The Guardian Praises Bush?

Pigs fly and hell freezes over, the Guardian actually has something rational written about Bush. I still have issues with portions of the article, but generally it's upbeat by Guardian standards:

None of these claims should be dismissed out of hand. The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail.

Too late for that but we'll cut the lefty a break because he's wearing blinders.

No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.

Crass? Us neocons? I'm hurt.

Such scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere.

This dude or his editor must've scored some serious sinsemilla, he actually said that libs may be wrong about something.

It may sound perverse to suggest that we should not measure progress in Iraq solely, or even chiefly, by counting corpses. Yet most insurgent activity is the work of Sunnis, chronically alienated by dispossession from power, or jihadists committed simply to frustrate any project sponsored by the US.

The key question, surely, is how far the Shia and Kurd majority is moving towards the creation of a working society. Evidence on this is mixed. Journalists are able to travel so little outside the Baghdad enclave that the world depends for information chiefly on western military and diplomatic sources.

There are several good correspondents living in country who are reporting on blogs regularly. And a Pole living in Australia finds some good reporting from time to time. The journalists from the major media have an expense account and bar tab to keep them occupied.

It seems wrong for either neocon true believers or liberal sceptics to rush to judgment. We of the latter persuasion must keep reciting the mantra: "We want Iraq to come right, even if this vindicates George Bush."

Man, how hard do you think it was for this guy to write that sentence? Too bad American leftists could never even think such thoughts let alone say them.

Here, indeed, is the nub of the issue about American foreign policy. The Bush vision is founded upon the exercise of military power. It is hard to regard Condoleezza Rice's "charm offensive" or the state department's protestations that in the second Bush term diplomacy will blossom, as more than cosmetic. The president himself has declared that, while he welcomes more allies, they must accept that the game will be played on Washington's terms.

And the problem with this is what? America pays the lions share of the money to prop up a thieving UN, contributes more to international aid than any other nation and is the worlds police when nations who hate us are attacked by neighbors. I believe that the US has the right to press issues that are in our interest. This is actually stated quite well by this paragraph:

We must respect American power, and also acknowledge that the world sometimes has much need of it. As Sir Michael Howard, wisest of British strategic thinkers, often remarks: "If America does not do things, nobody else will." We should acknowledge the limitations of the UN. The pitiful performance of many international peacekeeping contingents, not least in Afghanistan, highlights the feebleness of what passes for European security policy.

Nicely put.

Yet it still seems reasonable to question the optimism currently prevailing among Washington's neocons, because this remains founded upon a woefully simplistic vision.

Damn, if we had only elected John kerry, we'd be a more nuanced, less simplistic nation. Oh well.

It is true that, in some chronic, unstable regions, some bad governments — those of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein — have been removed by the Americans. But the fragile advantages gained will be lost, unless Washington can match its boldness in the deployment of military power with a new sensitivity to alien cultures, matched by far more subtle political skills.

If cutting off heads while screaming Allah-akbar and raping and murdering NGO workers is alien, I'd prefer we be insensitive and just kill those types of folks. If murdering a person, disemboweling them then replacing their innards with TNT to kill their familes is alien, I don't want to understand them, I want to exterminate them. The world would be a much nicer place where subtle political skills can thrive and grow.