God’s Whipping-Boy

In the October 29 New York Times, Anne Kornbluth writes of “The Elephant in the Room” the elephant being liberal-conservative disagreements, focusing on the presidency and policies of George W. Bush, that are making it increasingly difficult for friends and family members on either side of the divide to tolerate each other’s presence. I have, as I suspect do most Americans, considerable first-hand experience of the phenomenon. There have always, of course, been disagreements over politics and religion—subjects people tend to shy away from at family reunions and in employee lounges--but having had my ears open to such things now in every presidency since Eisenhower’s, I have never seen things at this pitch of vehemence and anger before. 

As Josh Trevino notes, in Kornbluth’s article, “every person in the piece who rejects a friend or family member over politics is a Democrat.” Naturally, when people have a different take on the shape of reality, its representations by the opposing party will have the appearance of distortion, but I have never witnessed such fevered and aggressive certitude on the part of friends and family members that a president, his cohorts, and by degree his supporters, are operating from a hostility to truth, not to mention common sense and decency, that makes them blind and stupid in almost everything politically associated. I know no conservatives that agree with Mr. Bush in every respect, but neither can they see him as the protoplast of malice, deceit, idiocy, and incompetence that so many liberals make him out to be.

Some point to conservative hatred of President Clinton as equivalent, but I think it was not. For one thing, it did not have the strong element of irrationality about it that liberal hatred of Bush does. Clinton was, even by liberal standards, a bad man. He cheated on his wife, took advantage of numerous women from a position of power, dishonored the presidential office with his sexual shenanigans, and was notorious within his own party as particularly skillful liar. Add this to the normal disagreements conservatives would have with his policies, and there is a formula for intense dislike, perhaps even hatred, of the person, with a discernable basis in reason. Hatred of Mr. Bush appears to be more directly connected to his policies and their execution that carries over into hatred of a man who would seem, if it weren’t for these, quite a decent chap. 

Intense disagreement with policies, even war policies, is by no means unprecedented in the realm of presidential politics, and does not account for the level of antipathy to which Kornbluth refers. I extrapolate from my own experience of Bush-haters to confirmation of the studies that as a group liberals reject traditional religion, and with it many of the most important strictures of Judeo-Christian sexual morality. Here, I believe, is where you will find the core of the hatred. Mr. Bush in fact stands for, in this age of the strong intensification of disagreement in that sphere--brought to a head by the issue of public acceptance of homosexuality--all that is named by liberals in their litany of evil: bigotry, exclusion, fundamentalism, and the rest. 

At the heart of it is the ferocious resentment of modern people who wish to regard themselves as deeply moral, against those who persist in pointing to an ancient and uniform tradition bearing witness to a God who not only says they’re not, but that they are attempting, in direct opposition to his law and will, to establish things in the world that he himself hates. 

The liberal, for many reasons, knows better than to hold forth against God, whom he perceives still controls a substantial voting bloc, so he must find a man to crucify. There is no one in our day that more clearly stands at the confluence of politics and traditional faith than the American president. He is the logical vent toward which all the pent-up anger at the biblical God and his priggish, self-righteous, ignorant, backwards, narrow-minded, reactionary, atavistic, hate-filled, soi-disant partisans naturally rushes. That Mr. Bush is even more understated about his personal faith than Mr. Clinton makes little difference—nor, as a matter of fact do most of his policies, a good many of which, even the war in Iraq, are weakly conservative, and have bipartisan support. The real parties and deepest party loyalties here in view here are not, strictly speaking, political. They pertain to a new morality that claims evolutionary superiority, against an old morality that claims to be the Only One, written on tablets of stone as well as on every human heart.

George W. Bush is an unlikely Christ-figure, as perhaps all have been who, in the history of the faith, have found themselves in a similar place. No doubt he wonders how the confluence of forces that have lifted him to the top of the target hill have managed to make what they have out of what he (along with his enemies) regards as a rather plain and in most ways unremarkable person. In such a situation, however, all a man must do to bring the wrath of hell upon him is to name the name of God and try to do what reason demands any Christian--and, if I am not mistaken, any Jew--in any place or time, must do to be worthy of the Name.

Comments

[Rob Grano]

Great post, Mr. Hutchens. I think there is an additional factor at work here as well. Liberals by-and-large do not get the 'love the sinner, hate the sin' thing, whether they're on the giving or receiving end. Hence opposition to and hatred of, say, homosexual behavior, translates in their minds to hatred of gays themselves. They don't seem to be able to see the difference between the rejection of a person's behavior and the rejection of the person.

Going in the reverse direction therefore, they can't help but hate Bush, or Ann Coulter, or (fill in the blank) since they hate their policies and ideas. To them, rejection of the person's ideas equates with rejection of the person. In fact, there is a whole series of popular liberal books called "The 'I Hate' Readers."

Of course what is ironic about this is that liberals are the first ones to moan about 'hate speech,' and how 'hateful' conservatives are, etc., etc. But the truth is, they use the H-word a lot more than conservatives do.

[JS Bangs]

Mr. Hutchens, I'm a regular Touchstone reader and qualify as a social and religious conservative by most measures. But I disagree strongly with your blithe dismissal of the Bush-haters, because I am a Bush-hater, and not for any reason connected to his religion. It's because his administration has defended, supported, and practiced torture, and has done its best to convince the American people that this is a good thing. At this point, Bush and his supporters are at the moral level of those who support partial-birth abortion: supporting that which is repugnant to any moral human being, and absolutely unconceivable under Christianity.

I'm not sure how ostensibly pro-life Christians justify support for Bush, but they shouldn't.

[Gintas]

It's so common there's a name for it: "Bush Derangement Syndrome".

[DGP]

The answer to JS Bangs' question is that the decision to support a candidate falls within the realm of prudential judgment, so long as the support is not offered precisely *because* of some evil platform. After all, no politician past or present has ever been entirely virtuous, and even were there such a man it would not be obvious, since the practical wisdom required in politics is rarely widely shared among the electorate.

The prudential quality of voting is not license to vote for anyone: Prudential morality remains a matter of morality, simply outside the realm of what can be discerned as a matter of exceptionaless rules. Voting for Mr. Bush over King St. Louis might be the wrong choice, but Mr. Bush might still look awfully good compared to other contemporary politicians.

Consider the case JS Bangs has offered -- partial-birth abortion vs. torture. Both are intrinsically evil, and yet most of the politicians available to us seem to favor one or the other at least implicity. Yet to be factored into our prudential judgment are (1) the frequency of these offenses, (2) the relative weight of governmental negligence in partial-birth abortion vis-a-vis direct governmental complicity in torture, (3) the relative guilt or innocence of victims of abortion or torture, (4) the likelihood that a politician's future conduct will actually affect the issues at hand.

With respect to this narror, two-point comparison, reasonable people may come to different conclusions -- not about the intrinsic moral questions, but about which candidates to support. However, as far as my political wit can discern, the prudential question becomes far less malleable when one factors in the broader matter of all abortions. This mind-boggling dereliction of duty on the part of government is tied up with the idolatry of sexual license, as Mr. Hutchens describes, and it appears to me to dwarf all other political issues both in its objective moral offense and in its long-term ruination. While revolted by recent Republican weaseling about torture, I nevertheless support of the Republican candidates with which I am familiar, and I find efforts to explain Christian support for most Democrats rather doubtful.

[DGP]

Sorry, "narror" was meant to be "narrow."

[Joe Mc Faul]

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/conservatives-debate-bush-impeachment.html

Maybe you should broaden your horizons more.

I also am generally conservative but I don't necessarily equate "conservative" with "Christian" or "religiously observant."

George Bush's disapproval ratings hover near 60%. I suspect that includes large numbers of conservatives who, not uniformly, criticize Bush on all of the following subjects:

1. His inability to balance the budget--something his predecessor managed to do one handedly between interns.

2. While many conservatives don't think Bush intentionally lied about the run up to the Iraq war, many do think he lied in the sense of "reckless disregard for the truth."

3. Many conservatives object to the inability to plan for an insurgency in Iraq that was anticipated by many people.

4. Many conservatives consider Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina to be impeachably incompetent.

5. Many conservatives object to the Federal government's intrusion into the Terry Schaivo afair and suggest the the Presidnet should have averted this.

6. Many conservatives object to the presidential politicization of science, specifically intelligent design and global warming.

7. Many conservatives find the Patriot Act repulsive to American freedoms and democatic values and subject to misuse, if not by this president, then in the future by liberal presidents.

8. Many conservatives find the administration's position on torture to be morally wrong. This is a very hot topic in Catholic circles, as the Church teaches that torture and abortion are both intrinsically evil.

http://www.americamagazine.org/editorial.cfm?articleTypeID=3&textID=4459&issueID=549

9. Many conservatives object to his "soft" position on illegal immigration-- a very hot button topic in states such as Arizona.

10. Many conservatives are not religious and therefore see any federal involvement in gay marriage isseus or gay rights to be a waste of time, money, and political capital.

I am sure there are many more issues on which conservatives hold strong opinions that George Bush is doing a very poor job as President. I don't suggest that any conservative even holds all of these combined, but I know many who hold some or most of these. That doesn't mean they hate Bush or that they would vote democratic. I don't hold all of these positions either, but I think they are reasonable positions for conservatives to hold and to rightly criticize the president. (I do feel strongly about the Katrina debacle.)

It does mean that we can probably postpone the canonization.

[Gintas]

BTW, George Bush is not up for reelection.

[dilys]

A very interesting post -- who else drops soi-disant so easily into the Friday pre-apertif rhetoric? -- and I hope the comments will end with as much light as heat.

Considerations of the intensity of what has been called BDS fail if the President is without argument abstractly and concretely EvilEvilEvil. If that's the argument --I hate him because he is hateful-- it's a good demonstration of the phenomenon but gets us nowhere in understanding it. If he is Genghis Bubba there is no derangement in spitting blood on him and the horse he rode in on, only a pressing moral obligation to seize pitchforks and march on the White House ASAP.

It is the rachet up to this implicit moral requirement: the distinction is in the demand that any right-thinking person must agree, a kind of moral identity politics usually imposed in the historical view only against certified moral monsters (and from which for instance Saddam is implicitly excused by those who hate Bush). It is asserted that Bush because of the complications and horrors of war is "repugnant to any moral human being." There the chasm opens to swallow up anyone who disagrees.

I knew plenty of people horrified and embarrassed by Bill Clinton, who didn't mix willingly with his fans. But I do not remember a moral prohibition, an exile of his defenders from the decent polis, no announcement that his sins or hard decisions or those who might accomodate them were "absolutely unconceivable under Christianity."  Most opposed to him simply hoped and prayed the Clinton supporters' votes would not prevail.

The ur-party-piece for loathing Bush, long before the controversy about interrogations and captive enemies, is Jonathan Chait's famous New Republic I Hate Bush article. What has brought us to this point may not be so much invisible stigmata on Bush, as the increasing self-defined activism of our era that requires affirmation and agreement with selected emotionally-charged positions. As the century rolls on outbreaks toward a variety of targets may become predictable.

