Bush Ex Machina (NY Times login: FRITOPIE; password: FRITOPIE)
Many of us had childhood dreams of becoming President and remaking the world in our own image. You remember the old "When I'M King of the World..." dream, don't you? Maureen Dowd tells us how George W. Bush's childhood dream is on the verge of becoming a reality.
George W. Bush has often talked wickedly about his days as the black sheep of a blue-blooded, mahogany-paneled family. But the younger rebellion pales before the adult revolt, now sparking epochal changes.
The president is about to upend the internationalist order nurtured by his father and grandfather, replacing the Bush code of noblesse oblige with one of force majeure.
Bush 41, a doting dad, would never disagree with his son in public, but in a speech at Tufts last week, he defended his decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after Desert Storm.
"If we had tried to go in there and created more instability in Iraq, I think it would have been very bad for the neighborhood," he told the crowd of 4,800. (Was he referring to Baghdad or Kennebunkport?)....
At the very same moment the father was pushing peace, the son was treating the war as a fait accompli. At the American Enterprise Institute, he finally coughed up the real reason for war: trickle-down democracy.
Unable to handcuff Osama and Saddam, he soft-pedaled his previous cry for a war of retribution for 9/11. Now he was being more forthright, calling for a war of re-engineering.
"A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said, adding: "Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state."
Conservatives began drawing up steroid-fueled plans to reorder the world a decade ago, imperial blueprints fantastical enough to make "Star Wars" look achievable.
In 1992, Dick Cheney, the defense secretary for Bush 41, and his aides, Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, drafted a document asserting that America should prepare to cast off formal alliances and throw its military weight around to prevent the rise of any "potential future global competitor" and to preclude the spread of nuclear weapons.
Now Shrub and his minions are in a position to make those plans a reality. Or, to paraphrase Toby Keith, the US is in a position to "put a boot up Iraq's ass." If you accept the reasoning that war is a fait accompli, the only question left is the cost, because refashioning the world in one's own image is not an inexpensive undertaking.
After obscuring the real reasons for war, the Bushies are now obscuring the Pentagon's assessments of the cost of war ($60 billion to $200 billion?), the size of the occupation force (100,000 to 400,000?) and the length of time American troops will stay in Iraq (2 to 10 years?).
Good questions, these; and they are questions that deserve some answers. These will be, after all, your tax dollars at work. Whether you support war or not, I think the argument could be made that our President needs to be a good deal more forthcoming on the details.
