Posted on 12/03/2004 11:47:05 PM PST by aidanmac
A Canadian Bush Backer Speaks Out
Recently I got into a discussion with a few Canadian friends about the Bush victory in the 2004 Presidential election and the ongoing war in Iraq. These friends are well educated and cultured people with a preference for European wine and movies with sub-titles. I suppose they could be described as middle-of-the-road liberals and made for pleasant company at dinner over a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau ... at least until the subject of George W. Bush came up.
Their reaction to the re-election of the President was unequivocal. Choice of language included adjectives such as "dreadful", "shocking", "appalling" and even "bizarre". Their self-righteousness was more akin to arch inquisitors passing judgement on a proven devil worshiper, rather than dinner companions airing views on a President of the United States.
When I offered a contrary opinion, there was a hush and eyes widened with genuine horror - as though the late hour had induced the first physical evidence of my ‘werewolf within’. One of them even said - "are you feeling alright Aidan?"
You see, I’m one of those anomalies in the Canadian dominion - a Bush backer. A partiality that induces some of my fellow citizens to regard me as ... if not exactly a brown shirt ... then at the very least a tan shirt.
In the majority of Canadian minds the standard Bush caricature reigns supreme; the idiot cowboy with his finger on the trigger of the greatest arsenal of weapons ever assembled in the history of mankind. They buy the stereotype of the phonetically challenged goofy guy with big ears who would seem more at home eating beans under a starry sky than sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office. So why don’t I see this also? Is it possible that an emissary of Karl Rove has slipped a President enhancing drug into our rural Ontario well?
I’ve always been a little suspicious of iconic Presidents. Clinton for example, with his majestic white mane and inclusive body language; master of the language and equally at home with an Ohio pig farmer and the head of the PLO. Reagan with his star appeal and charming malapropisms; shielded from accusations of idiocy by his transcendental belief in "the good" as personified by America. These legendary Presidents almost compelled belief by sheer force of presence. Something the reverend Sun Myung Moon is also rather good at doing.
By comparison, Dubya seems human and entirely fallible.
He reminds us of a guy we might encounter at the local sports bar or rub shoulders with in the bleachers during a ball game. Like most of us run-of-the-mill humans he screws up from time to time, mangles his grammar and even chokes on food at inopportune moments. He has daughters who have been known to act out and a wife who holds it all together with a stoicism that is instantly recognizable to those of us with an appreciation for self effacing, strong willed matriarchs. George is simply 'that guy'... the only difference being that he also happens to be President of the greatest superpower in the history of the planet.
In internet chat rooms and when talking with friends, Bush backers like myself are constantly accosted with the idiot word. "Bush is an idiot" has probably been recited more times than the Hare Krishna mantra, and yet despite a stratosphere that reverberates with the "Bush is an idiot" echo, I don’t buy it.
My reluctance to give the nod to the ‘Bush as idiot’ consensus doesn’t reflect either willfulness or perversity. When I observe Bush speaking off-the-cuff to reporters I see a guy with a folksy style who addresses the issues in a direct down-to-earth fashion. There are occasional moments of levity when he upstages a journalist or offers a witticism or two. Clearly this is a regular guy talking and not an icon, and therein lies the offence. For some, Bush is simply too human and they wonder how a President who looks and sounds like the guy next door, can ever be relied upon to do and say the right thing. But to leap from that assumption to the conclusion that Bush is therefore an idiot, is facile in the extreme.
After 9/11 he rallied Americans with his down-home appeals to the nation. When he stood on the smouldering debris of the towers with an arm around a fireman and spoke into a megaphone, he was one of us ... a surrogate doing what we all wanted to do most ... reach out to a nation reeling in a time of crisis.
When he made speeches at the U.N. and at military academies around the country, his words were of course scripted ... and yet there was nothing about either his diction or his delivery that was suggestive of an idiot. He speaks well, despite the occasional mangled word, and sometimes even speaks with energized power and conviction. All of which makes the ‘idiot fixation’ such an odd phenomenon.