[Bill R]

"...all a man must do to bring the wrath of hell upon him is to name the name of God..."

That's always been enough to bring upon us the wrath of hell in a figurative sense. It's now becoming the case in a literal sense. It's not just hate we see: in many cases it rises to rage, and rage of a demonic sort that has long lost an anchor in any civilized disagreement over public policies.

[Deacon John M. Bresnahan]

I'm still baffled by this word "torture" so wildly and loosely thrown around here by some. As far as I can see Bush wanted to see it defined so that it would NOT be done. It seems that many have fallen for the liberal definition of "Torture" that would include simply yelling at someone or anything the least bit uncomfortable for the one being interrogated. I wonder: did we follow such a rule in WWII. A friend of mine--an expert on WWII-- said that if that war were fought by today's standards being demanded and every step and inevitable screw-up Monday morning quarterbacked (1,000 men were drowned in a pre-Normandy practice and it was not revealed until the early 1950"s) we'd all be talking German or Japanese today.

[Nick]

Not a political blog. Not a political blog. Bad post. Bush has some serious faults, though I do think most of the criticism (especially the torture arguments) is unfair. Now can we move onto something else?

[DGP]

Mr. Bresnahan,

You're right about the destructive second-guessing, but there's also a significant moral difference between (1) silence and (2) actually defending or rationalizing any "screw-ups" that took place. While some have offered silly protests, these do not take away from legitimate objections to procedures such as a "dunk in the water."

Case in point -- the Abu Ghraib photographs. Most residents of Iraq and many other countries would hardly have batted an eye at simple torture. They almost expect it of governments, and rightly or wrongly they also expect it of the U.S. Occasional incidents of torture might be overlooked in silence -- the silence of toleration that is not approbation -- without damaging the war effort.

But the *sexual* torture of prisoners takes the matter to another level. It could have and should have been foreseen that any sexual exploitation of Iraqis or Afghanis would have contributed to the validation of Islamist critics of the U.S. and western civilization. It had a substantive effect on the war effort and it's not mere "Monday morning quarterbacking" to object to it.

I still support the war and those politicians who intend to prosecute it. S*** happens, especially in war, but most of us know torture when we see it and it doesn't serve U.S. or Iraqi interests for anyone to pretend otherwise or to attempt to justify it.

[Tony Esolen]

Dr. Hutchens has beaten me to the punch on this one, I'm glad to say. I've been mulling that same article over, testing it against what I see on my college campus all the time -- a campus which my leftist colleagues call "conservative" because, as far as I can fathom, not everybody who teaches there is a predictable leftist. (In fact, there is a core of about two dozen bonafide conservatives; and that, out of about 240 faculty members, makes them pretty conspicuous.)

The reason why the subject of the blog is a fair one for a Christian magazine -- other than that Christians are citizens too, and are supposed to comport themselves in their civic life in accord with the Good News -- is that for many in our country, the State is now an alternate god, or is that terrible machinery that allows for the untrammeled worship of Belial. We really are probing the infected tissue of the common idolatry of our day.

Bill Clinton did not suffer the same hatred; scorn, sure, and satire, and endless criticism. Many conservatives I know would characterize Bill Clinton as a buffoon -- not for his mind, which was better than average, with about the same acumen as that of Bush the Junior, but for his character. They would freely admit that were it not for that character, and for the irresponsible intrusions of his wife, he had the makings of an effective president. He could have compromised with conservatives on most of the social issues; he could have forged some interesting bipartisan alliances for cleaning up the mess in the Department of Education; he actually did have a pretty effective Secretary of the Treasury. He did not forge those alliances, however, because the Mrs. held the hammer, his shameful acts of intemperance having handed it to her.

A thought experiment might help illuminate what is really at stake. Rudy Giuliani, without question, is the best large-city mayor in my lifetime, Giuliani or Brett Schundler of Jersey City. Now Giuliani is a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage liberal, whose policies on crime, immigration, the economy, and even the war would hardly differ from those of the President. I guarantee you that if Giuliani were the President, and if he did exactly what the President has done, EXCEPT for delivering a few speeches on abortion, and quashing the nastiest of the cannibalistic proposals for the use of embryos, and referring to Jesus now and again, you would see nothing like the opprobrium to which the President has been subjected. In point of fact, George W. Bush is a political liberal in the old JFK mold, with conservative social instincts. There may be plenty to disagree with there, but what justifies the hate? How do you HATE a clean-cut, soft-spoken moderate? It's like hating Tom Dewey or Wendell Willkie or William Scranton, or, on the Democrat side, Bill Bradley or Henry Jackson or Sam Nunn. Nothing but Bush's faith can explain the hate. Recall that the late Pope, one of the gentlest men to walk the earth, if anything sometimes too gentle, was also hated, by many of the same people.

[Deacon John M. Bresnahan]

DGP-- That's the problem today. Because of lawsuits and the media you couldn't really ask someone ANY questions under ANY circumstances without the interrogator having to fear a ruined reputation or career or being charged with torture. The phrase "Most of us know torture when we see it" isn't exactly something that can be used as an objective procedural or legal standard. It seemed to me that it was Bush who wanted to have an objective, sensible standard for interrogation--while some others seemed more interested in hating Bush than in coming up with any solution to the problem. To this day much of the mainstream media just uses anti-Bush shorthand and says he was for torture and in many people's minds that means things like the rack and electrodes on the genitals.

[Mr. Bresnahan]

You're right about all that, except maybe the lawsuits part. Doesn't the military have its own laws and judiciary? Can't the President just bury things he wants buried?

In any case, I agree with you about most critics, and I believe I'm in substantial agreement with Mr. Hutchens. My main purpose in my original post was to render a fair response to JS Bangs, who seems to have adopted the "pox on both your houses" approach to politics. To my mind, that's irresponsible Christianity, if it's Christianity at all.

[DGP]

Oops again -- that should have been "Mr. Bresnahan" as the opening address, not as the sender. I'm not trying to impersonate you!

[Joe Mc Faul]

I think the Deacon is overlooking a lot of what is goign on--and frankly creating strawmen that nobody here is even suggesting. We are not talking about yelling at people or stoning them with marshmallows, we are talking about submerging them so that they have the intense physcical sensation of drowning. The modern shorthand for this is "waterboarding."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

We have an agreement that waterboarding is torture--yes?

Now we have a Vice president that suggests dunking in water is a "no-brainer."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15443701/

His "dunking" euphemism is identical to the equally distasteful "eliminating the products of conception" euphemism. All conservatives should unequivocally condemn torture in any form and under any euphemism.

But let's not get diverted by attmepting to define torture.

The Conservative Case against George Bush is argued convincingly here:

http://www.nypress.com/17/31/news&columns/WilliamBryk.cfm?page=1

Notice that hte same newspaerhas an article that sets out the liberal case against Kerry.

http://www.nypress.com/17/31/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm

Sure, there are peope who just hate Bush irrationally. You can't lump them all into the 60% of the population who disapprove of the President's job performance.

Frankly, if I conclude that a president is doing a very poor job, I'd be angry--very angry. I admit to sinful GLEE when Clinton got disbarred. And, yes, I'm angry at the current president, too. But, I think that anger is justified.

What has he done right? Well, he probably appointed two good Supreme Court justices--but not his first choice.

He did a good job in Afghanistan. There's work to do there, too.

Anything else? Nothing stands out.

[James Kabala]

The posts by Dr. Hutchens -and sadly, by Dr. Esolen as well - ignore the large amount (well, small in number as a percentage of the population, but large in intellectual heft) of Bush haters on the right. Steve Sailer and Daniel Larison, probably the best two bloggers in America, with all due respect to present company, could be regarded as Bush haters. So, to varying degrees (some much more than Sailer or even Larison), could such conservative writers and bloggers as Kevin Michael Grace, Clark Stooksbury, Randall Parker, Bill Kaufman, Thomas Fleming, Clyde Wilson (who probably hates Bush more than ANY liberal), Paul Gottfried, Paul Craig Roberts, and Lawrence Auster. Rod Dreher has evolved into a near-hater lately. I don't agree with all these men about everything and still find the ideas of some of them to be extreme and distasteful*, but they are undoubtedly conservatives and undoubtedly disgusted by Bush. Their dislike or hatred is based mainly on the war (except for Auster, who supported it) and also on Bush's immigration policy. To compare Bush to John Paul II (who was right about the war, I might add) is absurd and to suggest that Bush-hatred is nothing more than displaced God-hatred is obscene.
*Roberts in particular is somewhat unhinged, having flirted with 9/11 conspiracy theories.

[Seth R.]

The hatred comes from a sense of powerless despair. During the period of Bush's tenure, liberal and moderate voices have been increasingly marginalized. And no matter how many times Bush screws up, no matter how many scandals he blunders into, no matter how many stupid policies he cooks up, nothing seems to touch the guy.

After all we've gone through, we're still stuck with the guy. It leaves so many utterly flabbergasted. Incoherent yowling is the only option many feel they have left.

And come off it! Bush as Christ? That's not just "unlikely."

Bush's administration has thrived off polarization. From day one in the White House they have done zero, zip, nadda to reach out to anyone except their own personal yes-men.

Bush and Cheney's idea of bipartisan spirit is for everyone to agree with them. There's no give and take here and there never has been.

I won't deny that the anti-Bush screeching isn't banal, hysterical, and ludicrous. But Bush asked for exactly the anger he's getting. His entire political strategy was premised on polarization and bullying the opposition.

I'm not justifying the over-the-top Bush-hate. But you reap what you sow.

[Christopher Hathaway]

I'm not justifying the over-the-top Bush-hate. But you reap what you sow.

You are participating in the over-the-top hatred.

Bush's administration has thrived off polarization. From day one in the White House they have done zero, zip, nadda to reach out to anyone except their own personal yes-men. Bush and Cheney's idea of bipartisan spirit is for everyone to agree with them. There's no give and take here and there never has been.

You simply don't know what the heck you are talking about. Conservative criticism of Bush is that he has compromised too much with the democrats:

Campaign Finance Reform, he campaigned against it, said he wouldn't sign it if it restricted the right to buy airtime, but he signed it anyway; Education, he worked with Ted Kennedy to push a bad bill with no school vouchers.

His entire political strategy was premised on polarization and bullying the opposition.

When you vent like this your words become meaningless. Give me a single instance of "bullying the opposition". He never called anyone a Nazi or accused them of shredding the Constution. But his enemies do that to him all the time. I think it is your side that are the bullie. You don't get your way and you threaten a tantrum and start calling names and justifying your anger.

After all we've gone through, we're still stuck with the guy.

It's called democracy. Get over it. You just sound petty, silly and childish, and totally unproductive.

