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All the great and sophisticated arguments about President George Bush being a ‘crusader for democracy’ in the world fall flat on their face. The world media/journalists have intentionally played down the ‘lying dimension’ of the present American Presidency.

We are setting some real great standards/examples in the world by proclaming that liars are the greatest protectors of democracy in the world.

This reminds me of a story. Once upon a time there was King who was so powerful and stupid that the courtiers thought it safer to humour him all the time.

So whenever he farted. The courtiers would get into a simulated ecstasy…”Your Majesty it smells of roses!”…”No, no Your Majesty it smells of lavender!”…”I think your majesty your fart smells of jasmine!”…and so on.

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The best we can hope for is that with the help of our soldiers and our tax dollars, the sectarian conflict in Iraq will be contained, and not boil over into full-blown civil war. It may be well into the next generation before we know if there will be any positive effects from our efforts to the region.

We do know that there are already negative effects-our prestige has been damaged by scandals like Abu Ghraib and the many atrocities that usually accompany a long war. Our military is strained from the burden of fighting two wars at once, and anger at Americans in the Muslim world has grown.

Cheney was on Meet the Press tonight admitting some of the more glaring errors. My question is —why did it take him three years to admit them? Of course now that the Democrats are poised to retake the House in two months, I must accept the cynical response that Republicans know there’s a credibility gap about the war in Iraq, and they are trying damage control, before it is too late!

Well said.

Except that the voters don’t govern; politicians do. Research has demonstrated that American voters don’t understand very well what the politicians are up to.

American taxpayers deserve gratitude for allowing a President, elected by a hair’s breadth, to spend nearly $500 billion of their hard-earned money on foreign wars with no end in sight. Those dollars would otherwise have gone to health care, education or other services for Americans.

This simply doesn’t figure to go over very well with the American taxpayers, either those who have or still do support the war or those who don’t. Most of the voters who supported this war had no idea what the cost would be because the Administration led them to believe there would be much less to it than there turned out to be.

Bush has realized this. He understands that the American people cannot be protected without lifting the yokes of political oppression and its handmaiden of chronic poverty from as many foreign peoples as possible, at whatever pace feasible.

Unfortunately, it makes all the difference in the world that he didn’t start talking about this with respect to Iraq until other casi belli proved to be fictions. As a result, we don’t really know whether Bush realized something or whether he was casting about for a fig leaf to substitute for justifications that were no longer valid.

And even assuming the best, it’s a tricky business to bring democracy to peoples who haven’t had it and don’t know its ways, particularly when there are warring factions and religious fanatics about. America has been extremely fortunately to have had so little of this sort of thing to deal with, but the downside is that it renders Americans extremely naive in terms of understanding how some country thousands of miles away will get from where it is to where it would be better for them to be, not to mention the problems of agreeing about “better for them” means.

I’ll read up on just about anyone. (except Hillary, my mind was made up on her when I met her). May not like or agree with items about them. But I will take a look.

But can the Democrats? The real risk is that both parties turn away from the Iraq debacle and head down the path of head-in-the-sand isolationism. This seems to be a major worry of your post. And I share your worry. I am still a liberal interventionist. Though I hold no illusions that democracy will eliminate terrorism, I believe in democracy because it is fundamentally right. But getting out of the cynical morass that is Iraq, and into a genuine JFK/Truman-style aggressive, principled and competent idealism is going to be very difficult. It’s why I support Mark Warner, for example, and not Russ Feingold (Hillary has it right on this too but she’s got other problems IMHO). Americans shouldn’t turn from moronically executed democratic expansionism into harsh isolationism simply because Bush gave democracy a bad name.

It will be factually acurate. But this is why we have to educate why a child starving in Ethiopia is also of considerable concern to the west.

To harp from the other thread, you’ve got to educate. I think most American’s – if shown why – would also vote to help save that African Child. Yet that we can save that child, while not giving away our entire country. And still save our children too. For in the long run it is vital for our own security and economy.