Of course, these detractors will argue that going into Iraq was idiotic and will predictably cite the non-discovery of WMD as proof positive of idiocy. According to them Bush was acting from the most venal of motives; indulging his appetite for a personal vendetta and sacrificing young lives on the alter of his ego. For some reason these detractors feel more inclined to call Bush’s motives into question, rather than examine the despicable nature of the Iraqi regime and the long term consequences of leaving Saddam in power.
The entire world, and maybe even Saddam himself, believed erroneously that the regime was in possession of large stockpiles of proscribed weaponry, so when the larder was fond to be bare it prompted many to accuse the Bush administration of leading the everyone up the garden path. The compelling information that has surfaced concerning links between Saddam’s Baa’thist regime and Al Qaeda is simply disregarded by the President’s detractors. The genocidal excesses and expansionist tendencies of the Iraqi regime are similarly overlooked. Saddam’s funding of suicide bombers is disregarded, as is the presence in pre-invasion Baghdad of that most sinister of terrorist godfathers ... Abu Nidal.
In her book The War Against America, Laurie Mylroie claims that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was captured in Pakistan, may not in fact be Kuwaiti as he claims, but rather an Iraqi agent. Since Mohammed was an Al Qaeda operational leader, this information could well create direct ties between Iraq and the 9/11 New York attack, and so has important implications. Yet even such potentially damning information fails to move the die hard ‘idiot brigade’ who see in the person of Bush an atrocity that far exceeds even the rape room activities and genocidal excesses of the Baa’thists.
This odd fixation with Dubya’s inner idiot is compounded by the latter’s candid admission that he is a man of faith. Liberals by and large become alarmed at the prospect of God insinuating his way into the affairs of state. Some like Ann Coulter, have argued that this aversion is due to liberals devotion to the 'golden cow' of political correctness - something akin to a secular religion in and of itself. Coulter points out that while hundreds of references to the "Christian conservatives" and "religious right" occur in the New York Times, a Lexis-Nexis search of the entire New York Times archive did not succeed in unearthing even a single reference to "atheist liberals" or "the atheist left". Her not unreasonable conclusion, is that demeaning references are reserved for entities to the right of center.
Unlike his predecessors in the Oval Office who kept matters of personal faith in the closet, Bush has the temerity to refer candidly to God as if He actually exists and doesn’t hesitate to characterize terrorism and the states that support it as evil. Such candor is deeply disturbing to those liberals who view God as a type of quaint metaphor that nobody in the final analysis, takes seriously. Such Presidential utterances shocks them deeply - in much the way the psychiatric nurse was shocked by the ravings of the Jack Nicholson character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
In attempting to get to the roots of the knee jerk tendency to characterize the President as an idiot, I must also make some reference to ‘the line’.
There are some lines, such as union picket lines, that right wingers cross at risk of death and dismemberment. Even though all of the evidence and the call of destiny might necessitate the crossing of a non-negotiable line, the actually crossing of it brings unforseen consequences. Bill Clinton knew this very well. So while he was prepared to make shows of American military power by bombing a factory in the Sudan and ordering an air campaign in Kosovo, he was too much of a liberal to cross the scariest line of all. When Al Qaeda began testing the American will with bombings in the Middle East, most notably the attack on the USS Cole, the Clinton administration declined to act. Even when Dick Clarke, the former counter-terrorism czar, counseled a bombing campaign against terror camps in Afghanistan, the administration twiddled it’s thumbs and deferred. Opening a front with Al Qaeda was a scary line to cross and Bill Clinton wasn’t about to fire up the arab world and ruin fun times at home, let alone turn himself into a potential target for assassination.
The task of crossing that line fell to George W. Bush, and once he stepped over the line with the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq - all hell, as they say, broke loose. The Iraq attack in particular, in the eyes of many liberals was the act of an idiot. To others, it demonstrated tremendous courage and a willingness to defend the United States at any price. The jury is still out, debating the final verdict. As Jacques Chirac recently remarked ..."history will judge". Of course, it’s easy to play the proctor when you are comfortably ensconced on the sidelines sipping a pernod.
The reflex tendency to dismiss Bush as an idiot trivializes the very real threat of international terrorism. The demonizing of the USA and it’s President simply provides a pillow for the enemy who are greatly comforted by the sight of the western media reducing America to a loathsome caricature.