[Tony Esolen]

James,

Yes, I know he's hated on the right, too; but maybe "despised" is the better word. He's scorned, ridiculed, treated with contempt. But he is not, for Fleming and those others, an object of utter loathing. Or so it seems to me; I may be misreading that. I didn't mean, either, to imply any kind of equivalence between the President and the late Pope; they are very different men, and though I'm pretty darned sure of the holiness of the latter, I'm not going to venture to guess anything about the spiritual state of the President's soul. But none of that really matters on the left. If W were a secularist, I'm confident that he would not be the object of such loathing. I think that religion, not policy, is the dog wagging this tail. Some of that holds true, too, in a strange way, for ultramontane Catholics like Fleming and the crowd at The Remnant.

[Joe Mc Faul]

More conservative criticism of Bush, now from former presidential advisors:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612

James Kabala is right--htere's no displaced God-hatred or Giuliani lovers in this conservative crowd of Bush critics.

I'm beginning to think that Mr Hutchens. and Mr. Esolen are Bush worshippers and simply find it offensive when others attack their god. This comment is frankly bizarre:

"George W. Bush is an unlikely Christ-figure"

and this one, too:

"Recall that the late Pope, one of the gentlest men to walk the earth, if anything sometimes too gentle, was also hated, by many of the same people."

So was Idi Amin. Why the worship, gentlemen?

[David Gray]

>I'm beginning to think that Mr Hutchens. and Mr. Esolen are Bush worshippers and simply find it offensive when others attack their god. This comment is frankly bizarre:

For a moment I thought you were lucid enough to be commenting on your own comment.

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

Well, this got personal really quickly. Which I think perfectly illustrates why Steve was right. I have been gravely disappointed with some of the things the president has done, and yet, comparing him with the possible alternatives, I don't believe they would have done better and, in many cases, they would have done worse. Everything bad said about the invasion of Iraq -- no U.N. approval, the contingent slaughter of innocents, the failure to achieve the full objective -- can be said about Clinton's persuasion of NATO forces to bombard Serbia to force it to withdraw from Bosnia and later Kosovo. Yet ''anti-torture'' liberals and conservatives generally supported it. Jihadists are simply continuing to resist in Iraq, and are killing more Iraqis than they are allied soldiers while doing it. Yet, one never sees that mentioned in the ''anti-war'' critiques. No, the case against Bush is different, and different for ideological and, yes, moral reasons. Or should I say anti-moral reasons?

If you hate Bush as a conservative, how are you going to love Hillary more? Or Al Gore? Or John Kerry? Or Barak Obama? Neither Jesus nor the pope will be running, and yet we must make choices.....

[GL]

Joe,

I think you are missing SMH's and Tony's point. I am no big fan of the President. He certainly is no conservative (but he did appoint Roberts and Alito). He bungled the opportunity to build public and international support for our war with Islamofacists by his cowboy posturing. (He is no FDR.) He was blinded to the real situation in Iraq by his hatred for the man who put a contract out on his father's life. (Something which is understandable, but unacceptable in a President.) His overall economic policy is anti-family, though he has made some good moves such as cutting the marriage penalty. His compromise on embryonic stem cells is more pragmatic than principled. Having said all that, what can explain the depth of hate he generates other than the fact that he symbolizes the religious right in the mind of his secularists detractors? Frankly, I am not a big fan of Dobson and his ilk myself, but for reasons that differ as night does from day from the reasons the left dislike them. Bush has thrown a policy bone to the Dobson contingent from time to time, speaks the language that is music to their ears, and makes no effort to hide his faith in Christ.

He is then a very imperfect, but visible, proxy for the One whom the left really hates. He is in some respects an icon for them. Rather than being an object venerated to pay respect to the One represented, however, he has become the object of scorn for that purpose.

Finally, I do think the left's response to Bush is a result of the right's response to Clinton. I am no fan of the former president, but the right's response to him was over-the-top as well. The left, who were just as dissatisfied with Clinton as the right is with Bush, rightly saw the right's reaction to Clinton from the start to be vicious and they made a conscious decision to return the favor when Bush won.

This vilification of our presidents by their opponents is really poisoning our entire system and is going to cost us big time in the war if it keeps growing. It is one of the many reason I pray that Hillary does not win in 2008. Her abrasive personality, hypocrisy, and disdain for people of fatih will raise the problem to new heights.

[Judy Warner]

I think this is the nub of the post:

At the heart of it is the ferocious resentment of modern people who wish to regard themselves as deeply moral, against those who persist in pointing to an ancient and uniform tradition bearing witness to a God who not only says they’re not, but that they are attempting, in direct opposition to his law and will, to establish things in the world that he himself hates.

The left has always frothed at the mouth against those who invoke either God or tradition to support what used to be ordinary morality. Abortion has become a totem of this mentality. I've seen women who would never have an abortion themselves gasp in horror at the idea of voting for someone who is against women's "right to choose." And non-judgmentalism about homosexuality has become a co-totem in recent years; in fact, it might take top place now. For the left, to voice any opposition to homosexuality is to reveal yourself as unspeakably backward and not fit for polite society.

There was a pretty good measure of Reagan-hatred, some of it comparable to Bush-hatred. But between those two presidencies, the Christian right not only gained in influence but also developed more articulate voices for its point of view. Also,the right-to-life activists developed a strategy, beginning with exposing and trying to ban partial-birth abortion, and going on to ban taking young girls out of state for an abortion without their parents' permission. The left rightly sees these things -- the philosophical and political gains -- as threats to their sexual-freedom culture. So Bush, who as a Christian is the personification of this trend in the minds of the left (whether justified or not), is seen as a much greater threat than Reagan.

[DGP]

Yes, speaking of Reagan-hatred, I remember my public high school erupting in cheers when it was announced that Reagan had been shot.

[firinnteine]

Wow. This is one of the most vicious and ad hominem-laden threads I can remember reading at Mere Comments, and I've been following the blog closely for about a year and a half now. Granted, we've had some harsh words exchanged, particularly over questions relating to homosexuality; and the discussion of contraception has tended to be fairly strongly worded of late. But in those areas -- for the most part, though not always -- actual personal attacks were pointed out lovingly, and -- often, though not always -- retracted.

Dare I suggest humility and a deep breath of fresh, cold November air somewhere out of sight of a campaign poster?

Then come back and have a good fierce heated discussion -- but try to stay to the issues in question (torture, abortion, war against terror, hatred of God, partisanship, etc.) rather than the presumed deplorable qualities of sundry interlocutors....

[Bobby Winters]

Let me chime in with GL to a certain extent.

I don't like Bush's policies. The only thing I've agreed with him on is his opposition to embryonic stem cell research and he's waffling there.

Quite frankly each side of the nation so-called debate seems to be so dominated by elititists of one stripe or another that any true Christianity is lost. The elitists on the left seem intent on pushing an agenda of sexual libertinism while those on the right are pushing profit and power. Each side is using whatever Christian tradition is least repulsed by the nastier parts of its agenda. As is customary, the used will be tossed-away when they are used-up.

[DGP]

"Each side is using whatever Christian tradition is least repulsed by the nastier parts of its agenda. As is customary, the used will be tossed-away when they are used-up."

I don't think that was GL's point, but it's true. It always has been, and always will be. That doesn't excuse those of us in "Christian tradition" from deciding which persons are least repulsive, and whether and how we may support them. Once again, I propose that those who think they can hold themselves aloof from either Church or society are blinding themselves to serious moral obligations.

[Bobby Winters]

I didn't mean to presume to speak for GL in that part of my post.

>>>Once again, I propose that those who think they can hold themselves aloof from either Church or society are blinding themselves to serious moral obligations.<<<

Then, as on each side their are Christians who are holding their noses doing the best that they know, perhaps some civility is in order from EACH side.

[TheLeague]

Let's face it. The attack against conservative leadership didn't begin with the current Bush administration. It's been around since I've been old enough to notice. For me, that's the Reagan administration.

I was shocked to discover that many leftists rejected the results of the 1980-election. They actually believe the majority of Americans wanted another four years of President Carter! And that somehow the election was "stolen." Carter is, I guess, a Christian, but he was a terrible president and the radical Islamist movements he so ineffectually handled, came back to haunt us on 9-11, and will haunt us for decades to come. His legacy is a legacy of abject failure that has had long-term global consequences. I suspect that Americans were more than happy to vote for Reagan, even when there was talk back then that he mentioned God a little too much and used such passe words as "evil."

The only difference between Reagan and Bush is that Bush is much more open about his Christian life. For this reason, Bush is pummeled daily by all sorts of BDS sufferers who see themselves increasingly marginalized by an increasingly conservative culture. For the most part, these are men and women who are in their 50s and 60s. They're Baby Boomers who have seen "their time" come and go, and who have seen their leadership repudiated by strong and emerging undercurrents of conservative thought. They are a corrupted bunch, and have corrupted and rendered irrelevant every social institution they lead. BDS is not just a rage against the President; it's a rage against the conservative culture in general.

It isn't just Bush they hate. They hate people like me, and my conservative Christian and Catholic friends. They see as threatening things like Latin Masses and those who practice the Sacrament of Confession. They hate the young, JPII-inspired priests who give unforgiving homilies on life issues and sexual morality. It is fascinating to watch these folks rage-on in their impotence. You can read them on Daily Kos and other leftist sites. Even Kos admits the average age of his readers is 45-60.

Call it BDS, call it rage, call it whatever you want. The question I have is how do we respond to the rage.

[DGP]

"Then, as on each side their are Christians who are holding their noses doing the best that they know, perhaps some civility is in order from EACH side."

I don't get it. Did you think me uncivil?

[Rob Grano]

"The elitists on the left seem intent on pushing an agenda of sexual libertinism while those on the right are pushing profit and power."

Indeed. It's the party of the buck vs. the party of the something that rhymes with buck. I think Wendell Berry has said that one party is unwilling to put limits on economic behavior while the other wants no limits on sexual behavior.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>I don't get it. Did you think me uncivil?<<<

Not at all. I'm sorry you took it that way. I live in Kansas, on the border with Missouri. The folks over there are going at each other with rusty machetes. On my side of the border the candidates for Senate are doing the same, scaled down to Kansas-size. (I've met the Democrat, have talked to her about Christian matters, and she's not the person her opponent is painting her to be.) I am in the same Rotary club as one of the big republican ladies in the area, and she is as sweet as can be. How did it get to be this way? Why are we reduced to the "well THEY started it" approach.

The division reminds me of the old days, when Islam was banging on the gates of Constantinople and Christendom was dividing itself.

Excuse my rant.

[Tony Esolen]

For the record, Joe:

I've never written a single blog on this site to praise President Bush. I like him as a human being, and see in him a fellow Christian. He is, however, a liberal with some conservative social instincts. That's what I've long said, and I stand by it. I'm a conservative, not a liberal. I don't believe that the federal government has any business in education, at any level; the President does. I don't believe that democracy is necessarily a great thing, and I'm leery of attempting to spread it worldwide; the President, as a classical liberal, is far more internationalist and interventionist than I'd like. In that regard he is quite similar to JFK. I can put up with that difference, because my distrust of democracy stems from a pessimistic view of human nature, and I know that my hero Chesterton would take me to task for that distrust.

