Mark Steyn: The Bush Bandwagon

The Irish Times ^ | March 7, 2005 | Mark Steyn

[quidnunc]

Come on, lads. You don’t want to be the last to leap aboard the bandwagon. The New York Times are running front page stories with headlines like “Unexpected Whiff Of Freedom Proves Bracing For The Middle East”. Daniel Schorr, the dean of conventional wisdom at National Public Radio, was for once almost ahead of the game, concluding his most recent editorial with a strange combination of words that had never before passed his lips in that particular order: “Bush may have had it right.”

Did he simply muff the reading? Did he mean to say: “Bush may have had it — right?” But apparently not. Ever since, the same form of words has mysteriously flowered from Toronto to London to Sydney. It’s the catchphrase du jour — like “Show me the money” or “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.” Now it’s “Could Bush be right?” Even America’s media naysayers have suddenly noticed that they can hardly hear their own generic boilerplate about what a Vietnam quagmire the new Iraq is over the sound of raven-tressed Beirut hotties noisily demanding Lebanon’s freedom in the streets of Beirut.

Over at Britain’s Guardian, meanwhile, the poor chaps are desperately trying to give credit to anyone but the reviled Bushitler. Here’s how Timothy Garton Ash opened his disquisition: “Has Osama bin Laden started a revolution in the Middle East?” Well, that’s one way to look at it. Maybe he could share the Nobel Peace Prize with Michael Moore and MoveOn.org.

-snip-

[NZerFromHK]

Thanks once again for mentioning Reagan Brian. The more information is revealed from the KGB archives, the more I'm convinced Reagan is instrumental for ending the Cold War. In fact, the chattering class didn't even superficially acknowledge this until his death. Let me quote this from a German history-pictoral book published in 1999:

"'Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' This visionary appeal by the American Ronald Reagan in his speech at the Brandenberg Gate on June 12, 1987 during the celebration marking 750 years of the city of Berlin, became famous. However, two and half years before the unforeseen fall of the Berlin Wall, many regarded it as empty propaganda."

(Kosthorst, Daniel, and Lappenkueper, Ulrich (1999) 50 Jahre im Bild - Bundesrepublik Deutschland/50 Years in Pictures - Federal Republic of Germany. Koenemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne, pp 435)

They still don't accept what Reagan has accomplished...

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Thanks SO MUCH for posting the article in full! :-)