Is Bush really a Buffoon?
Sameh El-Shahat addresses this question in his commentary in The Telegraph.
Yes, we’ve all heard the Bushisms and laughed at them but do you really think somebody supposedly that thick can make it to the top of the most sophisticated political system the world has ever seen?
No, and that is because Mr Bush is far cleverer than most of his predecessors. He may not have been a Rhodes Scholar, but he has the ability to reach out to his people and read them.
Take the Iraq war for example. OK, so he got us into Iraq in the first place. But for Pete’s sake, he’s the leader of the world’s only superpower. He needs to take decisions, even if sometimes they have nasty consequences - which is far better than we do in Europe, where we enjoy dithering not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.
Something had to be done about Iraq and our government was all for attacking it too. So let’s not blame G.W. for the war.
And when things did go wrong in Iraq, and there were calls to pull out, Mr Bush just followed his own counsel and doubled his bet with the Surge.
And he was right because Iraq is in a relatively better shape today than it ever was and Al Qa’eda is a shadow of its former self in that country.
This is a man who has the courage of his convictions.
Let’s not forget how Europe does wars.
Usually we wait and wait until the enemy starts attacking, then we let them win a bit, then we fight until we are tired, then we just call the US to come over to clean our mess.
That is what happened in WWI, WWII, and the Balkans.
Bush is just showing us what a bunch of dangerous ditherers we are and we hate him for it. Naturally.
Interesting commentary. If Bush is a buffoon, it’s probably not for any of the reasons that El-Shahat explores, is all I’m going to say on the matter.
Other than to note that many of the criticisms of Bush fall into the framework of being intellectually lazy. It’s always easy to point fingers at other people, or to sneer at what they do, especially when you yourself are ignorant of the basic facts. Once again this illustrates the difference between cynicism (a pretense for intellectualism in some circles) and healthy skepticism.
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