I could go on and touch upon more issues, but what's the use? Bush is a liberal; he is not a hard leftist of the Hillary Clinton sort. I can live with a liberal. And I'm not going to grouch about it, either. Sure, I'd love it if the President were ready to dismantle the anti-family economic policies that we have gotten used to. And after he persuaded the 30 people who would put up with the temporary suffering, what then? I'd love it if he cashiered the Department of Education. And after he persuaded about 30 people who would understand that it was a good thing, and who would try to weather the ensuing (and temporary) upheaval, what then?

It's a liberal country, not conservative; also not hard leftist, not yet.

[Fr. Dan Eddy]

Mr. Hutchins, you have NAILED it!

Hatred of Evangelical Christians (among whom I number myself) is one of the last remaining "respectable" bigotries --along with hatred of the Pope; we're in good company, anyway. . .

[Bill Dillon]

The Democrats have swallowed the new "morality" hook, line and sinker.

The "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" no longer apply to them.

In short, the morality that is America is denied.

Furthermore, that ignorance is taught in public schools in various forms such as multiculturalism and its twin, moral relativity.

Perhaps President Bush is so much a Democrat target is because his candid religious statements grate on their exposed, sensitive moral nerves.

That and the fact that he won two national elections seem to jolt the nerves all the more.

One possible solution a return to civility would be frank discussions of the law written on the heart. First, among conservatives and libertarians; then expanding to include progressives.

[James A. Altena]

The point that Mr. Bangs, Joe McFaul, etc. are missing is that Dr. Hutchens (or Prof. Esolen, et al.) did not say that Bush was not a poor or incompetent president, or that there are not manifold reasons for people to oppose and even intensely to dislike him. I personally concur with many (though not all) of the criticisms of Bush offered here. What Dr. Hutchens wrote about, however, was the sheer HATRED directed against Bush. Hatred is a quite distinct thing from opposition, dislike, criticsm, poor opinion, etc. And on that, I think some of the comments posted here have proven Dr. Hutchens to be as astute as ever.

[Seth R.]

James, the only hatred I have really seen here is hatred of secular liberals. I don't hate Bush. He exasperates me. But an attempt to express that was immediately and violently attacked. Otherwise the whole thread has been one big invective-filled rant about "them durn liberals."

We're obviously in eye-for-an-eye territory here, with the commenters on this thread giving as good as they are getting.

[David Gray]

>But an attempt to express that was immediately and violently attacked.

Actually you seemed to be rationalizing the hatred with statements like:

"The hatred comes from a sense of powerless despair. During the period of Bush's tenure, liberal and moderate voices have been increasingly marginalized."

dave

[Seth R.]

There is a difference between explanation and rationalization. Sorry I didn't spell out the difference more clearly.

And who cares what I'm doing anyway? The ideas are more important than I am. You'd best stick to addressing those.

To be clear: I don't support the hate dialogue on either side.

[Joe McF aul]

In response to Mr. Altena, I only add that those people who actually "hate BUSH" are such a small minority of the group of people who object to his job performance that we can safely ignore them (and leave genuine threats to the Secret Service).

As a matter of course there will be irrational haters of any U.S. President. President Bush is not unique in this regard. Nixon was far more reviled. Reagan was cruelly diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease by his political opponents while he was still in office. Carter and Ford could hardly be mentioned without the word "buffoon" in the same sentence..enough said.

So I reject the claim that Bush haters are any more numerous than other president haters. There's no evidence.

We should give little weight to the emergence of liberal blogs. They didn't exist even in 2000, and the whole blog phenomenon has haters on all sides. As some commenters above note, vitriol is not a liberal monopoly so it is very difficult to determine how much is a defensive response to coulterism. Any individual can set up a blog site and show up on google. Most Americans are oblivious to blogs and I am positive that MySpace is far more popular than Instapundit or Drudge.

I further reject the notion that there are abnormal numbers of Bush haters specifically because he is religious. It's funny but I have no read on Bush's religiosity. I don't know if he attends services regularly or what denomination he claims. I have only heard him speak in platitudes:

for example, http://www.beliefnet.com/story/149/story_14930_1.html

(There is absolutely nothing wrong with a President limiting himself to speaking in religious platitudes in public. I just observe that I have not heard him say anything that suggests he is particular religious at all.)
In the absence of any facts, Bush is as religious as he is conservative, which according to Mr. Esolen, isn't much. he appears to express sincere deism. Certainly he's not religious enough to enrage large number of the American populace.

On the other hand, he has done a lot during his presidency to enrage liberals, conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, the military and big business.

I merely suggest that his performance is the most significant factor in people's feelings towards him. As set out above, his list of failures is quite long and his accomplishments modest.

If you favor a turn to a more conservative outlook then it's important to correctly diagnose the problem. Claimed antipathy to religion is the wrong diagnosis for what ails this country.

[Scott Walker]

Joe McFaul: Mr. Bush is a Methodist. He attends services regularly. And if you really think that his Christian faith is not driving much of the hatred you somehow seem to not be noticing, you know about as much about current politics as you know about Mr. Bush's denominational affiliation.

[DGP]

Hatred is different from political opposition. Just as opposition to the administration does not constitute hate, so also is it true that one may hate without disputing policy. I've personally witnessed a fairly broad spread of political liberals, including those of the "religious left" type, come to a consensus that President Bush is to be condemned and feared. (Read: "Hated.") Why, if he plays more or less on the liberal side of history?

I suggest it's because his language about religion and incidental elements of his policy platform suggest that liberalism is not the *only* criterion for moral judgment. As we now commonly hear, religious conservatives are not the only "values voters": Liberals, too, can subscribe to morality and virtue. What they can't seem to tolerate in President Bush is the occasional locution that pitches morality against liberalism. Even to invoke some vague notion of "values" against, say, federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is tantamount to theocracy because it cracks open the door to moral reasoning that does not derive its validity from liberalism. Liberalism is a jealous god.

Liberalism in various times and places has been understood as entrepreneurial freedom, as freedom of thought and conscience, or as solidarity with the poor or vulnerable. Wherever these interests are still features of political liberals, they are manifestly negotiable and dispensable. Ultimately, as has been written here and in many other places, it's now all about sex. Philosophical liberalism in the political sphere has devolved into license, and license reduced to sexual license. Any political stance that threatens sexual license ipso facto threatens liberalism so understood.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Joe McFaul,

Frankly, you're in denial here. I don't know if the number of people who hate GWB is greater than those who hated Clinton, and I agree that there was also that and (while I readily admit to despising Clinton with all my being, per Prof. Esolen's distinction) that it was excessive (e.g. the conspiracy theories about the 50+ people the Clintons allegedly had murdered). But not since Reagan have I seen the sheer, visceral, hysterical, blind hatred vented against a president that I've seen against Bush. (My father-in-law, generally a rreasonable man, is a good example).

What really gets me about both the Reagan and GWB haters is that they are almost invariably people who profess absolute opposition to capital punishment and accuse routinely accuse conservatives of "dehumanizing" others, but then hypocritically turn around and openly and blood-thirstily lust for them to be murdered.

[Judy Warner]

I have seen many photos and cartoons equating Bush with Hitler; this has become a cliche on the left. I have seen serious statements by leftists asserting that Bush and his colleagues have plunged us into a totalitarian nightmare, or if we're not there yet they are plotting to do it soon. I have read many anecdotes from college students on their professors' diatribes against Bush when they are supposed to be teaching, say, physics or ancient history. I cannot remember phenomena like these about any other president in my lifetime.

[Seth R.]

Joe McFaul's comment was pretty sensible to me.

I think a lot of the conservative angst about people "hating on Bush" is merely due to the fact that they feel vulnerable right now with the GOP in near political meltdown. It's prime time for people to feel especially sensitive to any criticism and blow things out of proportion.

I see little evidence that things are any worse now than they have ever been in American politics. All one needs to do is read a few good history books about US elections in the 1800s to find that out.

The original post is simplistic at best. It evidences a sad tendency in the religious conservative movement to reduce everything (and I do mean everything) that ails our politics and society to sex.

"People hate Bush because they want free and irresponsible sex."

Yeah.... sure....

I'm not arguing that isn't part of it. But good grief. Has anyone been paying attention to our government for the past 4 years?

I have plenty of reasons to be unhappy with the Bush administration and almost none of them have anything to do with sex.

For the record, I oppose abortion; I value the sanctity of human life; I attend church every Sunday; I am utterly unimpressed with liberal obsession with cultural relativism; I consider the Democratic party, as it exists today, to be largely weak and spineless; and I am profoundly disturbed by our mainstream culture's uncritical embrace of sexual promiscuity.

On Bush: I personally think he's a nice enough guy - probably be a good dinner guest; I think he believes in what he's doing; I have never claimed he deliberately lied about anything during his tenure; I also don't think all of his policies were necessarily wrong. Neither did I particularly like Kerry.

There isn't any hate here. It's just after 6 years of watching this guy clown-around with our national destiny, I firmly believe it's high-time someone took away the car keys.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with a deep-seated desire to avoid being personally held to objective moral standards. Just because some on the Christian Right, and some of their Leftist opponents seem to think everything is "about the sex," doesn't mean there aren't any other pressing moral concerns out there.

[David Gray]

>It's just after 6 years of watching this guy clown-around with our national destiny, I firmly believe it's high-time someone took away the car keys.

You favour impeachment?

[Seth R.]

No.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>There isn't any hate here. It's just after 6 years of watching this guy clown-around with our national destiny, I firmly believe it's high-time someone took away the car keys.<<<

I always love comments like this. Especially when they come from people who have given no really serious consideration to the issues involved. They have no expertize, no historical perspective, no conception whatsoever of any alternative plan. They are also completely free from responsibility, and never have to consider the consequences of their half-baked ideas.

But, hey, I'm game.

So, Seth, let's hear your game plan. Tell us what YOU would do in regard to the war in Iraq, the wider war on terrorism, the problem of genocide in Darfur (let's hope you can get beyond "raising awareness"), the economy, health care, race relations and anything else you would care to bring up.

I for my part, will play YOU--the Peanut Gallery--and gleefully shoot holes in whatever policy proposals you bring to the table. The main difference between me and you, though, is that I know my stuff. It's what I do for a living. So wear your aspestos shorts, OK?

[David R.]

I always love comments like this. Especially when they come from people who have given no really serious consideration to the issues involved. They have no expertize, no historical perspective, no conception whatsoever of any alternative plan. They are also completely free from responsibility, and never have to consider the consequences of their half-baked ideas.

