Skip to main content

The Bush Touch: Turning Friends into Enemies

Scott Horton, writing in Harper's Magazine, questions the Bush touch - which appears to make enemies of those whose were previously friends:

"George W. Bush came to power on January 20, 2001. He inherited the most powerful military force ever assembled in human history, and the most significant system of military alliances that any nation had ever constructed. It would be wrong to say that this was the product of the Administration of Bill Clinton. More accurately, it was the result of a bipartisan tradition in foreign policy and defense planning that stretched back to the era of Truman. Bush, however, was intent on using foreign adventures as a partisan political tool to enhance his grip on the helm of state. And he had little patience for or interest in alliances. The theme of his seven years of foreign and defense policy has been unilateralism.

One by one the leaders on the world stage who put their faith in Bush and thoughtlessly did his bidding have fallen in disgrace, usually rejected by their own voters. The first to go were Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s José María Aznar. Then Britain’s Tony Blair was forced to surrender 10 Downing Street to his Chancellor of the Exchequer, to give Labour a fighting chance to hold a majority in the next election. In the last week, Jarosław Kaczyński, a conservative ally in Poland fell, and over the weekend, Bush’s most faithful follower in the entire pack, the veritable boot-licker John Howard of Australia. In each case, the association with George W. Bush was electoral cyanide to voters back home."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?