Bush the Visionary?

By Scott Isebrand

A revisionist history of Bush the Visionary-a narrative in which he authored Middle East democracy over liberals' objections-is being written right across the slackened faces of Democratic Party leaders.

Max Boot in the L.A. Times wrote this past week, "In 2003I wrote that the forthcoming fall of Baghdad 'may turn out to be one of those hinge moments
in history.after which everything is different..' At the time, this kind of talk was dismissed.as neocon nuttiness. Well, who's the simpleton now? Those
who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?"

Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe notes, "The Axis of Weasel is crying uncle.." He quotes Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star: "It is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language.. It is this: Bush was right." Jacoby continues: "Claus Christian Malzahn in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel: 'Could George W. be right?' And Guy Sorman in France's Le Figaro: 'And if Bush was right?' And NPR's Daniel Schorr in The Christian Science Monitor: 'The Iraq effect? Bush may have had it right.'
And London's Independent, in a Page 1 headline on Monday: 'Was Bush right after all?'"

The Visionary Bush is just a golden calf. Don't be misled by the rhetorical jabs-"Well, who's the simpleton now?" "Was Bush right after all?" They beg
more honest questions: Simplistic about what? Bush was right about what? Boot, Jacoby and other Bush hagiographers would have us believe that opposition to the invasion of Iraq was based on pessimism about democracy in the Middle East. That's unfair and false. Bush (and Tony Blair in Britain) peddled liberaion as a sorry second-choice excuse for invasion only after first insisting on a dubious al-Qaeda-Iraq link (quickly proved false and
doubted all along by the intelligence community) and the imminent use of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (months ago deemed non-existent by the
Administration's own inspectors).

David Brooks in The New York Times takes a different tact. Instead of Bush, he gives us Wolfowitz, "the man who's been vilified by Michael Moore and the
rest of the infantile left .." Brooks is right that Wolfowitz has been misunderstood by some commentators, mostly on the left. He's right that
Michael Moore vilified him. (So what? The Swift Boat Vets vilified John Kerry, too. The Swift Boat Liars for Bush weren't journalists striving for
objectivity; they're gross propagandists, and no one ever said Fahrenheit 9/11 was investigative journalism-it's polemic. Relax, Brooks. This is just
how the game's been played since the rightwing started pushing Clinton-killed-Vince-Foster "documentaries." They started it; now they need
to take it as well as they dish it out.)

But in the run-up to the invasion, Wolfowitz was seldom if ever cited for any grand ideals he had about democracy in the Middle East. He was cited by
invasion-backers largely for his preemptive strike doctrine. Again, it was the rationale of imminent attack and bran, crass, deceitful attempts to
link Iraq with 9/11 that were offered, not a great vision for spreading democracy at gunpoint.