Ultimately the buck stops at the top. Whether we look at Iraq or Katrina or the deficits, the optics are terrible. Most people look at these situations and see significant failures of government and specifically they see presidential failures. Perhaps this is because they haven’t yet been educated by Mr. Koehl, however you can’t deny that these issues aren’t going to win Bush many supporters.

I think Seth quite adequately described the sentiment many people feel in regards to Bush; not hatred, but more disappointment and disillusionment. There are a lot of people who hate Bush, but that’s from segments of the population that would never have supported him anyways. It’s the disillusioned ones that may well cause the Republicans to lose the house and senate.

I for my part, will play YOU--the Peanut Gallery--and gleefully shoot holes in whatever policy proposals you bring to the table.

Fair enough, only Seth isn’t proposing to run anything, he’s merely pointing out that the accomplishments of the administration aren’t seen by most people as stellar. Personally I give Bush credit for two excellent judges; beyond that…

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Ultimately the buck stops at the top. Whether we look at Iraq or Katrina or the deficits, the optics are terrible. <<<

That's the kind of dumb, "perception is everything" attitude that, throughout human history, has caused nations fecklessly to jettison strong, prudent, long-term leadership for short-term benefit.

1. Katrina: When you look at what happened, you can only point to the idiocy of the Government of Louisiana and the electorate of that state, which prefers "optics" to substance. Mississippi and Alabama got hit just as hard (and in some cases, harder), yet the problems that hobbled Louisiana are not found there. Why? Moreover, under the system that was established by Congress decades ago, in order to placate the state governments, the states, not the Federal Government, has the primary responibility for first response in natural disasters. And that's just as it should be. Under this system, FEMA really doesn't have much of a role. It is and always has been, an agency that cuts checks and writes purchase orders.

2. Deficits: The present deficit of approximately $245 billion is less than half of what it was two years ago, when the country was recovering from the double whammy of war and natural disaster induced recession. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit is lower today than it was through most of the nineties. A period during which Bill Clinton managed to reduce the deficit and even turn a surplus entirely by dint of gutting military spending. I'll show you the graphs, if you like.

>>>Most people look at these situations and see significant failures of government and specifically they see presidential failures.<<<

Most people get their information from sources that can hardly be called either comprehensive or objective. In addition, most people don't have an opinion about anything until someone tells them what their opinion ought to be. In other words, most people really have no reason to have an opinion at all.

>>>Perhaps this is because they haven’t yet been educated by Mr. Koehl, however you can’t deny that these issues aren’t going to win Bush many supporters.<<<

So? Did it occur to you that he's not in this to be popular? That the popular path would have been a lot easier, and avoided most of the political problems Bush faces today? That, in other worlds, he could have governed like Bill Clinton, and been loved. But they we'd really be up the creek without a paddle, wouldn't we? Try to remember that Lincoln was reviled in the North almost as much as he was in the South until Sherman took Savannah. Or that Churchill could not get elected dog catcher throughout the 1930s. So, vote for Al Gore, or for Stanley Baldwin or Neville Chamberlain, for all I care. But remember, going with the flow is not leadership.

>>>I think Seth quite adequately described the sentiment many people feel in regards to Bush; not hatred, but more disappointment and disillusionment.<<<

Any feeling one holds about anyone or anything without full knowledge and understanding is merely prejuidice, or if you prefer, bigotry. Bigotry is a form of hatred. Moreover, those who would replace their leaders ought to have some idea of what they would like in their stead. "Anybody but. . ." does not constitute a policy. Moreover, in war, as Napoleon said, it's better to have one bad general than two good ones. So imagine how I feel looking at Congress and seeing 535 bad generals who all want to run the show, or worse, thousands of armchair Napoleons and Metterniches who all think they can do a better job, but when pushed to enunciate what they would do, make vague noises and wave their hands in the air. So, I'll put my challenge to you, too: if Bush is so bad, what would you do differently? I'll be here waiting to see how good you are.

>>>Fair enough, only Seth isn’t proposing to run anything, he’s merely pointing out that the accomplishments of the administration aren’t seen by most people as stellar. Personally I give Bush credit for two excellent judges; beyond that…<<<

Methinks that either you haven't been paying close attention, or that you are one of those conservatives who would rather curse the darkness rather than share a candle with someone who disagrees with your position. This is a country governed by a Constitution that enshrines a division of powers and is organized in such a way as to ensure that nobody gets a whole loaf. Those who try end up with nothing. Getting things done means building broad coalitions, and that in turn means compromise, and even sacrifice of peripheral objectives in order to get the big things done.

By the way, I'm available to educate whomever would like illumination.

[Judy Warner]

I'm available to educate you on grammar, Stuart. "Whomever" is the subject of the clause and should be "whoever."

[James A. Altena]

An important distinction keeps getting lost here, which is part of why the temperature is rising on all sides. Dr. Hutchens' post does not address the many people who (rightly or wrongly) disagree with Bush, or have a low opinion of him and his policies, etc. He is talking about that part of the population that postively HATES Bush, and I still think his post is right on the money with respect to those people and why they hate him.

[David Gray]

>He is talking about that part of the population that postively HATES Bush, and I still think his post is right on the money with respect to those people and why they hate him.

You make a good point but some people hate President Bush so much that they are unwilling to allow anyone to state that he is hated lest someone actually feel sympathy for him. Ironic. And this is coming from someone who is for the first time in his voting life finding himself tempted to vote for a third party (won't vote for the Godless Party).

[Tony Esolen]

I agree here with Stuart. It's easy for people to say, vaguely enough, what we should have done or should not have done, after the fact. One reason I'm willing to give the president a great deal of leeway on his decision to go to war in Iraq is that it was obviously not in his political interest to do so. The "conservative" option, if you are thinking only of your own political fortunes, is to do nothing risky if your approval rating is high, and at the time when the President decided to go to war, his approval rating was as high as it is possible to get, in this deeply divided country. Until the very end I thought he was bluffing, and I did not think the attack would come off.

In fact, in many ways he has dared to attempt things that the pundits had called political suicide. He has committed that suicide several times over. Touching Social Security was supposed to be suicide. Suggesting that we grant amnesty to illegals was supposed to be suicide, only this time the people whom you'd expect to kill you would be on the right, not on the left. In both cases I can only conclude that the President took a risky or an unpopular position because he happened to believe it was the correct one.

I haven't said anything about the war in Iraq, pro or con. I'm not a liberal, I'm not a great fan of democracy, so I'm leery, as I've said, of spreading democracy worldwide. Nor do I trust that we can ever really form solid alliances with Muslim nations. If I were a liberal, though, I would have to ask why the lives of Muslims in Iraq -- not simply those living there now, but those to come, generation after generation -- are not worthy of enjoying the blessings of freedom. I understand why a conservative would oppose this war, on principle. I understand why either a conservative or a liberal would oppose this war, for prudential reasons. I do not understand why a liberal would oppose this war on principle. But that is just what they say they are doing. I can grow angry at a president's miscalculation. But you don't hate somebody who makes a mistake, even a horrible mistake.

Unless they are not properly called "liberals," because they no longer believe in any freedom beyond that of the zipper. But I'm repeating myself; sorry.

[Bobby Winters]

Let us put on hold for the moment whether there is a rational reason to hate GW Bush or either of the Clintons. I live out in the backwoods and would like to ask a question of the more sophisticated. Aren't there people who are paid to stir up hatred on both sides? I know there are the commercials during the election years, but aren't there other things that are more subtle?

I've seen shameful e-mail jokes circulating about Hilary Clinton. I've heard about the whisper campaigns reputing her to be a lesbian in the elevators of New York. This is scandalous no matter what you think of her. I've been e-mailed photos of GW with his mouth curled in such a way that you'd just have to hate him. There are the saved up mis-speakings that are so popular. Am I being paranoid when I ask myself whether some of these are a bit too well-constructed. Do we hate with such intensity because we are told we are supposed to?

Each "side" has a machine to churn stuff out. The Right has Rush Limbaugh and the Left has Jon Daley. What lurks beneath the surface?

I am probably just nuts, but these are some questions that have occured to me.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>An important distinction keeps getting lost here, which is part of why the temperature is rising on all sides. Dr. Hutchens' post does not address the many people who (rightly or wrongly) disagree with Bush, or have a low opinion of him and his policies, etc. He is talking about that part of the population that postively HATES Bush, and I still think his post is right on the money with respect to those people and why they hate him.<<<

Go back to Christopher Lasch and "The Revolt of the Elites". Put in simple terms, there is within the United States a "new class" of people who owe their positions in society not to status or birth, but to shear merit. They went to the best schools, scored the highest grades, were recruited by the best companies, and now, having risen on merit, they feel that their position is an entitlement resulting from their own worth. As such, they feel that their opinions are better than that of any others, because, naturally, they are the best and brightest people. This makes them inherently suspicious of tradition and any authority other than themselves. It also means that when they are foiled in their will, they tend to attribute this failure not to anything inherent in their ideas, but rather in the failure of their inferiors to understand them, or to nepharious motives and methods of their opponents. Thus, you get the inherently contradictory "Bush is an idiot/Bush is a Machievellian genius" trope, as well as John Kerry's plaintive lament from the last presidential election, "I can't believe I'm losing to this moron!"

[DGP]

There's also a lot of natural triangulation going on, as has always been the case in national and international politics. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has become the only agent to whom blame for the world's troubles may be plausibly imputed by those eager to shift it. Those most eager for a scapegoat -- the long humiliated Arabs suddenly re-empowered by oil -- were the first to jump at the bait, but even if the U.S. survives them others are waiting in line for their turn at vindication or vengeance.

These international affairs reverberate at the national level. Prominent Democrats since President Carter acted against U.S. interests abroad, and so received strategic praise from foreign leaders who wanted to encourage their behavior -- witness the standing ovation President Clinton received at the U.N. Meanwhile, prominent Republicans who pursued U.S. interests more aggressively (i.e., Presidents Reagan and Bush XLIII) were reviled by the same leaders.

Americans (and more generally, Westerners) whose moral constitutions disincline them to face awkward responsibilities are eager to buy into the lie that electing soft Democrats will make everyone love the U.S. They imagine that foreigners' approval will bring us greater prestige and surer peace. Others among us with dimmer views of world politics saw the regathering storm already in the early 1990s, and started to worry when President Clinton received such enthusiastic praise overseas.

One curious thing about all this is how it ties into religious and philosophical views of human nature and salvation. Are people basically good or evil? Will God save us through tribulation and cross or through incremental enlightenment and progress? I'd guess that folks' answers to these questions might correlate with their political instincts.

[Christopher Hathaway]

I'm available to educate you on grammar, Stuart. "Whomever" is the subject of the clause and should be "whoever."

Ha, ha!

If you're going to try to score snooty points in a political argument at least get it right. "Whomever" is the object of the verb to educate. Try it out with the third personal pronoun. I can educate he? No. I can educate him.

[Juli]

the Left has Jon Daley

Who is Jon Daley?

[David R.]

