Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

The linked article was complaining about how Bush the elder drove Iraq out of Kuwait.  Apparently the author of the article would have liked to leave Iraq in Kuwait.

In other words the portion of the linked article that deals with Iraq is laughable.

With regard to domestic policies you are correct that the combination of Bush 1 and Bush 2 has pretty much gutted philosophical core of conservatism in the US.

Unfortunately, the rot runs well beyond the Bush family and it is not going to be easy to clean up.  The club for growth shows a good example of how the rot might be cleaned up.

Cheers,

TJIT

I recall at the time Bush was rattling swords with Saddam thinking that all the rationales he was putting forth were pure hokum. I especially rolled my eyes at the thought of Arabs welcoming Americans as liberators. Like that would ever happen.

The only rationale I might have thought credible was a Bush Doctrine of simply bringing down any dictator with the 3rd largest army as a matter of target practice. Under that policy, our military would have gotten badly needed validation of its current weapons and strategies (a military becomes soft and bloated after a long period of inaction), and tin-pot dictators would have a positive incentive not to build their militaries bigger than the next guy’s. Forget nation-building. Don’t overstay your welcome. Just go after the big guy until you catch him, then leave. That’s where all the incentive effects will come from.

I don’t expect many votes from the left for this program, but they have nothing to worry about. By sticking around and getting 3000 of our sons killed, Bush has compromised our ability to threaten anyone for at least a generation, even when it would be patently in our national interest to do so. Yea, he pissed it away.

You aren’t embarrassed by Kirk’s attack on Roosevelt?  Recall that Kirk offered no apology for casting his first presidential vote for Socialist Party candidatea Norman Thomas, on the grounds that Thomas was opposed to US involvement in WWII.  However badly Johnson fought Vietnam, recall that after the communists took over, over a million refugees took to the seas to escape that tyranny, with many of those remaining thrown in re-education camps.  Do you seriously agree with Kirk that the safety of the US would have been unaffected by Soviet domination of Greece, giving them ready access to the Mediterranean?  Kirk was in many ways an interesting figure, but his foreign policy views were pretty much “to hell with the rest of the world”, and I remain baffled how anyone can call him the “Grand Old Man of American conservatism”.

I am also puzzled how one can be a huge admirer of Kirk, who rated rock music, and like the Who?

"It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.”

Said legislature which writes the people’s laws, (I like that - Mr. Smith goes to Washington.  NOT!) may say it opposes the war.  But said legislature did not enact legislation that ends the war.  Said legislature did not, as it is constitutionally empowered to do, deny funding for said OPPOSED war.  Go figure. 

Brings to mind Mark Twain’s incisive commentary on congress.

These comments don’t seem very prescient to me. This first strike me as utterly banal:

“But we must expect to suffer during a very long period of widespread hostility toward the United States...”

I must have slept through the period of U.S. popularity that preceded the First Gulf War. The U.S. has not been popular with most of the world since the end of WW2. I believe that it has more to do with our strength than our actions. No nation loves a stronger country. It might fear that country, respect its strength or look to it for succor, but friendly feelings are rare. The hostility comes from the observation that being a friend of America brings few benefits, while being an enemy imposes few costs.

This next seems to me to be just plain wrong:

“… the Soviet Union, by virtue of its endeavors to mediate the quarrel in its later stages, may pose again as the friend of Moslem lands.”

The Soviet Union is gone, and its successor Russia is appreciated for its willingness to sell weapons and technology. The old communists used to say that capitalists would sell the communists the rope with which the capitalists would be hanged. No doubt Muslims will say the same about Russia. But I doubt that very many Muslim lands consider Russia their friend.

Isn’t it pretty well established at this point that GWB campaigned against nation-building, and then changed-course, quite openly, in response to 9/11 and Al Queda’s use of Afghanistan as a safe-haven/training ground, and similar examples in other countries? This laissez-faire view of tolerating “unrighteous” men in the name of conservatism seems quaint, at best, and dangerous, at worst, in this post 9-11 era when we know that certain “unrighteous” men actively seek horrors for the United States unimaginably worse than 9-11. Of course, one can certainly take issue with the execution of strategy by GWB, but to suggest that we’re better off letting events run their course, given the threats we face, is incomprehensible to me. It’s also disgraceful, given the sacrificies that our armed forces are making in taking the battle to the enemy.

There seems to be an inaccurate mixing of Bush’s flaws in carrying out the war, and the general decay of conservatism in the GOP overall.

I’ll save everyone the now well known list of Republican sins against conservatism as a whole, but it is irrational and just plain wrong to assert that George Bush caused the party lose its overall ideals.

"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

The Republicans were never a particularly good party.  But they sold their souls trying to win the Scots-Irish vote.  In the process, they became the Scots-Irish party: hillbilly evangelism mixed with superstition and delusion, shaken together with an unquenchable thirst for violence, a twisted joy in the suffering of others, and a fawning admiration for whoever swings the Big Stick.  The Abyss stared also into the Republican Party.

- Josh

Wild Pegasus,
If only we had an admiration for swinging the Big Stick in the GOP.  Sadly, it was Bush’s childish notion that by having some sort or war by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, we would become the heroes of the Mideast.

You mock conservatism’s approval of military might as a method of securing peace.  But look at the major conflicts America has won - the Civil War and WWII come to mind - were won not by hand wringing about world opinion and collateral damage.  Instead, we slaughtered our enemies and burnt their cities.  We won because the enemy knew that they were defeated.

When we tried to win hearts and minds or to please the wider world, we got draws or lost - See Korea and Vietnam.  Reality is that if we tie our hands, we doom ourselves to losing wars - and irreplaceable blood and treasure.

And as to your mockery of “superstition and delusion” Bush invokes God and Christ in far less direct terms than, say, FDR.  Was Roosevelt a “hillbilly?”

Prof B--

I doubt the claim that Pres. Bush, by himself “pissed away” the conservative movement.  I’d give the Republicans in Congress a lot of the blame for current public opinion, as well as the terribly biased media coverage.

Public opinion is fickle--Bush I had around a 90% approval rating after the First Gulf War and lost the presidency not long thereafter.  And public opinion is weak basis for establishing public policy.

The opinions of Messrs. Buckley and Kirk expressed here smack to me of the isolationist GOP of old.  Did Mr. Kirk believe the First Gulf War should not have been waged at all simply because it was unpopular in some quarters?