Leave Marty McFly Out of This

Here. Wow, a two-fer but I can't leave this one alone. Either Hanson is intellectually lazy or one of the most dishonest neocons in the group. Now, I will admit an error in last night's blog; that being his membership of the CATO Institute; that I can't verify, but I correct myself by mentioning Hanson's membership in the Hoover Institute. Think Condi and you're on the right track policy-wise. In today's article, Hanson seems to sloppily lump Bush's foreign policy disaster in with the last thirty years of Middle East policy as if to admit defeat, failure and acceptance for the biggest foreign policy bungle since New Coke.

"If Gen. David Petraeus can't stabilize Iraq by autumn - or if Americans decide to pull out of Iraq before he gets a fair chance - expect far worse chaos eventually to follow. We will see ethnic cleansing, mass murder of Iraqi reformers, Kurdistan threatened, emerging Turkish-, Iranian-, and Wahhabi-controlled rump states, and al-Qaida emboldened as American military prestige is ruined."

Because, of course, this will only begin upon the Democrat-led pullout from Iraq. 0 for 1, Vic.

"However, their three decades of bipartisan failure helped bring us to the present post-9/11 world."

Now, I know my history enough to know that since 1980, effectively the last quarter-century of American foreign policy, has been dominated by not just Republican ideology but that of the neoconservative school. We're not talking Newt "slash welfare and send the potheads to prison for life" but the think tanks and policy experts who salivated since the Kennedy days of re-arranging American interests in the third world. This didn't start with Bush. Nor Clinton, nor Reagan. Remember Curtis LeMay? American Middle East policy has been a neocon-led disaster from the get-go. Maybe too many subscribers of the ideology had their fingers in the economic pie, a la oil, high-tech, educational and other industries. And, let's remember what this "post-9/11 world" is, Vic - a nation, with world-wide support in snuffing out a terrorist organization responsible for attacking it decides to invade a nation for other interests that had been clearly stated prior to the most current regime's tenure but wrapped in the rouse of the initial attacks. Not only do the claims the nation uses to illegally invade the nation fall to pieces but the war falls apart. The nation, in order to save political face, draws resources away from the originally-intended target that was the source of the terrorist attack, enabling and allowing the terrorist organization to not only regroup but expand. THAT's the post-9/11 world we live in, you fool.

"Jimmy Carter now writes books damning our present policies. He should keep quiet. "

Yes, but about the Palestinian question, you idiot. Stick to your Herodotus, I'll stick to my Bruce and let's agree to stop claiming expertise in modern world affairs.

I do appreciate Hanson's inclusion of Ronald Reagan's involvment in Lebanon, which, by most accounts, was simply carried out in order to make the United States' presence stronger to defend Israel and not "stop terrorism" for terrorism's sake. However, Hanson signals Reagan's policy failures by mentioning Iran-Contra - so let's stop. We're not even mentioning the ends in this debate, we're simply looking at the means, aren't we? Maybe I should teach speech and debate. Or not.

What I don't understand is Hanson's attacking of James Baker and Bush I. Maybe because to the neocon ideology, Baker became a turncoat, but then Hanson directs his anger at the Saud family for not removing the "murderous Hussein regime"...First, when was American foreign policy focussed on removing the "bad guys" and secondly, why didn't the United States do it when it had 550,000 soldiers in Kuwait itself?

The rest of Hanson's disingenuous article rags on Clinton for not taking Osama bin Ladin when Sudan was just willing to hand him over, though he does fail to mention that Reagan was supplying the same man with weapons in the 1980s all in the name of "freedom fighting", so I'm not quite sure just where Hanson sees bin Ladin's role here. To say that Clinton was complicit in al Qaeda's "serial terrorist attacks" is ridiculous, considering the United States government took and brought action against the first WTC attacks and that George Bush was selected president just forty days after the Cole incident. What I also remember, which Hanson so conveniently forgets, is that Clinton (not to defend the dude) was also hamstrung by a Republican-led Congress that believed that extra-marital sex is the most egregious form of behavior and which pilloried him for taking action in Sudan against Osama bin Ladin, claiming that Clinton initiated bombing raids simply as a measure to distract the American public from his impeachment?

So, before we all get out of control about the Bush War by lumping into thirty years of previous foreign policy, let us step back and reassess our history: who has dominated U.S. foreign policy? Who stood to gain the most by U.S. actions as such? What were abject failures of policy and what were simple fights in execution or action? Does Bush's policies fail because he happens to be a president like the other guys? Nice logic, Vic. Bush being Bush, we can assess his policies totally independent from other presidents while also placing the failied Bush War in with other disastrous foreign policy actions by the United States in attempting to conclude one simple question: why did this country seemingly get it wrong the entire time?