Letters to the Editor

• To Bill - Part II - Sorry About the Length Everyone!

  [Read the article: Bush: Too busy for Iraq debate]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  "Thanks a lot about the joke in the bar. I guess you're part of the same crowd, smear the person's integrity."

  To be fair, my joke was making just as much fun of the ball-kickers as it was you. I was impatient, and, yes, jumped to conclusions when you responded first to the ball-kickers. I figured that if you were serious about discussing the issue, you would have ignored the ball-kickers and gone directly to the more respectful responses. You have explained why this wasn't so, and I retract my bar-fight analogy.

  Okay, enough preliminaries.

  "From your original post, I think President Bush is a strong leader because he leads, he doesn't follow. Like Ronald Reagon, like Abraham Lincoln. Like FDR. Like JFK."

  Your argument is tautogolical: a strong leader is one who leads. It implies that all a good leader has to do is just point the way and doesn't take into account where we are being led and if it's a worthwhile desitation, nor does it take into account how we get there and if it's likely to succeed.

  I don't believe that merely "leading" makes one a strong leader. I think that we must evaluate the worthiness of the ends and the practicality of the means if we're going to evaluate whether or not someone was a strong leader. One they've been leading for a while, we also need to look at their accomplishments, i.e. did they succeed to achieving their ends?

  You do give examples of people you regard as good leaders, and perhaps in their example one can see an evaluation of the worthiness of the ends and the utility of the means, but without any specific examples of what these leaders did and why that makes them strong leaders, we are no closer to understand what you mean by a "strong leader."

  By my criteria, Bush is not strong leader. His ends are good enough (make US safer from terrorism), but his means to that end have not made us safer. Iraq has been transformed from a relatively stable totalitarian state into a anarchic training ground for terrorists, much as the Afghan-Soviet war was a training ground for Bin Laden and the Taliban.

  Meanwhile, Afghanistan was improving, the means (airstrikes, ground-troops, enlisting the Northern Alliance to our cause) were working, but then our troops were diverted to Iraq. Now the Taliban have retrenched in their safe-habor in northern territories of our (nominal) ally Pakistan, from which they launch fresh attacks. Taliban warlords have retaken control of several Afghan towns and are expanding their territory after having been routed five years ago. Furthermore, opium is flowing out of Afghanistan and into the US at an alarming rate. I am sure this was not one of a Bush's intended ends.

  Not only have Bush's ends not been achieved, but there were numerous critics - people with expertise in the Middle East and with Islamic terrorism - who told him that his means were not likely to achieve his ends. He ignored those critics and the Republican party smeared everyone who objected to the means as being naive, unpatriotic, or of having a "political angenda."

  "I like your comments about the Romans. Using that logic, we should undermine the terrorists. Like going to Iran and Syria and cutting off the source."

  I don't think my historical analogy can be stretched that far. Hannibal, unlike the terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, was beholden to the city-state of Carthage. When Scipio finally marched on Carthage, Hannibal, already beginning to lose in Italy, was forced to sail for home. Unfortunately, the terrorist in Iraq are already home, and I find it doubtful that the foreign fighters there are going to return home to defend their countries if they were attacked. Also, a great the foreign fighters are from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan, (nominal) allies all.

  "I think the tactics in Iraq stink. But the principle is valid - kill the enemy until they surrendor. Otherwise, more killing! and not just the World Trade Center in NYC."

  Honestly, you've lost me here. "Kill the enemy until they surrender" is a tactic, not a principle. And it's a tactic that only works if you can find and kill our enemies so quickly that the can't recruit new ones or if there's someone who can proffer a surrender that everyone would follow. We've failed on the first count, and there's no one (or three) leaders in Iraq would could offer a surrender that the insurgents would respect.

  "Bush isn't mentally weak, nor does he have moral weakness. Rather, he has moral strength to do the right thing, i.e., protect the US and attempt to export real democracy."

  There are so many fallacies in this statement that I can't get a handle on them all. Your first statement is just an assertion with no examples to illustrate why it's true. As for the second second, I've just explained that I don't think that he's done a good job protecting the US. As for "exporting democracy," I don't think it can be done in the Middle East given the currently climate of anti-Americanism. But that's a whole other discussion.

  "They're going to continue to chase us on our own soil."

  I really don't think so - not in numbers that present an "existential threat" to the US. But again, that's a whole other discussion.

  To summarize:

  A strong leader must have a worthwhile goals and practicable means to achieve those goals. Bush's goal of making the US safer from terrorism is a good goal, but his means have not us closer to that goal and, I would argue, have taken us further from that goal. Furthermore, Bush has refused to radically change course in Iraq, the "surge" plan being a rehash of past failed plans. A strong leader would propose some new means to achieving his ends once his original means have failed.

  Email me if you like: sleepycoyote@yahoo.com

  Permalink Tuesday, February 13, 2007 02:18 PM