Like a vampire, the conservative fantasy about Bush as a patriotic American conservative refuses to die

Bruce Thornton at FrontPage Magazine wrote:

George Bush’s vigorous defense of our national security and vocal pride in our values and goodness went a long way to getting rid of the ‘kick me’ sign liberal America has hung on our collective back.

Below, in revised form, are two comments I posted at FP:

What is Bruce Thornton thinking? Bush never said anything affectionate about the historic American nation. As a candidate he made clear that he wanted to change America into a culturally Hispanic country. His 2001 inaugural was all about America as a vast collection of victims. He constantly chided Americans who opposed the illegal alien invasion for their moral failings. His smug mantra, “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” clearly implied that the U.S. border is not morally legitimate. He expressed nothing but the warmest regard for Mexicans, while frequently expressing distaste and disapproval for Americans. He stood next to the anti-American president of Mexico and called the MInutemen, who were true American patiots, vigilantes. And he pushed with all his might the most radical and irresponsible immigration bill in American history, including an amnesty measure that would have greatly speeded the Hispanicization of the U.S. He went to Africa and said that America today is still driven by the same racial hatreds that drove slavery. He appointed as Secretary of State and maintained as his closest friend and his “sister” a vain woman who traveled around the world putting down America because women didn’t have the vote in the 19th century and we “still have a long way to go” to overcome racism. And on and on and on.

The only time Bush put America in a positive light was when he said it was America’s job to spread freedom. And that had nothing to do with fondness for America the country; rather he was enlisting America in service to the unreal neocon ideology that weakens our actual country. He spent America’s energies and the lives and limbs of thousands of its soldiers in building a “democracy” in a Muslim country that will never be a democracy and will never be our friend; and he silenced legitimate debate on that policy by saying that anyone who doubted that Islam was compatible with democracy was “condescending.” And in what was perhaps his most contemptuous gesture toward America, he led her into an unprecedented pre-emptive invasion of that same Muslim country on the basis of the latter’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, and when he didn’t find the weapons, he didn’t even have enough regard for the American people to explain to them what had happened. In refusing to take responsibility for having misled us in a matter of such deep consequence, Bush made it clear that he looked on America as the mere instrument of his universalist agenda, not as his country that he loves and serves.

We have had failed and even calamitous presidents, but never, never was there a president more unlike the original George W.

Yes, Bush put in place, against vicious and unfair opposition, the Patriot Act and the surveillance measures that helped keep our country safe; and in 2001 his UN delegation stood alone against the entire UN blocking a measure that would start the world on the path to global gun control (a heroic moment for our country which I covered as a reporter); and very late in his presidency he actually engaged in some immigration law enforcement. And that’s it. Those were the ONLY things on the national front for which he deserves credit. [Plus the invasion of Afghanistan, see below.]

How can Bruce Thornton get it so wrong? It’s because he’s doing the usual Republican thing. Opposing the anti-American left, he has to imagine that Bush is the opposite, that Bush is pro-American and patriotic. But this is a fantasy, the same fantasy that kept conservatives imagining for the last eight years that Bush was a conservative. And in supporting this faux conservative, they themselves gave up conservatism. Looks like Mr. Thornton is still having that fantasy.

Follow-up comment:

And of course on the national defense front Bush deserves credit for his decisive action after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. But he had no exit strategy, because of his fantasy that we can democratize a Muslim country. We are currently trying to “save” an Afghanistan that has sharia law and kills apostates. That’s what our men are dying for. They’re dying for a sharia Muslim country.

We should destroy a dangerous regime like the Taliban (and destroy means kill the entire leadership of that regime), then leave that country, promising to return and do it again if an unacceptable regime comes back. A three week invasion once every five or ten years would be infinitely less costly than permanent occupation and permanent counterinsurgency warfare.

- end of initial entry -

Paul Nachman writes:

In the sentence that begins, “In refusing to take responsibility for having misled us in a matter of such deep consequence,” the word “misled” bothers me. It’s akin to “Bush lied and people died,” no?

I suppose “misled” could mean “He led us badly,” but I think the default meaning of “misled” is dishonesty or intentional misdirection.

I’d substitute “mistake” somehow.

LA replies:

I see what you’re saying. But to me, “misled,” especially in the present context, doesn’t mean deliberate. It means he led us wrongly, led us badly, led us astray, which he certainly did.

Also, when he failed to admit the mistake and take responsibility, that was certainly a deliberate act, that turned the “mistake” into a deliberate “mis-leading.”

LA continues:

Also, if Bush had framed the argument differently and been more honest about doubts, he could have avoided the problem. He could have said,

My fellow Americans, I have to be frank with you. The fact is, despite all our surveillance, we don’t absolutely know what is the status of Saddam’s WMD programs, how many and what type of weapons he has. And that’s the very problem. His regime is opaque, and he has been acting in a threatening way. And in this world with terrorist groups, we cannot allow even the possibility that an opaque rogue regime is developing WMDs. The UN resolution said Saddam had to be absolutely forthcoming or there would be serious consequences. He had not been forthcoming. His refusal to comply, his continued opacity, constitutes a threat and is intolerable.

I repeat: We don’t know for a fact whether he has WMDs. But we do know that his country is opaque; we do know he has been acting suspiciously, we do know that he has not been forthcoming to inspectors. And that by itself is unacceptable. The bottom line is this: the only way we can be sure what weapons he has is to invade his country.

Now, maybe such a frank argument would have failed to win the country to invasion. But that wouldn’t have been so bad. A pre-emptive invasion of a country to destroy WMDs is a heavy enough thing as it is. If Bush wasn’t sure that there were WMDs then perhaps that should have been the mission-abort signal: no smoking gun, no pre-emptive invasion.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 26, 2009 10:08 PM | Send