Andrew Roberts, the UK historian, pens what can only be described as a robust defence of soon-to-be-ex-US President, George W. Bush. It has stirred up a hornet’s nest of comments, some of which include open support for OBL’s cause, which makes me wonder about who edits the Telegraph blogs these days, if at all.
Unfortunately, this piece suffers from a number of basic factual errors that make one wonder about the quality of the editing of the Daily Telegraph’s print edition, never mind the electronic version. He says, for example, that Oliver North directed a movie about Bush, when in fact he meant Oliver Stone. These Olivers are a bit of a pest: I mean, there’s Oliver Reed, Oliver Cromwell, Oliver Twist, and loads of others. It might rather tickle both Messrs North and Stone – one a rather controversial soldier, the other a former-soldier-turned leftwing filmaker, to be so conflated.
On a more serious note, though, Mr Roberts suffers from over-reach in his understandable desire to set the record a bit straighter. For a start, any believer in the small government brand of conservatism, even a hawk who supported the overthrow of Saddam and the fight against the Taliban, has to confront the continuing expansion of government and debt under the Bush administration. Bush went over the heads of Congress to support the bailout of the US auto industry. Then there is the whole nonsense of No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drugs, Patriot Act, and the rest.
As for protecting America from attack, it is true, that he deserves – as I said some time ago – some, if not a lot, of credit for the fact that there has been no major repeat of a 9-11 sort of attack on US soil since that terrible September morning; and yes, I happen to agree with Mr Roberts that paying a pure “wait-and-see”, defensive posture after that day was not really plausible.
Libertarians continue to argue among themselves, never mind with others and often vehemently, about the proper scope of foreign policy, or whether a libertarian foreign policy is an oxymoron. For me, the principle of self-defence cannot rule out the need, in certain circumstances, to go after declared enemies with a track record of violence and mayhem. Bush went after some of those enemies and made mistakes along the way. But I think, that on foreign policy at least, the judgement of history on this man will be rather kinder than at the present time.
In the end, GWB was no worse than the average.
Of course, this is an average pulled down by FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton…
I’d rather have GWB as a neighbor, than any other living former or future President today. (Especially that idiot antisemite fascist asshat Carter or his spiritual son, The Most Holy, The One, The Obamessiah, peace be upon him.)
Something just occurred to me: was Lyndon Johnson, expander of social programs and the guy who led us into unpopular wars abroad, a bad president? If the leftards like LBJ then what’s their problem with Bush?
Regardless of the merits of Bush’s and Blair’s post-9/11 foreign policy, it seems fairly self evident that they have increased the likelihood of Muslims wanting to launch a terrorist attack on e.g. British soil. So we now need bigger (e.g. Dept. of Homeland Security) and more intrusive (telecommunications surveillance, detention of terrorism suspects etc.) government at home as well.
Isn’t all of this really an unavoidable consequence of pursuing a bellicose, activist foreign policy?
It seems to me that strictly libertarian policies at home also require a strictly libertarian, isolationist foreign policy. I.e. the only involvement in Middle East politics would be economic in nature.
MARCU$
Marcus writes:
If a purely economic approach would have worked, I would jump at it. The trouble is that Western firms involved in say, oil exploration and transportation would piss of the local, self-appointed guardians of spiritual purity concerned that western capitalism was messing up their lives. So even a purist, isolationist foreign policy would, I contend, require things like navies to protect shipping lanes, which in turn require bases, friendly local regimes, etc, etc.
I would love it if governments could adopt a policy that says, in effect: “if you don’t mess with us, we won’t mess with you”. The problem is that it is not like that.
As for Bush’s “bellicose” foreign policy, one might argue that yes, it has annoyed hot-head Islamic militants, but then such folk were never going to be amenable to sweet reason anyway. Let’s give them something to be angry about.
Which I would argue hold little relationship to the real world needs of survival. I am all for doing ‘less’ but the only sort of state that is really compatible with isolationism is North Korea.
As Brian Micklethwait often points out, doing nothing does not stop you running risks in foreign policy, it just gives you a different set of risks compared to doing something.
Well, that’s their bloody problem. Their profits should be enough to pay for their own defence, and if they are not, maybe doing business over there wasn’t such a great idea in the first place. Socialising those costs is nothing but a massive subsidy.
Marcu$,
For fuck’s sake they have always been gunning for us. This is not “blowback”. This is visceral hatred from a culture that is conclusively fucked on all rational grounds. Hate is all they have left.
Bush will probably be judged in a better light than he is currently, and only a long view of history (mostly to come) will indicate whether “his” reaction to war being declared on his country was the right one.