In the final analysis, war polarizes and compels people to choose sides. The Bush detractors in N. America are operating in shrinking neutral territory. When the final verdict comes in, they may well find themselves further out to sea than they had ever dreamed possible.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight,
nothing which is more important than his own personal safety,
is a miserable creature
and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions
of better men than himself.
- John Stuart Mill
Don't ban me. There is no need, I am gone. I will post not another word. You see, I have already read that as soon as anyone posts any meaningful facts that are not in accordance with your opinions, they get banned and deleted. I will leave ya'll to your holier than thou smug arrogant self-righteous "American supremacy" selves. You can continue to mock us, criticise us for being over-weight or our ethnicity (I was looking at the posts ripping on the pics from Sorry Everybody") or just plain being what you all term a "loser" because of the way someone's facial features or appearance is.
In my attempts to humble myself before you folks I have not recieved a single kind word, not one conciliatory tone, not one... no aknowledgement that I was at least attempting to find middle ground, certainly no mention that ya'll would lift a finger to help me if I were in peril (in response to my assertions that I would respond in kind). No need to mend anything with anybody. After all, you are the ruling class.
It's a huge waste of my time to attempt anything here because you folks obviously have no desire to do anything but criticise me and those like me. That's OK, this is America. This is your site, your domain, you owe me nothing. I am an alien here and don't belong here anyway.
But I tried. Whatever ya'll think of me, I gave it a shot. Ya'll could have said "I disagree with you, your facts are skewed, you are a dumbshit...but it's nice that you are trying to understand us and reaching out to fellow Americans"...nope. Not here, not from you.
You live your red state existence and I'll live my blue state existence but as sure as God is great, I will find a republican, a right winger, a conservative group somewhere that will at least treat me with some common decency and be impressed that I feel it is a good thing to attempt to bridge the divide and we can disagree in harmony. I apologized for the boneheads that berate Bush, I apologised for my stupid post, not one iota of anything but smug arrogance from you folks to me. Not one word of thanks that my brother is fighting your war. No wish that he does not get killed. Nothing but vitriol and sarcasm.
Good luck, have a great Christmas, enjoy the next four years as Bush drives the economy into the ground, have fun as Iraq simmers in blood and disintegrates, and let's see if in four years Bush can blame it all on the "Clinton Recession".
God help America... a nation divided. Osama is laughing. We are that much closer to a police state, dems and repubs at each other's throats, Bush is spending money faster than any tax and spend democrat as he gives our children's future away.
Yeh man, enjoy your ride to the top. It's gonna be a long ways down. But I made an honest, albeit feeble attempt. You perfect people, the truth seekers need no affiliations with a peace lovin housewife liberal "rat".
Happy Trailmix! I'm outta here.
Later days, DragginFly- Delete me for all I care. I am not coming back.
As I said, no ones believes that you came to “bridge the divide” and tried to do that by criticizing the war and talking about civilian deaths. That’s just not what a person who wanted to reach out would say.
I hope that you will at least tell yourself the truth.
You were treated fairly here, considering that you registered on a conservative site under false pretenses. You are aware that this is a place for conservatives only. It is you who have been rude and insulting and unfriendly.
You are obviously not at peace. I hope you get serious about finding peace, since you claim an interest in the subject, but you must first realize that to have peace you must be peaceful and you are anything but. As the great sage said, “peace of mind is clearly an internal matter”.
Perhaps sometime when you are alone and in a brutally honest mood you will realize that peace is truly a worthy pursuit and those who proclaim it the loudest and “protest” for it and commit all kinds of verbal and physical violence in the name of it – are the ones who know the least about it.
Thank you for your replies since I last talked to you. They are of a very different nature (compared to your first posts). And, yes, I do now believe you want a meaningful discussion. And, no, I do not speak for anyone else on FR, nor do they speak for me.
OK, let's talk about civilian deaths. Some points here...