Any feeling one holds about anyone or anything without full knowledge and understanding is merely prejuidice, or if you prefer, bigotry. Bigotry is a form of hatred.

That is totally absurd. In many of your comments you state your feelings about other people, but you don’t know them; you certainly don’t know me. Does that mean you hate me? I certainly don’t think so. Throwing around words like bigotry and hatred certainly does nothing to raise the level of dialogue.

Methinks that either you haven't been paying close attention, or that you are one of those conservatives who would rather curse the darkness rather than share a candle with someone who disagrees with your position. This is a country governed by a Constitution that enshrines a division of powers and is organized in such a way as to ensure that nobody gets a whole loaf. Those who try end up with nothing. Getting things done means building broad coalitions, and that in turn means compromise, and even sacrifice of peripheral objectives in order to get the big things done.

I absolutely agree with you, only you imply that this administration has pursued politics by way of building broad coalitions and compromise. I think you’d have a really, really, ridiculously hard time proving that one.

So, I'll put my challenge to you, too: if Bush is so bad, what would you do differently? I'll be here waiting to see how good you are.

It really doesn’t matter a whit what I would do. I don’t think Bush is terrible, but neither do I feel that he should somehow be insulated from any criticism or questioning. And I believe there are very significant criticisms which can and have been made by people on both the right and the left side of the spectrum. Some of these are hateful rants, but some are perfectly reasonable criticisms, at least in my opinion.

Besides, any serious discussion on what I would have done would require me going mano-a-mano with you and I have neither the time or desire to do that! From what I have seen you subscribe to the Powel Doctrine when it comes to blogging, so I leave the last word to you.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>That is totally absurd. In many of your comments you state your feelings about other people, but you don’t know them; you certainly don’t know me. <<<

I don't "hate" people because I do not generally express myself on people per se; I reflect rather on the opinions and attitudes expressed by people, as well as their actions, which are, of course, suitable subjects for analysis.

>>> absolutely agree with you, only you imply that this administration has pursued politics by way of building broad coalitions and compromise. I think you’d have a really, really, ridiculously hard time proving that one.<<<

When the "loyal opposition" is loyal only to its own, and not the national interest, it's rather difficult to build a consensus on anything. In the old days, politics stopped at the water's edge; today, we have ex-presidents of the Democratic pursuasion making speeches critical of U.S. foreign policy in international fora. In the old days, this would have been considered scandalous, if not treasonous. At home, we have an opposition whose entire program is obstruction and opposition. Asked to provide their own alternatives to the President's policy proposals, the only thing we hear is "We're agin' it", not "Try this one". Even now, during the election campaign, Democratic candidates have been exceedingly careful NOT to offer policy suggestions, but merely vague bromides and promises of "change". But what kind of change? They'll never tell.

Forty years of close observation has convinced me that in the liberal Democratic lexicon, "compromise" means "Do what I want", and consensus means an absolute Democratic majority with a "me too" Republican rump opposition to give it legitimacy.

>>>It really doesn’t matter a whit what I would do. I don’t think Bush is terrible, but neither do I feel that he should somehow be insulated from any criticism or questioning. <<<

There is a legitimate way to do that. Democrats don't seem to know what it is.

>>>Besides, any serious discussion on what I would have done would require me going mano-a-mano with you and I have neither the time or desire to do that! From what I have seen you subscribe to the Powel Doctrine when it comes to blogging, so I leave the last word to you.<<<

Fine. Take your ball and go home.

[David Gray]

>neither do I feel that he should somehow be insulated from any criticism or questioning

I hadn't noticed anyone advocating that.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I hadn't noticed anyone advocating that.<<<

David, please! You're making other David's straw man all soggy and hard to light.

[Beth]

Dear Chris,

Judy is right.

"I'm available to educate [whomever would like illumination}."

The object of "to educate" is the *clause* "whoever would like illumination." "Whoever" is the subject of that clause, thus must be in the subject form in standard English.

I don't really care about grammar on weblogs as long as the meaning is clear, because people are writing quickly more than elegantly, but I couldn't let this one go by, as you are being rather "snooty" yourself towards Judy -- who I suspect was teasing rather than trying to score points, given her general point of view as I've seen it here.

I am a full professor of English who teaches grammar at the college level, by the way, in case anyone wants to know my level of expertise on this. :)

[Judy Warner]

By the way, I'm available to educate whomever would like illumination.

"Whomever" is the object of the verb to educate.

The whole clause is the object of the verb to educate. Within the clause there is a subject. For instance, this sentence is awkward but correct: I'm available to educate him, who would like illumination. There, "him" is the object. Sorry to sound snotty. I like Stuart's writing immensely and that's probably why I was moved to correct it.

[James A. Altena]

While I stand on one side here of what should have been a debate, it has degenerated into a food-fight unworthy of those who bear the name of Christ. What sort of witness are these posts presenting to the world for any non-Christian, let alone Christian, who should chance to see them? Where here is our practice of the Gospel virtues of forbearance, longsuffering, and patience in dealing with opponents?

Or perhaps I should be thankful that it has not yet descended to the use of four-letter words that pepper comments posted to various partisan political blogs....

[Bobby Winters]

>>>the Left has Jon Daley

Who is Jon Daley?<<<

Oops. My bad. It's Jon Stewart of the Daily show. I am forever conflating him with the chairman of the History Department. Were I an expert on cognition, that would undoubtedly tell me something about my brain.

[Christopher Hathaway]

Ah, ah! (reversal)

Judy,

Mea maxima culpa, or in the modern vernacular, my bad.

I should have noticed that yours was a friendly correction. I like to think my hasty judgment of your motive made me miss the clause at the end. Bad it is to falsely correct someone's gramar. Far, far worse is it to falsely correct the accuracy of another's correction. Now I came off the snooty one. I repent in dust and ashes.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The whole clause is the object of the verb to educate. Within the clause there is a subject. For instance, this sentence is awkward but correct: I'm available to educate him, who would like illumination. There, "him" is the object. Sorry to sound snotty. I like Stuart's writing immensely and that's probably why I was moved to correct it.<<<

Hey, I was tired, OK?

[GL]

Stuart,

If you committed more grammatical errors and typos (like me), then folks wouldn't point out the few you do. ;-)

I'm with Beth on this. I decided some time ago that I could take the time to proofread and edit my posts or figure that this is just a blog, not a scholarly publication, and assume that other readers took it as such.

[Seth R.]

OK Stuart, I just Googled you. You're the defense analyst right? OK...

What's your point?

That we aren't allowed to have opinions about our elected leaders' military policies unless we have your level of expertise?

That'a singular position, considering that, last I checked, this was a democracy with a supposedly accountable leadership.

And what am I supposed to make of the recent calls for Rumsfeld's resignation by numerous editorial boards of military publications? I suppose they aren't qualified either?

In my experience accusations of "armchair quarterbacking" are often the last resort of a failing leadership that simply wishes the opposition would shut-up and accept that "papa knows best."

Funny though, how similarly "unqualified" commenters who want to tell us WHY Rumsfeld is doing such a "boppo job" rarely get accused of being "armchair generals."

Kinda kills the whole image of objectivity.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> What's your point?<<<

My point is talk is cheap, and opinions are like butts--everybody's got one.

>>>That we aren't allowed to have opinions about our elected leaders' military policies unless we have your level of expertise?<<<

No, but you have to have SOME level of expertise beyond having watched "Platoon" and "Saving Private Ryan" and listening to Wolf Blitzer on CNN for ten minutes a day.

>>>That'a singular position, considering that, last I checked, this was a democracy with a supposedly accountable leadership.<<<

Actually, we live in a representative republic, and while leaders are accountable to the electorate, the electorate has a responsibility to be INFORMED. History is replete with examples of ignorant electorates that voted out or deposed effective leaders because they were not INFORMED about affairs, and so could not see clearly the true situation. If I might only tap into a recent example in American history, in January 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Liberation Army opened a broad offensive to coincide with the Vietnamese lunar new year, Tet. In the ensuing six weeks, the Communists were handed a catastrophic defeat in which they suffered massive casualties--so massive, in fact, that the Viet Cong were wiped out as a fighting force. Yet, because one pompous old fool told them so on the CBS Evening News, the majority of Americans came to view Tet as a defeat, rather than a great victory--and thus set the stage for the cowardly withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam. Going forward a little, we can look at how the Battle of Mogadishu was covered in the U.S. press, and the effect that our withdrawal from Somalia had on the course of future events (culminating with the attacks of 9/11).

Going back as far as the Peloponnesian Wars and the Punic Wars, ill-informed electorates have a remarkable record of perceiving victory as defeat, and of deposing, exiling or even executing their most successful leaders. Why? Because throughout history, most people have never looked beyond the end of their noses and have no interest in or knowledge about anything outside their own immediate interests, and thus are easily misled by people who provide them with an easy way out.

>>>And what am I supposed to make of the recent calls for Rumsfeld's resignation by numerous editorial boards of military publications? I suppose they aren't qualified either?<<<

My own well-considered, professional opinion? No, they're not. Basically, they're political hacks in uniform angling for cabinet positions in some future Democratic administration or for political office in their own right (Can you say "Wesley Clark"?). As for the editorial boards of Army Times, et al., please be advised that these are not "official" military publications, but part of the Gannett Corporation, which of course, has no editoral axe to grind.

Moreover, most of the people involved here have been personally gored by Rumsfeld, and so there is a certain amount of personal animus involved here. Basically, Rumsfeld is doing two disparate jobs, each of which is hard on its own, both of which together ought to be impossible. First, he is trying to fight and win a multi-front counterinsurgency operation. Second, he is trying to reform and modernize the military to fight a new kind of war, in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic and institutional opposition. As I have said, and numerous other commentators have also noted, the U.S. military entered this war ill-configured to fight the kind of enemy we face. Worse, it never wanted to fight this type of war at all--it's not "real" war. As a result, it has resisted tooth and nail all attempts to transform the military into something that can fight terrorists AND a major adversary like China. It is especially annoyed when told some of its favorite (and almost useless) toys are no longer going to be funded. Stuff like the Crusader self-propelled howitzer (a 7-ton behemoth capable of firing six 155mm rounds per minute, which may be more than we actually fired in the entire Afghan war) or the RAH-66 Comanche scout helicopter (stealth is expensive, and not very useful against guys who kill you by shooting a bunch of RPGs at you). So, yeah, there are a lot of people whose careers have been derailed by Donald Rumsfeld. But, to quote Napoleon, to make a good omlette, you have to break eggs.

>>>Funny though, how similarly "unqualified" commenters who want to tell us WHY Rumsfeld is doing such a "boppo job" rarely get accused of being "armchair generals."<<<

Support for the established leadership in time of war ought to be the default position. Those who wish to challenge the leadership had better know their stuff and have some alternative course in mind, because "Now it's my turn" is not a strategy.

[Seth R.]

OK, fine.

I get your point.