All of which puts me in two minds about the Middle East. Part of me says well, if you Mol-lovers want to declare war on us, batten down the hatches guys because we want to re-introduce you to the stone age. But another part of me says, oh just don’t bother with them; they won’t see reason whatever you do and there is always something they are upset about. They really do want to live in another age.
Maybe that’s the problem: how do we give them the primitive, anti-social way of life they so yearn for?
It will be interesting what crisis the ME throws at the incoming president and how he handles it. I wonder if future historians will say: “If only Obama had handled it like his predecessor did…”
Sorry, typo. Mol-lovers was meant to be Mo-lovers.
Otherwise you’d think they might be gangsters with their Molls…
There is an element of truth to this for sure. However not all foreign policy ‘problems’ fall into that category. For example Britain and Japan depend on food imported by sea… if someone starts threatening the SLOC, that is *not* just a matter for the company importing the food to sell. That is a clear cut example but there are many many more which to varying degrees fall well outside purely commercial considerations.
What GW’s history will tell us is that there was not a single attack on American soil after 911. That is enough for me and my children, you all can fight over the rest of the schemes, lies and deceptions that are part of any government that has ever been.
(Link)
Putting Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court makes up for a lot of things. Already in the Heller case they strongly asserted that governments do NOT have the right to ban citizens from owning guns. The repercussions from this are going to last a very long time.
Bush has a truly compassionate side which lead him to fight AIDS in Africa more than anyone else including Clinton who talked about it more than Bush ever did. This may have made him more statist that I would have liked, but it takes an extraordinary leader to really walk the small government walk and they don’t come along more than once a century.
Like Perry, I say that is a perfectly good argument – up to a point. There are clearly people involved in trade who cannot afford to be protected from thugs, but for the interests of global trade and movement overall, we have things like navies, just as in a country, there are courts, police and so on paid for out of taxation, rather than directly.
To be fair, it is worth noticing that in the past, organisations such as the East India Company had armed vessels, and private firms had private armies to protect themselves. I am all in favour of this, just as, of course, I favour the right to carry arms for self defence among the population as a whole.
Sunfish, where have you been the last eight years? I know the presidency is a tough job, but can you honestly say you or the country is better off now than it was in the past? I truly believe we should defend ourselves against any and all aggressors, but don’t kill our economy and infrastructure in the process. Those who forget the past mistakes are bound to repeat them.
That’s one of my pet peeves. That’s a ridiculous question. It is only a reasonable question if all things are equal, ie, that Islamic terrorists don’t decide to fly planes into our buildings, a democratic congress doesn’t play spendy-dope with entitlement programs, etc.
Given the political climate, the aggressive mainstream media attacks on any/all conservative issues, Democrats who are not only willing to interfere outside of Constitutional limits, but willing to lose a war and our soldiers, then I’d say the man did a fine job.
Is the country better off? YES, better off than it would have been under Gore or Kerry, or any number of Democrats who could have REALLY messed things up.
Much of the article is counterfactual. We simply don’t know if Bush’s policies actually worked or if the terrorists blew their only good idea. His policies haven’t failed, but it’s quite possible they’re more expensive and intrusive than is prudent and legal. Many of them can be used against American “undesirables” as much as terrorists. What will it profit us to gain the whole world and lose our own soul?
As to Iraq, more than a million people are dead, and several million more are homeless. The world’s strongest theocracy is significantly stronger. The world thinks of us as brutes and aggressors. Hussein swung from a lamppost, as was right, but were the deaths of a million people really worth it? The loss of any moral standing in the world? Spending another trillion dollars that we don’t have and can’t repay? To attack a country that did us no wrong?
It’s probably true that Bush is smarter than he lets on. I’ve seen the Texas gubernatorial debates, where he was lucid, witty, even eloquent at times. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s got the reverse Midas Touch: what he touches turns to shit. Stupid is as stupid does, they say.
Or, as Jefferson put it,
I don’t know where I found that quote (quite possibly here, some time ago), but it bears repeating.
A million people???
According to IraqBodyCount, the number killed since this all began is about 90,000. Where do you get a number 10 x that?
To your point… how much is the chance of freedom worth? 1 life or 100 million lives? Doesn’t seem like something you can quantify.
