I enjoy a regular dose of conservative writing. The folks at First Things provide food for thought, as well as occasional entertainment, including today’s “debate” on the Bush II presidency. You may well ask what a self-professed liberal is doing on this site. My progressive friends: read and learn, observe and be well-informed.
They are loathe to concede the best arguments of the left, but between them, Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak do a pretty spectacular job of it where the president is concerned. Once the decibel level of Western “civility” is toned down, people across the left-right divide can agree on these points:
1. Bush II is no Reagan and certainly no Bill Clinton. Yet like his Republican predecessor, the current Bush administration has been rife with corruption. So far, like that predecessor (but unlike Nixon), he seems to have carefully avoided the personal taint of it. Yet even these guys concede Clinton (like Reagan) was a master of politics, and our current president is clearly not.
2. The war was badly, badly bungled. ‘Nuff said.
My sense is that the American executive branch is being run by opportunists. Instead of a noble sense of public service and the greater good of society (much less the principles of democracy and freedom) the president and his cronies are the worst type of venture capitalists. Their object seems to maximize profit-taking (as opposed to “making”) and a sense of world entitlement.
Incompetent opportunists, at that. Bill Gates, for all his perceived transgressions against economic parity, is a competent self-made multi-billionaire. You can’t say the same for the guys heading Enron, Arthur Andersen LLP, or any of the other “conservative” darlings of the legal trashheaps since the Reagan Era. I believe Dick Cheney and his buds actually thought the remaking of Iraq into a golden goose was going to be a slam dunk. I believe the proper sports metaphor would be a travel call, missed the dunk, ball bounces of the rim and across the court into the other net. It takes some skill to mangle such easiness.
Novak and Bottum’s so-called Jihadism is a manufactured enemy. It might well be a real threat today, thanks to neo-con opportunism, but that does not obliviate the fact that it’s an artificial post-Cold War construct. Smack a hornet’s nest and the little animals will come after you. Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites ripping one another to shreds with bombs: we think these guys are going to conquer the world? The Soviets, with all their grim concrete architecture, were a whole lot scarier. And as long as nobody outside military families is being asked to make any kind of sacrifice for this onslaught on the West, I’m inclined to think North America’s gated (or other) communities are no more a viable target for Muslim domination than they were 1300 years ago. The real last “conservative” president, Dwight Eisenhower, had the measure of it all, I believe.
All that said, the table has been set for more competent war profiteers to take over in the next several decades. From a Christian view, the forces of evil all over have won. Rabid religionists have their cause and will dupe millions of young people into fighting and dying for a cause that, at worst, wants to develop product placement for the non-Western world.
Multi-national corporations, possessing even less principle than the 42nd president, will rake profits from the terrorized poor of Iraq and other similar nations. The First World middle class will sink in dilapidated communties, but thanks to Bill Gates, will enjoy cheap and simple pleasures via the latest in the revolution of communications media. And anti-climate conservatives think the scientists are playing the fiddles of PR manipulation. Heh.
So my lefty friends, are you still asking why I read stuff like First Things? Guilty pleasure, I guess. Incompetence isn’t just for politicians.
Catholic Sensibility 
I won’t agree that President Clinton’s administration was “rife with corruption.” Sorry, but that’s just objectively wrong.
Sorry, Mike; I should’ve been more clear. It was the Reagan administration that far outdid Clinton’s for corruption.
I guess I cannot get too worked up about all of this esp. at more “conservative” online Catholic sites.
I actively (yes, out there with a sign and writing letters to my deaf and blind Republican congressman) protested this WAR four years ago. I could be smug about it and say “tough, I’ve done my part and just *now* you guys are waking up?” But I don’t because now we have a responsibilty to do right by the Iraqi people. Now we *must* stay and make, what seems to be an impossible situation, a better one. How? The US must humble itself and get others involved. Period. We have to stop believing we know what is best for Iraq. We obviously do not. And none of this will happen until this current administration is gone. If we Americans really do care, then we would humble ourselves before the rest of the world, ask for help and help restore Irag to its people. We are obligated now for the sin of entering this War four years ago. But can we do it?
Todd, I totally disagree that Jihadism is a manufactured enemy, or that it was only created by the invasion of Iraq. The World Trade Center was attacked twice before 2003. The USS Cole was bombed before 2003. Moving outside the US, there is a decade long insurgency against a largely secular government in Algeria, large scale genocide comitted against Christians and animists in southern Sudan, violent anti-Christian pogroms in the Moluccas islands in Indonesia, armed attempts to create an Islamic state in Sumatra, Islamic insrugencies in southern regions of the Phillipines, repeated violent episodes in Egypt involving the Muslim brotherhood attacking tourists, civil war in Kosovo, the imposition of Shariah in northern regions of Nigeria resulting in violent confrontations between Muslims and Christians, etc. All that predated the invasion of Iraq. There is abundant evidence that fundamentalist Islam has an expansionist ideology, and has now qualms about using violence to achieve its ends. Your claim that jihad is a manufactured enemy is just silly.
I respect the difference of opinion here, John, but it is also undeniable that Muslim states were eager allies of the US in the early Cold War. Despite some pretty horrific manipulations from the Brits after the Great War, the Middle East was clearly not going to fall Communist, seeing what was happening to their religious comrades under Soviet domination. And how did the US react to this? Grossly immoral political manipulation.
The US has badly bungled ME foreign policy for decades. It might be more accurate to suggest that anti-American agitators and terrorists are creations of our own CIA and State Department. It seems all too convenient that the end of the Cold War has spawned this conveniently good reason to pump up defense budgets and the war-making machinery of the West, especially US-based corporations.
The will to impose a worldwide Islam strikes me as little different from the explicit Christian mandate to baptize the entire world into Christ. Problem is, that the US government, especially conservatives, often wrap themselves in the mantle of Christianity. So when materialism, injustice, profiteering, over-sexuality, hypocrisy, and the like serve as the whorish consorts of Western culture, why wouldn’t we expect Muslims to get upset about it?
The enemy we have created is now a real threat, indeed. But facing evil and confronting it is not a selective process, confined to people of different religions, nationalities, and worldviews. Addressing the incompetence, if not the immorality, of one’s own nation is part of the challenge. The silliness is the conversion of willing friends into bitter enemies. Sorry about where the finger of blame has to point on this one, but it must be done.