Anyone who is not as qualified as you are on these matters is not entitled to an opinion on this.

That's a pretty high bar to set for democratic participation. And it disqualifies just about everyone on this blog from having an opinion except you.

Convenient.

[Seth R.]

Oh, and I always agreed with scrapping the Crusader program, even if it was a really cool piece of machinery.

[Steve Nicoloso]

I can't quite believe this one:

Any feeling one holds about anyone or anything without full knowledge and understanding is merely prejuidice, or if you prefer, bigotry. Bigotry is a form of hatred.

Has Stuart finally come out? Revealing himself as the Gnostic, the enlightenment rationalist, the small-p protestant--big-E Eastern rite catholic at which he's so often hinted? If so, thanks... finally... for your honesty.

Conservativsm, in its Burkean anti-revolutionary purity, is nothing if not a commitment to Prescription, Presumption, and, yes, Prejudice. And as such true conservatism dreads almost as much as the Devil himself, abstraction (if in fact they are not one and the same). Prejudice is NOT (necessarily) bigotry. Tho' with a healthy dose of ideology it can become that. No, prejudice is the natural condition of man by which he allows the inherited wisdom (and alas occasionally the foolishness) of uncountable past generations to guide him in living his life and in notions of the common good. What the common man may not be able to articulate rationally because he lacks the leisure (or learning or IQ), he almost always knows viscerally thanks to nature, blood, soil, and Providence.

Now it has been for 2 1/2 centuries the liberal project to strip man of his prejudices... to make him into (and ONLY into) the rational bargainer that liberal ideology requires (some hogswill about being "by nature free and equal") and by all accounts the project has been a great success (cf. Capitalism, Democracy, Socialism, &c.). And if, Stuart, you're joining that Great March of modern liberalism (against which the Tower of Babel is surely a molehill by comparison), that's fine, but please don't pretend to be a card-carrying conservative... much less a realist.

Cheers!

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Has Stuart finally come out? Revealing himself as the Gnostic, the enlightenment rationalist, the small-p protestant--big-E Eastern rite catholic at which he's so often hinted? If so, thanks... finally... for your honesty.<<<

Whatever.

[Gene Godbold]

Dear Seth,
I think what Stuart is trying to elicit from you (in his typical swashbuckling, bare-knuckled fashion) is an actual policy prescription. It doesn't do any good to sulk about it. Stuart reacts badly to other people carping without having any clear idea what they would prefer or how they would do something differently. Democracies (I'm trusting Victor Davis Hanson and Stuart on this) are notorious for brain-dead reactions in wartime. ("Wait, we don't like this! Out with all of you!") Sometimes the better part of wisdom is not having an opinion.

[Judy Warner]

What the common man may not be able to articulate rationally because he lacks the leisure (or learning or IQ), he almost always knows viscerally thanks to nature, blood, soil, and Providence.

Those who react viscerally thanks to nature etc. argued mightily before we went into Iraq that it wasn't our business. I'm thinking of Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell, etc. But once we're in a war, it seems to me that nature, blood and soil would tell a man that he should support his country and not prescribe policies that would surely lead to disaster for us.

[Bob Gardner]

Stuart,

To whom shall we go for education? It seems that most of the stuff you share is not available to the common-man. Should we trust big media? No. Should we trust academia? No. So what is the solution to what you perceive to be an ill informed electorate?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Anyone who is not as qualified as you are on these matters is not entitled to an opinion on this.<<<

That would be hard. Most of those 4-Stars who keep popping up like a bad hoagie wouldn't qualify.

No, I would say, rather, that a person ought, at a minimum, have some idea about where Iraq is, about who the different parties in the conflict are, about the positions those parties hold, about the nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare, about reasonable expectations within such warfare, and about this war relative, say, to other wars the United States has fought.

For instance, suppose in 1942 (or even 1943), the Roosevelt Administration had been subjected to the same relentless and vitriolic criticism on its handling of World War II has the Bush Administration has received to date.

Could we expect a bipartisan "Pearl Harbor Commission" to release all of its findings (including ULTRA and MAGIC) in real time (the actual commission did not begin hearings until the war was as good as won)? Would the commission have foisted off hare-brained recommendations for military and intelligence "reform" on the Administration?

What would the press have made of the catastrophic loss of shipping off the East and Gulf coasts of the United States? Would there have been calls for the resignation or firing of COMINCH Admiral Ernest J. King, whose own stubborn refusal to convoy shipping resulted in the needless loss of hundreds of ships?

Would the press have made a major issue out of the relocation of Japanese nationals on the West Coast? Conversely, if the Roosevelt Administration had chosen to leave them in place, would the press have yelled that the Administration was ignoring a security threat (This is the principle of "heads I win/tails you lose")?

Would the Press have deliberately leaked military and intelligence secrets, such as our code-breaking operations (this almost happened by accident, but I can really see Seymour Hersh blowing the lid off of MAGIC because the original code books were copied during a clandestine breakin at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC)?

What would the Press have said after the catastropic loss of the Philippines, MacArthur's woeful performance as commander there, the lack of preparation by both U.S. and Philippines forces, the destruction of the U.S. Army Air Force on the ground almost 12 hours after Pearl Harbor? Of the loss of the Malay Barrier, the destruction of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, and almost all aircraft deployed to the Dutch East Indies?

What would have been said after Rommel kicked our tails at the Battle of Kasserine Pass? Of the woeful inadequacies of our equipment, whether tanks, aircraft or small arms (the M1 Garand rifle excepted)? You want to talk about armor scandals? The M4A3 Sherman Tank's armor was so thin that a German Panzer IV tank could penetrate it at close to 1000 meters (a Tiger or 8mm anti-tank gun could gut a Sherman at 1500 meters), while the Sherman's pathetic little 75mm popgun could only penetrate the German tank at 500 meters or less (and could not even penetrate the frontal armor of a Tiger tank at point blank range). Did I mention that the Shermans caught fire so easily they were called "Ronsons" by their crews (light first time, every time)?

Then there was the torpedo scandal: It would be early 1944 before all the bugs in the U.S. Mk.XIV torpedo were worked out--the faulty magnetic exploder, the defective contact exploder, the inaccurate depth-keeping mechanism--so that U.S. submarines (the ones practicing unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to international law) experienced dud rates approaching 66%.

How about the Regensburg-Schweinfurt raid, eh? Lost 60 heavy bombers in one afternoon, along with the 600 men on board. If something like that happened today, you can be sure 60 Minutes would have an expose on the faulty doctrine of precision bombing and would call for cancellation of the overpriced and ineffective B-17 and B-24.

And then there was all that waste, fraud and abuse in defense contracting, but hey, this ought to be enough to start.

My point is this: a hermeneutic of suspicion in regard to wartime leadership can easily be taken too far. The difference between reporters in World War II and reporters today is that the former KNEW that they were Americans first, reporters second. Their primary committment was to helping us win the war. As such, they not only allowed their reporting to be subjected to military censorship, but they also censored themselves, deliberately not reporting things they knew would undermine the war effort (including atrocities committed by American troops on and off the battlefield).

On the other hand, today's "journalists" consider themselves a class apart, rootless cosmopolitans who answer to no nation but only to a higher, objective "truth". This sounds nice, but what it actually means is they are free to indulge their own preconceived notions, to act as arbiters in the war and mediators between the government and the people. There is no guarantee that they want this country to win; there is considerable evidence that they in fact do not.

When these people are the filters between the citizenry and the government, and their primary source of information, there really is no way that the people can get a true picture, or that the government can effectively lead.

There is a right and wrong way to hold the government accountable. There is a time and a place for criticism and recriminations. That time is usually AFTER the war is one, not while it is still being fought. There is a fundamental principle of war called "unity of command". In war, the United States has usually honored this at the highest level by deferring to the Executive Branch in most matters, with the legislature concerned mostly with oversight, and the judiciary not at all. We violated this rule in the Civil War, when Congress tried to tell Lincoln how to fight. Bad as Lincoln's strategy was at times, the few times when the Congress got its way shows quite well what happens when you try to wage war by committee.

[Bob Gardner]

Please ignore this post, just getting rid of the italics.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>To whom shall we go for education? It seems that most of the stuff you share is not available to the common-man. <<<

Actually, it is. But you have to take out the time to educate yourself. There was a time when matters of state and military affairs were avidly followed by the citizenry. In classical times, the ones who ruled were the ones who fought. Democracy grew out of the need to expand the franchise to all who bore arms (particularly the urban proletariat who provided Athens with the rowers for her triremes). In Rome, political leaders were also military leaders (same in Greece, for that matter). In colonial American and the early United States, this was also true: most political leaders were also leaders of the militia, or served in the regulars. The people avidly filled the ranks. They drilled, they read, they knew their stuff (Washington's two most valuable generals, Henry Knox and Nathaniel Greene, were self-taught military geniuses who got all their knowledge out of books--and then put it to work in the field).

I'm not suggesting that we all have to serve, but I am suggesting that perhaps our public schools were just a little bit irresponsible in jettisoning classic narrative history, with its stirring retellings of wars and heroic deeds, with its emphasis on the centrality of war and military history in human affairs, has led, even more than the end of the draft (which, after all, was just an aberration in U.S. civil-military affairs) to a situation in which the citizens are totally ignorant both of foreign affairs generally and of war in particular.

We live in the middle of a glorious renaissance in military history--almost all of it occuring outside of academic circles. You can find more, better written and more insightful books on all aspects of military history today than you could at any other time in our history. Whether it's the Revolution, or the Civil War, or even the Mexican War, the War of 1812 or the Indian Wars--to say nothing of the two Big Ones, Korea and Viet Nam, you can find books that deal with all aspects of the subject, from grand strategy to operations, tactics and equipment. More exciting still is the emergence of battlefield psychology--the responses, behavior and attitudes of ordinary troops. Reading this is the next best thing to actually talking to veterans (and a lot more comfortable than sitting in a foxhole yourself). From it, you get some inkling of what war is in reality, as opposed to theory, and what it is you ask our troops to do. More, from it you learn why they do it, and keep doing it, even though there are people back home who think that soldiers are just people too stupid to get a real job (if you read American history, you would quickly learn that Kerry's attitude has been more the rule than the exception in the American tradition).

So my recommendation is to read, read broadly, and then read deeply. Read multiple books on the same subject, to get different perspectives. If possible, read the enemy's accounts at the same time as our own. Read what was written at the time, and how things looked after ten or twenty years had past. Discover what things change over time, and what things are constant. Develop a sense of realistic expectations (for instance, most insurgencies fail, but beating them typically takes about ten years), so that there is some context for judging the present situation.

Do this on your own. Do not rely on the media or academics. Use the critical faculties God gave us all, and apply to them a big dollop of the common sense that is the American heritage. And remember, everything you really need to know about international affairs, you learned on the playground in 4th grade (unless, of course, you were in elementry school in the 1980s and later).

[Seth R.]

Fair enough Gene.