I can't say this any better than P. J. O'Rourke did in a column where he was giving advice to GWB as to how he should answer Kerry's main "talking points" during the debates. Here's some of what he had to say (putting words into Dubya's mouth as he debates Kerry):
(7) You say that we won the war, but we're losing the peace because Iraq is so unstable. When Iraq was stable, it attacked Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. It attacked Iran. It attacked Kuwait. It gassed the Kurds. It butchered the Shiites. It fostered terrorism in the Middle East. Who wants a stable Iraq?
.....
(14) Let me tell you something, Senator Kerry. I don't blame the U.N. for not supporting me in Iraq. The world is full of loathsome governments run by criminals, thugs, and beasts. When I mentioned "regime-change," hairy little ears pricked up all over the earth. Beads of sweat broke out on low, sloping brows. Blood-stained, grasping hands began to tremble. I had to put poor Colin Powell on the phone to various hyenas in high office and have him explain that America itself needed regime-change from 1992 to 2000. And we didn't bomb the fellow responsible, and we only impeached him a little. Secretary Powell had to tell Kim Jung Il, Robert Mugabe, and Jacques Chirac to quit worrying and look at Bill Clinton and realize the fate that awaits them is a lucrative lecture tour, a best-selling book, and many willing, plump young women.
--- from "Putting Words in the President's Mouth" by P.J. O'Rourke
There is so much more I want to say, but this is getting too long. The bottom line here --- the major point I'm trying to make is that if you truly do feel compassion for Iraqi civilians and want to see their deaths minimized, then you should support our Iraqi action.
But if your only desire was that no Iraqi civilian deaths should have ever been caused by *our* soldiers, even if our staying out of war would have caused far more civilian deaths under a continued Saddam regime than we would ever cause, then I can see why you would be against this war.
But consider the question, are civilian deaths caused by dictators during peacetime sweeter than those caused by armies during wartime? What makes peacetime slaughters more palatable than wartime slaughters to some people?
Even if you are unable to carry on insult-free discussions with other FR members due to bad chemistry between you or whatever the reason is, you can still carry one on with me.
Do note, though, that FR is no different from any other partisan forums - whether conservative or liberal. The rules are not fairly applied to both sides. For instance, if I were to login to DU, state I was a conservative, and ask for a meaningful dialog on some issue, I would fully expect that for every person who would respond to me only in an insult-free meaningful dialog, there would be 50 people who would respond with only insults or with some combination of insults and attempts at dialog in the same post. Furthermore, I'd expect that the first time I blew my cool and insulted someone back, I'd be removed by the admins and lose my channel to the one person I could talk to.
That's why FR is so superior to DU --- because for every one member here who a liberal like you can talk to unemotionally, there are only 5 (instead of 50) people who will insult you!
:-) :-)
But unfortunately, if you make even one person mad at you, you'll still be banned by the admins, just as at DU.
There are very few neutral political forums on the internet. The ones without rules are next to useless because "signal to noise" ratio is close to zero, and the "noise" consists mostly of foul mouthed ranting. And neutral forums controlled by moderators might be mostly invective-free, but they are never really fully neutral. They might start out that way with the best of intentions, but the moderators are only human with their own set of biases, and they only have so much time on their hands to work at such a thankless job.
Behold the difference between a "Liberal Democrat" and a "Conservative Republican"
The Democrat believes in a "ruling class" and of course would never think to talk to those who were not "ruling class."
Which of course explains why they treat everyone like dirt unless they are out of power.
no acknowledgment that I was at least attempting to find middle ground,
What is this middle ground of which you speak? You have yet to put forward a single position that would be considered middle ground. Your idea of middle ground seems to be "Do it my way." If that is not what you mean then please give concrete examples of what you consider middle ground.
certainly no mention that ya'll would lift a finger to help me if I were in peril (in response to my assertions that I would respond in kind).
Why should we have to. Is that not a given of how a civilized society works? Should I also have to reassure you that I will not roast you over an open fire? That fact that you feel a need to even bring it up shows how far from civilized behavior the Democrat Party has gone. Because of that we beg leave to doubt it.
It's a huge waste of my time to attempt anything here because you folks obviously have no desire to do anything but criticise me and those like me.
Mememmememememememememememmemememem! Do you ever think of anything but yourself. Do you see everything through a prism of you? We actually discus ideas here. So far I have seen not a one from you.
but it's nice that you are trying to understand us and reaching out to fellow Americans"..
