Posted on 01/26/2005 5:05:56 AM PST by Thorin
Where Woodrow Wilson was going to make the world safe for democracy, George W. Bush is going him one better. President Bush is going to make the whole world democratic. As he declared in his Inaugural Address, our "great objective" is "ending tyranny" on earth.
And how does the president propose to achieve it?
So, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
The president is here asserting a unilateral American right to interfere in the internal affairs of every nation on earth, without regard to whether these nations have threatened us or attacked us. Their domestic politics are now our concern, because if they are not democratic, we are not secure.
Let it be said: This is a formula for endless collisions between this nation and every autocratic regime on earth and must inevitably lead to endless wars. And wars are the death of republics.
President Bush also plans to badger and hector foreign leaders on the progress they are making, or failing to make, in attaining U.S. standards of liberty and freedom:
We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. ... We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own peoples ...
One awaits with anticipation the next visit of the Saudi crown prince. And as there are at least 50 autocracies or tyrannies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, questions arise.
If President Musharraf refuses to yield dictatorial powers, will Bush sanction Pakistan, and risk his overthrow and transfer of his nuclear weapons to pro-Taliban generals sympathetic to al-Qaida?
If Beijing declares its treatment of dissidents to be none of Bush's business, will Bush impose sanctions and enrage a regime ruling 1.3 billion people with whom we have $200 billion in annual trade?
When a Chinese fighter crashed a U.S. reconnaissance plane and Beijing held its crew hostage, Bush meekly apologized. Now, he's going to take these xenophobic Chinese communists to the woodshed?
If President Putin tells Bush the oligarch Mikhail Khordokovsy will stay in prison and he will decide how elections are run in Russia, what is Bush going to do? Isolate him and drive Russia into the arms of China, as we have already done with our sanctions on Burma?
If the Saudis reject democracy, are we going to stop buying their oil? Somewhere, Osama is praying that Bush will undermine the Saudi monarchy, as another democracy-worshiper, Jimmy Carter, helped to undermine the Shah – after whom we got the Ayatollah.
President Bush is championing a policy of interventionism in the internal affairs of every nation on earth. But did we not learn from 9-11 that intervention is not a cure for terrorism, it is the cause of terrorism.
Clearly, the president does not understand this, or believe it. For, in his inaugural, he describes 9-11 as the day "when freedom came under attack." But Osama bin Laden did not dispatch his fanatics to ram planes into the World Trade Center because he hated our Bill of Rights. He did it because he hates our presence and our policies in the Middle East.
President Bush says we have no other choice than to end tyranny on earth because the "survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." But this is ahistorical.
The world has almost always been a cesspool of despotisms, but America has always been free. We have retained our liberty by following the counsel of Washington and staying out of foreign wars that were not America's wars. It has been when we intervened in wars where our vital interests were not imperiled – crushing the Philippine insurrection, World War I, invading Iraq – that America has come to grief.
Occupying the Philippines led us to intervention in Asia, war with Japan and, soon after, wars to defend the South Korean and Indochinese remnants of the Japanese empire. Wilson's war gave us the Versailles peace treaty that tore a defeated Germany apart and imposed unpayable debts on her people, leading directly to Hitler.
The invasion of Iraq has reaped a harvest of hatred in the Arab world, cost us 10,000 dead and wounded and $200 billion, and created a new training ground and haven for terrorists to replace the one we cleaned out in Afghanistan.
In declaring it to be America's mission in the world to end tyranny on earth, President Bush is launching a crusade even more ambitious and utopian than was Wilson's. His crusade, too, will end, as Wilson's did, in disillusionment for him and tragedy for his country.
And the Arabs just loved us before we invaded Iraq?
Patrick al-Mohammed Buchanan should just make the hajj and profess Shahada, he'd fit in better.
and created a new training ground and haven for terrorists to replace the one we cleaned out in Afghanistan.
An active war zone makes a poor training area.
Pat is always so upbeat < /sarcasm > off
Another Buchanan hissy fit.
Sometimes he comes close . . . . . . . other times he lands on Mars.
This is one of his Mars days.
Mars, my a$$, he's headed for Alpha Centauri.
By that logic, the roughly 50% of Americans who are skeptical of our efforts in Iraq are really Moslems, as is the Pope, who opposed the war from the outset.
Woodrow Wilson is not a conservative role model. Bush's inaugural address was a Wilsonian fantasy, as conservatives as disparate as Pat Buchanan, George Will, and Peggy Noonan have recognized.
When one makes common cause with MoveOn.org and ANSWER, neither are you or Pat Buchanan.
We've been in a war for over 10 years. It wasn't until three years ago that we started fighting back.
I can't believe that many of us actually considered this buffoon, this bombasic tunnel vision ideologue as leadership material in any sense, never mind national leadership.
I have this complaint, this serious grievance: there is this group of doctors who keep insisting that I be poked regularly with needles (it hurts), to be prodded and to undergo all sorts of discomfort, they even rendered me unconscious and cut me up once, provoking all sorts of long term irritation, and discomfort, all for the silly reason of wanting to rid me of a cancer.