1. Set a timetable for pullout. Probably not less than a year from now. We can't afford Iraq anymore, plain and simple.

2. Plan for a partition of Iraq along ethnic lines and start seriously pressuring the leaders of the different factions to work out an agreeable division of Iraq's oil reserves. Lots of diplomacy with Turkey and Iran will be necessary to secure this future, particularly in the case of Kurdistan.

Iraq is a lost cause on the unification front. Semi-peaceful fragmentation is the best we can hope for now. Unification at this point will only come with, at best, another Saddam brutally crushing all opposition or, at worst, a fanatical Taliban doing the same.

3. Shift our focus to military actions against the Taliban, and Afghan nation-building.

4. Shore-up our defensive posture on the Pacific Rim and fast-track an effective missile-defense system along the lines of the Patriot platform that can be locally deployed by our Japanese and South Korean allies. Realistically, this will have to be highly coordinated with China and Russia to avoid either of them feeling threatened.

Above all, start reassuring Japan that our defensive umbrella is still something they can count on. We do NOT want a miniature Cold War starting between Japan and China.

5. Reopen diplomatic avenues with Germany and other western European nations (but mostly Germany) with the aim of securing financial and military backing in Afghanistan and diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.

6. Start making some serious diplomatic and economic inroads in Africa. If we don't, the Chinese will pre-empt us out of access to Africa's natural resources.

7. Secure stable allies in Central Asia and the Middle East to counteract burgeoning Russian nationalism. Georgia, for instance, should be getting a lot more support from the US than it is.

This is doubly important if we wish to preserve access to oil reserves in the Caspian Basin.

8. Serious economic deals with Pakistan and India. This will ensure that we retain influence with those nations, which will be invaluable if hostilities flare up again between these two nuclear powers.

9. Sigh... Restart serious attempts at resolving the Palestinian issue. I'm not optimistic of any real resolution, but it's important that we at least be prominently seen as trying.

None of this can be easily accomplished as long as our political capital, our international goodwill, our national budget, and our military resources are being sucked up by Iraq.

I'm not sure we will be able to accomplish even a peaceful partition of Iraq now. Securing a peacful Kurdistan is going to be a terribly difficult political tightrope to walk and will depend entirely on successful diplomacy with China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

Honestly, I heartily wish that Bush's plan for a unified Iraq had succeeded. But I just don't see it as a real possibility anymore.

[Judy Warner]

Sorry about those italics.

[Joe Mc Faul]

I second any recommendation to become well informed. I also reject any suggestion that a less well informed person is not entitled to an opinion of presidential competence or a vote.

A comment like this:

"So, I'll put my challenge to you, too: if Bush is so bad, what would you do differently? I'll be here waiting to see how good you are."

is a fallacy. Like almost every body here, I purchase services and supplies from everyone from doctors to car mecahnics. I am woefully unqualified to diagnose problems with my car or my body. I leave those to experts.

Nevertheless, I am in a position to fire my expert without knowing exactly what he did wrong and how to do it beter. I do this by testing my mechanic's opinions and forecasts agaisnt reality. Mr. Koehl's challenge is both meaningless and ridiculous.

If my car mechanic tells me that weapons of mass destruction are hidden throughout my vehicle and we'll find "scads of them, piles of them everywhere" and it turns out not to be true, I have a concern. When he now reports that they aren't there-- maybe they got secretly moved to a neighbor's car or maybe there were destroyed a few years back, I'd conclude that my car mechanic is not very good--even if I don;t knwot he first thing about WMD's car mechanics or politics.

When he later tells me "mission accomplished" and yet my monthly repair bills are costing as much as they did before the so-called accomplished misssion, I'd conclude my car meachnic wasn't being truthful or is incompetent.

When he tells me that I will be invoiced for my car repairs and that he is phlosophically opposed to hidden fees and rate increases, but then I learn that costs far exceed the promises I suspect a major propblem. When he tells me, "Dont worry about the hidden expnses and cost overuns, you'll never have to pay it becasue I charged your granchildrens' credit card, I'm through with the guy.

Even if I don't know the first thing about car mecahnics, I know I wont use *this one* again, even if the other mechanics don't have an exact game plan becasue they haven't had a chance to look at my car. But if those car mechanics tell me the first guy essentially got it right--well I'll go somewhere else.

[Seth R.]

Stuart, I'll lay it on the table for you since you seem to be asking.

I got my bachelors degree at BYU in International Politics, with a double minor in Asia Area Studies and Philosophy. I'm fluent in Japanese. I listen to NPR news and the BBC on a daily basis for news in addition to our local newspaper (yes, I'm well aware of the "liberal bias," but I don't like commercial breaks).

I received a Juris Doctorate at Wyoming's law school, served on the law review editorial board and took third place at the Jessup Internation Moot Court competition for my teams written work. I now work in my own private law practice.

I am a permanent contributor at a couple Mormon blogs.

Throughout college, and since graduating I have read a wide range of books on many topics and specializing in none in particular. But I am intensely interested in World War II history and have read several books on that front. I have also been reading up on the Korean War, War of 1812, and recently finished a book outlining the Revolutionary War from the perspective of the political maneuvering that was occuring in the British Parliament. I've found several works by Niall Ferguson rather entertaining. I grab historical documentaries whenever possible and occasionally, I'll browse through issues of Harper's, the National Review, Atlantic Monthly, and others. I try to make sure I check out both conservative and liberal rags. I also follow the blog Volokh conspiracy when I can (but I've been a bit busy).

Does this put me in the same league as published, professional academics? Hardly.

Do you, Stuart, have a wider range of knowlege on international subjects than I do? Probably.

Personally, I'm not particularly impressed with my own credentials. I think they teach me just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be irresponsible.

But I'm forced to live with what I have. I'm not a professional academic.

So you tell me? Am I qualified to have an opinion in America?

[Seth R.]

Sorry, that should have read toward the end:

"but not enough to be RESPONSIBLE."

[Joe Mc Faul]

To return to the point of the thread. I disagree thqat peopel hat eBush ebcase he is a religious person.

I do agree a lot of poeple hate Bush, many for jsutifieable reasons. The most frequent unjustifiable reason, however, is not religion as claimed it the post. It is this sentiment:

"Put in simple terms, there is within the United States a "new class" of people who owe their positions in society not to status or birth, but to shear merit. They went to the best schools, scored the highest grades, were recruited by the best companies, and now, having risen on merit, they feel that their position is an entitlement resulting from their own worth. As such, they feel that their opinions are better than that of any others, because, naturally, they are the best and brightest people."

These people, not to put too fine a point on it, think Bush is an idiot.

Exactly the same dynamic was working with Carter, the peanut farmer with the inbred relatives, Reagan, the Hollywood actor, Clinton the Arkansas philanderer picking up dates at family reunions, and of course, Bush the drunk driving spoiled preppie.

How could we elect such fools and idiots? I suspect this is the basis for Mr. Altena's relative's dislike of Bush and his general disapproval in academia. These people just think the President is not very smart.

I don't think high intelligence is a necessary prerequisite for the job and our most intelligent presidents have not always done a good job.

[David Gray]

>I do agree a lot of poeple hate Bush, many for jsutifieable reasons.

What would those justifiable reasons be?

[Christopher]

I wonder what this Bush hatred says about the direction of the "cultural war" in America in particular and "western civilization" in general. Is there a certain despondency, maybe even desperation, on the part of the militant secularists? Or, have they always been shrill? I am old enough to recall some of the irrationalism on their part towards Reagan, but Bush does seem to carry them to new heights. I wonder if they realize the future is not necessarily a progressive march towards their view of morality. Because I hope and pray for something other than their vision, I have a hard time being objective about it though. Comments?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I listen to NPR news and the BBC on a daily basis for news<<<

QED

>>>So you tell me? Am I qualified to have an opinion in America?<<<

If you worked at it a little more, yes.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I disagree thqat peopel hat eBush ebcase he is a religious person.<<<

In Europe, however, that is indeed a major component of the syndrome. For instance, I have had otherwise well-educated, apparently sane people tell me with a straight face that George W. Bush is a fundamentalist and a religious fanatic. They say the same abou Tony Blair, but leave off the fanatic part. Why? Because any public expression of religious sentiment is considered suspect in Europe. Religion has NO place in the public square; religiously informed positions are not deemed legitimate. Anyone who has one is by definition a religious "fanatic", and thus George Bush, Osama bin Ladin, and even the Pope are all cut from the same cloth. By European standards, our very presence on this type of a forum would be indicative of our fanaticism.

To the extent that there are circles of American liberalism that are nothing more than Euro-Wannabees, this same attitude informs their view of George Bush--and us.

[Seth R.]

Well that's good to know Stuart. Perhaps in ten years, it'll be safe to allow me to vote.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I don't think high intelligence is a necessary prerequisite for the job and our most intelligent presidents have not always done a good job.<<<

The acid test is simple: Do you prefer Washington, or Jefferson? The answer illuminates a host of opinions and beliefs.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Well that's good to know Stuart. Perhaps in ten years, it'll be safe to allow me to vote.<<<

Only if you meet the property requirement.

[Christopher]

"The acid test is simple: Do you prefer Washington, or Jefferson? The answer illuminates a host of opinions and beliefs."

Ok, I'll bite: Washington! Also, let me throw in I would have fought for the South. When I lived in the Ohio valley, I noticed that there are several "Lincoln boyhood home national parks" spread through Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. I think that was part of his problem, an unstable childhood. Perhaps this explains his maniacal quest for unity in things that should not be joined later in life. ;)

[Barbara]

I am not a liberal and I don't hate Bush. Contempt maybe. Convinced of his incompetence, certainly. I note the following:

1. We were railroaded into the war in Iraq, a war that was on the administration's agenda long before 911 and that was not part of the war on terror (now it is). As a consequence, we are losing whatever we gained in Afghanistan and have diverted resources from the war on terror. If this is not impeachable, I don't know what is. Moreover, this war will bring about the destruction of one of the oldest Christian communities, yet it is supported by Evangelicals (many of whose churches were founded in the 20th c.)

2. 51% of the vote is not a mandate. Bush's signing statements are a violation of the balance of powers principle. As he signs legislation into law, he explains why he will not follow the law he has just signed.

3. Torture - whatever excesses may have been committed in previous wars under duress is now official policy. Near drowning, attacks by vicious dogs, etc. is being justified in the name of the war on terror.

4. "Thanks for the vote. See you in four years." I'm not surprised by Kuo's new book, which reveals that ten percent of the promised aid to faith-based initiatives was actually forthcoming. Nor at the ridicule and contempt expressed by the administration for their most stalwart supporters - the religious right. Kuo actually likes Bush and tells us he was surprised by the lack of support faith-based initiatives received. Shouldn't he have known? The buck stops here, as Truman observed. But, then, we've seen that look of surprise before - during the 2004 debates with Kerry, when he seems to have discovered for the first time that not everyone agrees with him.