The Iraq Body Count figures are statistical lies themselves (iirc any unsubstantiated report of a single death is recorded as two deaths!) Oliver Kamm posted about IBC figures on numerous occasions, the most pertinent:
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2003/09/more_truth_and_.html
The 1m figure is probably an extrapolation from the laughable Lancet report that was comprehensively debunked:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984087808076475.html
No. Btw, more Iraqis lost their lives in the first Gulf War (40k soldiers) and in the immediate aftermath (100k Shiites) to Saddam’s stupidity and cruelty than in 5+ years of OIF.
Further, isolationism is thoroughly proven nonsense; only shut-ins like Switzerland can do it.
As to Bush, Pericles was hated for 2 centuries as the man who started the ruinous Peloponesian War by the artists of his day (Aristophanes’s The Archanians comes to mind) before he was resurrected in proper light and acclaim. Bush is not Pericles, but he is not Carter, or Clinton either.
Roberts’ blames Congressional democrats for the credit crunch. While Fannie/Freddie Mac and the CRA contributed, this explanation ignores the huge role of the Federal Reserve in bringing about. Roberts also ignores the fact that Bush himself was all in favour of wider home ownership for credit-unworthy people, especially if they were Hispanics.
And the fact that Roberts defends Bush’s bank bailout is risible.
I think even in this case a market in security on the seas would go a long way in resolving that problem. I’d rather rely on a company that has actual contractual obligations than on the government to solve the problem. Incentives do matter… And there is precedent in form of the various trading companies.
If anyone threatened to close vital shipping passages, the price of security for shipping lines that rely on those passages would rise sharply, causing increased investment in the sector. Governments can do foreign policy, but they can’t be as flexible in the production of security as entrepreneurs with access to capital markets.
Note that even now shipping companies take out insurance against piracy. If governments didn’t do the job for them and even prohibit them from providing defence services, those insurers would have a very strong incentive to provide security.
If some traders cannot afford to be protected from thugs, doesn’t that mean that the net benefit of their trading, after subtracting the cost of protection, is negative? I guess I could live with it a little better if shipping companies were to bear most of the cost. Unlike with police and courts, it’s rather easy to find out who benefits how much from naval protection, and a service-for-a-fee model of financing seems workable.
Oh, we were talking about Bush, weren’t we? Call me a cynic, but if you are a muslim terrorist and all you care about is killing Americans, it’s much easier to do that now that the US government has shipped lots of them to war zones in the Middle East. There are no terrorist attacks on US soil because you don’t have to come to US soil (or similarly well-defended places) to kill Americans any more.
Oh, we were talking about Bush, weren’t we? Call me a cynic, but if you are a muslim terrorist and all you care about is killing Americans, it’s much easier to do that now that the US government has shipped lots of them to war zones in the Middle East. There are no terrorist attacks on US soil because you don’t have to come to US soil (or similarly well-defended places) to kill Americans any more.
That’s just idiotic. Yes, it’s just so much easier to kill well equipped and trained troops than it is to kill normal people going about their daily business. After more than five years of occupation in Iraq they’ve managed to kill slightly more Americans (at a cost of tens of thousands of their own) than 19 guys did in an hour or so.
Sorry to interrupt,but the government is proposing to enforce the use of noise limiters on all venues applying or reapplying for music licenses.
A Petition to the Prime Minister
Given all of the errors in the article, a “sic” would have been nice in the vicinity of “20th century”!
I agree. This is drifting off-topic a bit, but I would be all in favour of shipping firms and others involved in global trade being armed, paying for security protection, use of mercenary forces, etc. But as I said, in the long run, total global trade volumes will rise if efforts are made to root out pirates, prevent trade routes being disrupted, etc. And mercenary forces are not always able or willing to do that.
I also do not like the argument that says that “If you cannot afford to ward off thugs, go and live somewhere else”. It might be prudent, but it also smacks of sort of concession to thuggery and predation.
Even in the early days of the US Republic, Jefferson, remember, used US naval power to put down the Barbary pirates. Even in its infancy, a purist, isolationist foreign policy was not practical for the US, and it is naive to suppose it is now.
What Eric said.
George W Bush’s two terms in office were not plagued by scandals and conspiracy theories of the sort that plagued Bill Clinton’s two terms in office.
The left’s hatred of Bush, in spite of the massive political concessions he made to them, may perhaps be attributed to their evasion of the apparent fact – and the implications thereof – that Bush was, in a non-political sense, a more or less decent man whereas they know that that was never true of Clinton.
The left’s ‘rehabilitation’ of Nixon in popular culture may be a consequence of the evasiveness on Clinton – their distorted way of dealing with what Clinton was: “oh you know, Nixon wasn’t really that bad, he was just a republican” (therefore Clinton was more or less OK, but Bush is a monster).