There is that ruling class condescension thing mixed in with the MeMeMe bit again.
How incredibly kind of you to condescend to visit us.
I will find a republican, a right winger, a conservative group somewhere that will at least treat me with some common decency and be impressed that I feel it is a good thing to attempt to bridge the divide and we can disagree in harmony.
We are not worthy. Once again all you do is criticize and condescend.
I apologized for the boneheads that berate Bush, I apologised for my stupid post, not one iota of anything but smug arrogance from you folks to me.
Hello Pot...this is kettle....
Not one word of thanks that my brother is fighting your war. No wish that he does not get killed. Nothing but vitriol and sarcasm.
Maybe because most of us don't believe he actually exists.
But hey, if he does I hope he comes home safe.
Good luck, have a great Christmas, enjoy the next four years as Bush drives the economy into the ground, have fun as Iraq simmers in blood and disintegrates, and let's see if in four years Bush can blame it all on the "Clinton Recession".
And once you never manage to get your facts right. The economy is going great guns with 3.9 million jobs being added since President Bush was elected. That is your problem, you don't bother to learn anything because, Hey you already know it all.
As for the "Iraq simmers in blood and disintegrates" not going to happen so you can keep your happy good wishes to yourself. I know that is what you are hoping for. Which once again shows the basic difference in the mine set of a Liberal and a Republican. You hope that every thing we touch will fail because we touched it. We, on the other hand oppose your plans because we think they won't work.
I think Clinton was a fool for going into the former Yugoslavia. Time has proven me right I really wish I had been wrong. Because I don't see the world through what is best only for me.
God help America... a nation divided. Osama is laughing. We are that much closer to a police state, dems and repubs at each other's throats, Bush is spending money faster than any tax and spend democrat as he gives our children's future away.
Now you are worried about money? And you have yet to produce even one example of your hyperboloid "police state".
Yeh man, enjoy your ride to the top. It's gonna be a long ways down. But I made an honest, albeit feeble attempt. You perfect people, the truth seekers need no affiliations with a peace lovin housewife liberal "rat".
And once again the hope for failure. And for no other reason then that people you don't like are in charge. Now tell me where does that fit in with peace loving? Do you have any idea that your bitter vitriol keeps bubbling to the surface no matter how hard you try to fight it?
And you wonder why the two parties are at each others throats as you put it? Take a look inside yourself. You don't want what is best for the nation even if it means a Republican in charge. You want to be in charge.
'Don't ban me. There is no need, I am gone. I will post not another word. You see, I have already read that as soon as anyone posts any meaningful facts that are not in accordance with your opinions, they get banned and deleted'
Translation: Wah, I'm a lib.
'In my attempts to humble myself before you folks I have not recieved a single kind word, not one conciliatory tone, not one... no aknowledgement that I was at least attempting to find middle ground, certainly no mention that ya'll would lift a finger to help me if I were in peril (in response to my assertions that I would respond in kind). '
Translation: Wah I'm a victim an conservs are cruel.
'But I tried. Whatever ya'll think of me, I gave it a shot. Ya'll could have said "I disagree with you, your facts are skewed, you are a dumbshit...but it's nice that you are trying to understand us and reaching out to fellow Americans"...nope. Not here, not from you.
Some told you you were wrong and didn't have your facts straight, no one called you a dumbshit, so to make you feel better I will.
'Not one word of thanks that my brother is fighting your war. No wish that he does not get killed.'
Why would I thank YOU for your brother's service. By the way, it is HIS war as well unless he just joined for college money. As for wishing for the death of servicepeople, that is a lefty lib thing.
Yeh man, enjoy your ride to the top. It's gonna be a long ways down. But I made an honest, albeit feeble attempt. You perfect people, the truth seekers need no affiliations with a peace lovin housewife liberal "rat".
'Yeh man, enjoy your ride to the top. It's gonna be a long ways down. But I made an honest, albeit feeble attempt. You perfect people, the truth seekers need no affiliations with a peace lovin housewife liberal "rat".'
Okey dokey.
' Delete me for all I care. I am not coming back.'
Alright, MoDs FORAC.
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