Dinesh D'Souza says history hasn't spoken yet. Running through the list of recent presidents D'Souza credits Ronald Reagan with winning the cold war, relegates George H. W. Bush to caretaker status in spite of winning the Gulf War, and dismisses Bill Clinton as a total failure.
George W. Bush? Lots of people are rushing to judgment. Some months ago historian Sean Wilentz published an article in Rolling Stone (where this Princeton historian features some of his best work) declaring Bush the worst president ever. Ever. And the man isn't even done yet.
Bush is staking it all on Iraq. The man is going for the bleachers. And I think he recognizes that this is an experiment, whose outcome could go either way. History says democracy won't work in the Muslim Middle East. But Bush believes that democracy is a universal idea, and he's willing to buck the trend. It's a noble effort.
I have lots of criticism to make of Bush, but I do admire his tenacity, his stick-to-itiveness. The man's ability to keep going in the face of overwhelming political pain and opposition is simply unmatched. Even Reagan didn't have that kind of fortitude. So I hope he succeeds. And he just might. If in two years the insurgency is repelled, and if Iraq is a standing, even if fragile, democracy, then Bush will have created something truly new in the Middle East--a new model of a pro-American Muslim democracy.
That's what scares our enemies. And our allies. And the left in this country. As former Clinton official Sandy Soderberg told Jon Stewart after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "It's scary for Democrats...There's always hope that this might not work." History will be the judge. But so far history is just waiting, and watching.
According to Bob Novak while history may be waiting and watching, the Democrats are busy busy. Novak, who reported Richard Armitages outing of Valerie Plame, says the Democrats are wasting no time working the Scooter Libby verdict into their attacks on the White House.
Writing in the latest Evans-Novak Political Report, Novak--who provided testimony on his involvement in the Plame outing to Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald--says that Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) "greeted the conviction as the beginning of a reckoning with the Bush Administration for manipulating intelligence and discrediting critics.
Reid and the rest of the Democratic leadership harbor those same sentiments voiced by former Clinton official Sandy Soderberg about the American liberation of Iraq. "It's scary for Democrats...There's always hope that this might not work." In fact it would appear to be crucial for Reid and the Democrats that the American liberation of Iraq not work, they work so hard to prevent it. But according to Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model, the Iraqis are working hard, too. Omar reports that politics have broken out anew in Baghdad.
A new political bloc has emerged. It’s not a fourth bloc as Mohammed anticipated some time ago; it’s a union of, so far, two existing blocs. The core of the new movement is pretty much the same as what Mohammed expected, though. The Accord Front has announced it has joined the bloc led by former PM Ayad Allawi, forming what they refer to now as the “Iraqi National Front”. This new alliance has 69 seats in parliament and is likely to gain an additional 11 seats if the Dialogue Front of the nationalist Salih al-Mutlaq decides to join in, which is not unlikely...
The second development, which is far more significant than the first, just took place in the corridors of the United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shia bloc. This morning, in a frank challenge to ayatollah Sistani’s earlier call for preserving the UIA’s unity, the head of al-Fadheela party -which controls 15 of its 130 seats- declared independence from the Shia bloc and said his team now would act as an independent bloc within parliament.
There is so much at stake in Iraq - the Bush historic legacy, Iraqi freedom and democracy, hope for political reform in the Middle East, American security, and Democratic political advantage.
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