It never occured to me that negotiating my way out might have been a more intellectually and morally rational solution.
Live and learn, I guess.
"The president is here asserting a unilateral American right to interfere in the internal affairs of every nation on earth, without regard to whether these nations have threatened us or attacked us. Their domestic politics are now our concern, because if they are not democratic, we are not secure."
Buchanan is nuts! The US will continue to do what it has already been doing for over one hundred years. That is, make security assessments about countries on an individual basis and act in accordance with our perceived defense interests. We've already intervened in the domestic affairs of foreign countries around the globe, in every corner of the globe. And we've done this with, and without, the cooperation of the people of these countries. The only thing Bush did that is new is to make this an explicitly stated foreign policy goal, with the added benefit of denouncing and ending the previous US tactic of accommodating tyrants and dictators. I say, Bully for Bush!
News Flash!!!!!
We have been fighting Muslim's far longer than 10 years.
My Husband was fighting them during the cold war, just wasn't reported.
News Flash!!!!!
We have been fighting Muslim's far longer than 10 years.
My Husband was fighting them during the cold war, just wasn't reported.
Pat's just being a coward again.
Ever since the Republican Party rejected Buchanan he has been determined to get even. His last book said we would have been better off not to have entered WWII. Can you imagine what shape the world would be in today had we done that. That wisdom was displayed with the benefit of hindsight so I put little faith in his prognostications.
When is God going to call Patrick home?
This has always been U.S. policy. It's part of the American Dream.
However it seems to me that it clashes with the Muslim Dream of a worldwide Islamic theocracy with the Koran as the constitution and the shariah as international law.
I didn't hear the President say this. He simply stated that it would be America's policy, from now on, to encourage countries to NOT treat their people in an oppressive way. He said that countries who DO mistreat their people won't find America to be as friendly or accomodating as in the past.
We, as a country, can choose with whom we do business. That's not the same as invading them and forcing democracy on them
I can't tell from your comment... are you talking about Bush, or Buchanan?
pitchfork bump
I heard Pat will be going to Auschwitz to commemorate the 60th anniversery of The Shoah. He had a relative killed there. He fell out of a guard tower.
I'm sorry I voted for him in the '91 primary.
Ist das Buch von Buchannan auf Deutsch geschreiben?
Bush has all the characteristics of a good communist leader or fascist. The US is not to be a leader and superior country in the new world order that Bush envisions. It is supposed to be just like the rest of the world. How do I know this? Bush wants the world to be just like the US. It is sad that a leader does not want the country to excel but is content to be one of the crowd in the world of nations. When pride and excellence is downgraded in the interest of uniformity and we are supposed to represent the average, there is not much left to distinguish us as exceptional.
No I think he is headed for Chulack..
I voted for him too. Big mistake..
Is this place a haven for crackpots? Nah!
I don't see how writing a column that causes all sorts of people here to hurl invective at Buchanan qualifies as an act of cowardice. If Pat were a coward, he would praise Bush to the skies and garner praise himself. Instead, he's continued to do what he's always done: calls them as he sees them, without an eye to winning any popularity contest.
He endorsed Bush for reelection. But I will say this for you: you've certainly earned your name.
State-sponsored terrorism is a clear and present threat to the United States, often promoted by countries which are one form or another of tyranny. Pat Buchanan is clearly unwilling to summon the moral courage to confront this threat.
I consider that to be cowardice.
In the nuclear age, letting dictatorships develop unhindered leads to the even quicker death of republics. This isn't 1850, when the US could hide behind the walls of the Atlantic and Pacific and tell the world to solve its own problems.
Buchanan's column wasn't about "state-sponsored terrorism," but about the President's declaration that the United States will intervene, diplomatically and militarily, to promote democracy around the world. Bush didn't single out countries that posed a threat to the United States; he said he would force every country to choose between democracy and "tyranny" and that the future of liberty in America depended on the spread of liberty abroad. This is Wilsonian, utopian gobbledygook.
The irony is that, even as we are now committed to spreading "liberty" around the globe, we enjoy less and less of it at home. The list of regulations being imposed on Americans is endless and growing, and the number of topics that one may freely discuss in public is small and shrinking, thanks to political correctness. The colonists under George III enjoyed far more freedom than we have today.
Look, either freedom and democracy spread, or systems like communism, facism, and Islamic fundamentalism will spread. It is literally an either/or proposition. It's scary, but the alternative is much worse. And Buchanan would rather just give up. I still call it cowardice.
We made the mistake of isolationism in the 1930s. We got Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Cold War as a result. And Buchanan, rather than learn from history's mistakes, wants us to repeat them.
Simplistic nonsense. Many of the world's authoritarian regimes are impoverished Third World countries that pose no threat to the United States and never will. There is absolutely no reason to intervene there.
