in 08. If there is a major terrorist attack close to the 12 election, does anyone doubt that she'd nuke someone to assure her re-election?

Let's put it another way, would she not respond "vigorously" if she thought that failing to do so would cost her the election?

The above is not to say that she wouldn't try appeasement before such an attack. I'm just saying that she'd go heavy in response if she thought that failure to do so would cause her to lose an election.

Hilary may not be another Roosevelt. But if could do so much with so little back then....
it may be that the office will elevate even Hilary to do the things that need to be done.

I hope she'd be a hawk. It would be nice to hear her say something definitive along that line.

I mean, it would certainly demoralize the enemy --which, in Roosevelt's day, seems to've been considered a sort of public duty.

Could this explain such profound mysteries as the missing half of the Sandy Berger story? The friendship bond between Bush senior & the future First Husband?

Sounds crazy, but USA could win this war in quicktime, with BOTH sides of the political divide on board to do it.

I warned only around a week ago that Hillary Clinton's people are going to market her as another Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir. It's nothing but a con job. The pacifist mindset has conquered the Democratic Party. At the end of the day, the Democrat "mainstream" is comprised of self-hating Americans who blame their own country for the rage of the Islamic totalitarians. What is a Democratic Party moderate? That's roughly the same thing as a moderate George McGovern.

If confronted with a major terrorist attack, I don't think Hillary would have the stomach for a major conventional military operation a la Afghanistan/Iraq. I do think she would likely respond with extreme violence using air and/or missile forces.

If the terrorist attack were on a sufficient scale, I could imagine Hillary executing a nuclear response. If the response killed a hundred thousand people, most of them innocent, I doubt she would suffer any agonies of soul, either before or after.

Dave makes a good point --Hil *might* turn out to be ok on national security, but the issue is grave enough that the question has to be, should we take the leap of faith ?

Of course, one issue is if Hillary is elected, maybe we'll need national healthcare.

Just because Hillary probably isn't a moonbat, doesn't mean she'd be great on national security. The Clintons care about appearances more than perhaps just about anything else. We really need someone who won't worry about that too much. To her credit, she can probably tolerate being disliked more than Bill ever could.

when it comes to reacting to 9/11 type events, I am very afraid that the Liberal Left has only 2 modes: kindly appeasement or all-out nuking.

Make no mistake: Hillary will weaken the US Armed Forces because she disdains soldiering. But when/if the US is attacked in a 9/11 manner (the kind you can't ignore, like Khobar Towers, etc), she will expect the Military to be capable to armageddon.

Like all Liberals, she talks and talks about "caring" about "children", but is cold as ice when it comes to actual living breathing people. She despises people 'not like her.' She will do a lot of damage to the US if she becomes President.

Thinking she will be a balanced war leader is just wishful thinking, guys. She reminds me of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (without the glamour.)

"What Bush is recognizing here is something that is becoming increasingly obvious - the left/right dichotomy in our society is a phony exploited by those who lust for power."

The polling data does not support this sort of optimism. On the contrary, it clearly shows that Democrats generally believe the war on terror is grossly exaggerated. Far more Republicans believe in we are in an existential fight to the death against Islamic totalitarianism. A very high percentage of Democrats (something like 40%) even believe that the Bush Whitehouse may be responsible for the events of 9/11!

Buddy...just to clarify, I do *not* think there is much chance of Hillary being OK on national security...I think she would tend either to use power brutally and excessively, or not to use it at all. What she would not do is to use power in a rational and controlled fashion.

I agree with David Thomson's comment. Americans are truly divided; ironically, it seems to me, even more so than Iraqis.

Hillary would probably not do enough to prevent an attack and would then likely overreact.

Her answer that the first thing she would do if America were attacked is retaliate was telling. One would hope that the first thing the President would do is ascertain who did it.

I enjoy Michael Totten's reports from Iraq but don't understand why he is so enamoured with Rodham Clinton. She basically called Petraeus a liar and then refused to criticize the far left MoveOn for their scurrilous attack on Petraeus.

Who in their right mind would want her when they can have Rudy, Mitt or McCain? She's not trustworthy. Instead of reading tea leaves I'd base my decision on what she said to win the nomination.

September 25, 2007: Bush and the "Democratic" future of IRaq.

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