Posts Tagged ‘George W. Bush’
“Those who wish to perfect themselves must regard their losses as lessons and learn from them what sorts of things to avoid in the future.”*…
Ponder a mystery…
Ask 100 historians to rank the foreign policy teams of the post Truman presidencies. What might they say? My wager: the majority would pinpoint the administration of George H.W. Bush as the most accomplished of the modern era. The men and women who served under President Bush have a distinguished list of accomplishments to their name: they brought the Cold War to a victorious conclusion, integrated two Germanies into one whole, managed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc without the outbreak of violence, shepherded South Korea and the Philippines into the democratic fold, saved South America from a regional debt crisis, enshrined human rights and neoliberal economics as the conceptual foundation stones of the new post-Cold War order, and presided over two military victories—first in the now largely forgotten Panama intervention, second in the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. That war’s 100-hour land campaign was one of the most spectacular military triumphs in American history—a triumph made the more impressive by the massive global backing the Bush team mustered to support it. A vast number of countries mobilized troops to join in the coalition, even the Soviet Union supported this American-led intervention, and the United States did not have to pay a dime. Allies abroad were convinced to finance all operations.
It is a substantial set of accomplishments. Even those who might disagree with some of their favored policies (say the administration’s embrace of free trade as a bedrock principle of their new world order) will admit that the foreign policy team that directed America in the late Reagan and Bush Sr. years was fantastically effective at moving the world towards their own vision of the good.
Such nice things cannot be said for the poorest showing of the post-Truman era. Here again a commanding majority of experts is likely to have a consensus candidate: the administration of George W. Bush, particularly during its first term. The demerits are many: a poorly conceived strategy of the War on Terror, the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the mismanagement of that country’s occupation, their failure to prevent its subsequent descent into civil war, the mistaken attempt to remake the People’s Republic of China a “responsible stakeholder” in an American led international system, and Russia’s alienation from this same system all occurred under the watch of the Bush 43 team. To this may be added a one final disaster, the subject of this series: it was this group of statesmen that had responsibility for Afghanistan in the early aughts. As they squabbled in Washington, their field of victory sank into our military quagmire.
How different the legacies of these two groups of officials!
But there is the catch: these are not two groups of officials. The national security teams of Bush 41 and Bush 43, America’s most accomplished and most reviled set of statesmen officials… were the exact same set of people. The authors of America’s Cold War victory were the architects of America’s 21st century defeats. There lies the mystery! With more collective experience under their belts than any foreign policy team since the Founding Era, with a greater list of accomplishments than any group of national security elites since the creation of the modern national security state, the statesmen-officials of the second Bush administration should have accomplished glorious deeds. They should have lived up to their track records. Instead, they delivered failure and catastrophe. How could this have happened?…
Find out at “Learning From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vulcans,” from Tanner Greer (@Scholars_Stage).
[Image above: source]
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As we learn from our mistakes, we might recall that it was on this date in 2014 that One World Trade Center formally opened in lower Manhattan. The tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, it was erected as a replacement for (and is the namesake of) the North Tower of the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“The map? I will first make it”*…
Greg Pass has built a formidable resume– past CTO of Twitter, current Founding Entrepreneurial Officer of the new Cornell Technology Campus being built in New York City– but it is his hobby, his blog Unurthed, that has earned him a place in your correspondent’s Pantheon…
Unurthed is a survey of diagrams, cosmograms, emblems, etchings, sketches, illustrations, yantras, paintings, engravings, photographs, figures, cutouts, seals, depictions, pictures, images, with an eye for that which cannot be diagrammed, cosmogrammed, emblemed, etched, sketched, illustrated, plucked, painted, engraved, photographed, figured out, cut out, sealed, depicted, pictured, imagined.
All of the material is scanned from my personal collection or, in a few cases, drawn by me.
And what material it is! Consider, for example, “Cramer’s Emblems“:
Six of forty emblems from Daniel Cramer’s 1617 The Rosicrucian Emblems of Daniel Cramer, each presenting a contemplative exercise working upon the heart process of a Rosicrucian meditator. Prefaces Cramer:
“And so, Reader, you have the work of death and life,
The embossings of the Holy page, and a short epigram.
These will be able to show and teach your mind
What your state was once and what it may become today” (p16).
Emblem 34: NEITHER ON THIS SIDE, NOR ON THE OTHER
“‘…we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left.’ (Numbers 20:17)
“Not in this place, not in that;
The heart will go more safely in the middle.
He who rushes from the mean, runs to destruction” (p63).
A plethora of perspicacious pictures to ponder at Unurthed.
* Patrick White, Voss
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As we learn to love to limn, we might recall that it was on this date– the birthdays of the eloquent Dalai Lama (1935) and the not-so-eloquent George W. Bush (1946)– in 1535 that lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, Renaissance humanist, and councillor to Henry VIII of England, Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia, was beheaded by Henry for refusing to accept the king as Supreme Head of the newly-established Church of England. More was acting in accordance with his opposition to Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and the Protestant Reformation… for which he was canonized in 1935 by Pope Pius XI. (He is remembered by the Church of England as a “Reformation martyr.”)
Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of More
The Dear Leader’s Gaze…
Looking at dinner
Looking at son and Dear-Leader-Apparent Kim Jong-un
More stolen glances at Makemisteaks‘ insightful “Kim Jong-il Looking at Things.” (TotH to Rebecca MacKinnon)
As we reach for our lens cloths, we might recall that it was on this date in 2002 that North Korea rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency’s call to allow inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North. Ten years earlier North Korea had abrogated its participation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but then agreed the following year to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors. The following month, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush lumped North Korea with Iran and Iraq as the “Axis of Evil.”
Looking at atomic test site (source)
Teach your children well…
It’s that time again: pencils, books, teachers’ dirty looks… Lest one forget that at least some students actually learn what they’re taught, Foreign Policy presents a round-up of “The World’s Worst Textbooks.”
There’s…
Saudi Arabia
“Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________.” — from a first-grade textbook
And then, there’s…
Texas, U.S.A.
“Explain how Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict.” And “Evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U.S. sovereignty.” — from study exercises proposed by the Texas School Board (thus, the “markers” to which textbook publishers create).
More on each of these examples, and others, at “The World’s Worst Textbooks.”
As we reach for our Zinn’s, we might recall that it was on this date in 2001 that, in an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror.”
No BONES about it…
From the ever-entertaining (and insightful) xkcd. (As to the allusion in the title of this post… a weakness to which your correspondent will confess.)
As we recalibrate our expectations of our instruments, we might acknowledge imprecision-in-practice, as it was on this date in 2001 that a Joint Session of Congress (with then Vice President Al Gore presiding) certified the election of George W. Bush…
And in an example of synchronicity that would light Arthur Koestler’s eyes, this was also the date on which, in 1936, Porky Pig made his debut in his commonly-known form in Tex Avery’s Gold Diggers of ’49. Porky had been introduced the prior year, but in a younger, quieter, and thinner incarnation, by Bob Clampitt (of later Beany and Cecil renown). Porky was voiced in (and immediately following) Avery’s toon by Joe Dougherty, who actually did have a stuttering problem. But because Dougherty could not control his stutter, his recording sessions took hours. Thus, the extraordinary Mel Blanc replaced Dougherty in 1937.
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