Nor is there any reason to believe that American intervention will be the best way to push people toward democracy. American intervention in Iran--beginning with the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and continuing to the support of the Shah--produced a very anti-American population. We have had no political connection at all with Iran since 1979, but Iran probably has the most pro-American population of any Middle East country, precisely because Iranians have experienced Islamic fundamentalism and many have concluded that it does not work. Islamic fundamentalism will never work, which is why countries that embrace it will not go forth to conquer the world, but will end up imploding, as Iran eventually will.
And there is no automatic correlation between democracy and being friendly toward the United States. During the cold war, Franco's Spain was a far better friend of the United States than, say, India, the world's largest democracy, which tilted toward Moscow inthe Cold War.
>>>>>We made the mistake of isolationism in the 1930s. We got Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Cold War as a result. And Buchanan, rather than learn from history's mistakes, wants us to repeat them.<<<<<<
More nonsense. Hitler was the result of American intervention, not American isolationism. Nazism was the direct result of the Allied victory in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. If America had not intervened, the Allies would never have won. And many--including Churchill--argued that it was the prospect of American intervention that prevented Europe from reaching a negotiated peace in 1916, a peace that would have spared the continent both Hitler and Lenin. Wilson went to war to make the world safe for democracy; he ended up making it safe for Nazism.
Where did he ever say anything about 'trying to be like the rest of the world"? Did you see his press conference this morning? He believes that what America has is better than anything else around, and he'd love for everyone in the world to have it. He knows that liberty and freedom are the most precious gifts, and he know that societies that treasure and nurture them are less contentious and willing to make war on their neighbors. It is neither a fascist nor a communist idea to encourage freedom. He has never said he's going to march into every country and make people convert to democracy at the point of a gun. He has said he will continue to 'encourage' in whatever way he can, countries to begin to treat their people well. It is in those leaders' own best interests, as well as that of the US that this breeding of resentment against us is stopped.
Nope. They're just knuckle-dragging naysayers who don't read the right newspapers, magazines and books--and not of the same enlightened class as the new conservative cognoscenti.
Woodrow Wilson is not a conservative role model. Bush's inaugural address was a Wilsonian fantasy, as conservatives as disparate as Pat Buchanan, George Will, and Peggy Noonan have recognized.
I haven't seen Will's commentary on the speech. Have a link?
You are only one of many who have made that observation. From some, I consider it a compliment.
Yavo, one and the same.
When haven't we been engaged in endless war? That's my question!
bttt
Here is the link to the Will article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6856836/site/newsweek/
I'm sorry that you are confused. I was referring to the inaugural speech. In it he said that we were going to reform the rest of the world in the image of the United States. I don't know, you are entitled to your own beliefs, but that sounds like excessive socialism to me. Marx at least distinguished between the working classes and the bourgueis. It seems to me that the most regimented part of society is now the Bush followers. They seem to be the most willing to accept large government, military adventures, and irresponsible spending. There seems to be very little practical common sense involved in the policies.
I heard him say that he would like for America to bring freedom and democracy to the world. Folks may argue on what that means. I didn't interpret it to mean democracy at the point of a rifle. I thought it meant bringing economic pressure to bear on nations that oppress their own people. We are not REQUIRED to do business with anyone; we can choose with whom we have economic ties.
He is right in that if we don't do something about the resentment being created against the US, it will not help us at all. There are ways to do it, that don't involve a modern day Crusade. Much of it has to do with just making people aware of what the US is and what her people are like, and the freedoms we enjoy.
We didn't have to go to war with the Soviet Union because it's people got a taste of freedom and decided to go for it. It's been tough for them, but I guarantee you that they, for the most part, do NOT want to go back to a totalitarian state where they could be whisked off the street at any moment for any reason.
The people of Iraq are at the juncture right now, and are chomping at the bit to vote. Their governmental structure may not look like ours, but if they develop a constitution that protects individual rights, they will have moved light years ahead of their neighbors, and don't think for a minute that the neighbor aren't paying attention. Why do you think so many terrorists have come in form all over the ME to fight this momentous change?
No, it's a good haven for those individuals that participate in group think instead of looking at the facts. Did Hitler promise the German people that he was going to liberate the Sudetenland before invading Chzechoslavakia? Did George Bush promise the American people that he was going to liberate the Iraqis before invading Iraq? Did good ole' boy Joe Stalin promise to liberate the people in Eastern Europe from Germany, only to murder more than the Germans ever did? Open your eyes and try to shake the denial from your lids. Open your mind and think!
Thanks Barlowmaker, bowzer313, DustyMoment, hchutch, KevinDavis, Mind-numbed Robo, MJY1288, Mr. Jeeves, mariabush, massgopguy, mbynack, Poohbah, Publius6961, pfony1, riri, Savage Beast, SuziQ, and verity, you've made my day. Pat Buchanan is an intellectual, and I think I'd enjoy knowing him because he can be quite amusing, but he has his head stuck up his ass. His idealogy is slippery but appears to be a populist mask over the face WWII-era Fifth Column.
Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."
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