The left have been, and continue to, lie to themselves in order to oppose Bush and regain political power. In opposing the left, this is the context in which judgements about Bush’s administration ought to be made – what does his effect on the left mean?
It surely means that they are more dangerous than ever before because:
(a) As already mentioned, Bush spent and regulated like an inflated Dem – and that is now going to be difficult to overturn.
(b) But also, Bush is now the left’s image of the extreme right with whom the largest possible political contrast must be made by the left – to act otherwise would be to admit the truth about what Bill Clinton – the left’s great ‘success’ – actually was. Consider what that would imply.
That is broadly true: it boggles my mind that Clinton and his ghastly wife got away with so much stuff. The number of villains he pardoned, for example, and the way that they were pardoned, is inexcusable.
The scandals that did occur tended to involve Congressional GOP members, usually via lobbying, and things like that.
There are quite a lot of similarities in some senses, though. Both men like things like golf and are probably great company. I’d prefer W. and Laura as neighbours though. I bet Mrs Bush cannot wait to get back to Texas.
Isn’t the real question for a libertarian here whether the increased threat of terrorism calls for more intrusive security measures at home, such as the PATRIOT Act and the FISA-less wiretapping? The issue rests on whether we are forced to accept (relatively) minimal losses of privacy to prevent worse attacks which themselves might lead to a much more comprehensive backlash against privacy.
And, as we can see from Obama’s sudden turnaround on many Bush homeland security measures, once a state has these powers, it rarely rescinds them.
I didn’t make my point very well; let me try again.
(a) Clinton was not a decent man in a non-political sense – rather, he was a fucking monstrosity.
(b) W Bush was apparently a decent man in a non-political sense.
It follows from (a), that the left can only defend Clinton on political grounds until such time as monstrous criminals are regarded as socially acceptable. I contend that the intelligent people among the left (and no, that is not an oxymoron) know this and dare not publicly breach the question of what manner of creature Clinton actually was.
To the extent that the left accept (b), then it follows that they can only attack W Bush on political grounds, and they dare not breach the question of what kind of man the reported facts indicate W Bush to be.
Their hatred for Bush is partly a consequence of this contrast between the personal characteristics of Clinton and Bush. The fact that they dare not honestly examine this in public or draw the correct implications, means that the left must now completely seperate politics from ethics – even under their own confused standards.
I see Bush’s legacy in this way – he has, albeit unwittingly, accelerated the descent of the left (and with it much of U.S. culture) into chaos. And they are now in power.
Johnathan: But as I said, in the long run, total global trade volumes will rise if efforts are made to root out pirates, prevent trade routes being disrupted, etc. And mercenary forces are not always able or willing to do that.
How about going to fight pirates under a Letter of Marque and Reprisal and/or outsourcing this business to the PMCs?
Bush was much less than we hoped for, but much, really much, a whole lot – better than that nut, Al Gore.
Bush saved us from an Al Gore (and John Kerry) presidency (perish that thought), so, he gets some credit points from me.
A pity the Reps couldn’t put up some decent candidate against Obama.
I am intrigued by your views, sir, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Further, isolationism is thoroughly proven nonsense; only shut-ins like Switzerland can do it.
Thoroughly proven nonsense. I suppose you did a randomized double-blind trial and had your results published in The New England Journal of American Politics, right? *laugh*
The US had a long period of tremendous growth and prosperity while mostly ignoring Europe and Asia. It’s not an accident that permanent deficits, permanent paper money, and corporatism coincide with the US deciding to run the world.
As Madison said, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. . .No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
Wrong. I’d be surprised if we have had a year in our entire history when we were not deployed throughout the world, in action somewhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_history_events
(Link)
And by no means is that the only bit of it: we’ve had military advisors in almost any country you can think of at one time or another, for this conflict or another.
The US, unsurprisingly, is not Switzerland; try again.
Just to unequivocally show how positively interventionist the US has been in its long history, here’s a brief timeline of wars (took me about 5 minutes on Google):
1622-1898 Indian Wars
1775-1783 American Revolution
1798-1800 Quasi-war with France
1801-1805, 1815 Barbary Wars
1812-1815 War of 1812
1813-1814 Creek War
1836 War of Texas Independence
1846-1848 Mexican War
1861-1865 Civil War
1898 Spanish-American War
1898-1934 Banana Wars
1914-1918 World War I
1939-1945 World War II
1950-1953 Korean War
1960-1975 Vietnam War
And I left out all the myriad actions of the Cold War.
I like the Madison quote posted by Joshua, especially the last sentence: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” I think we’ve seen the truth of this statement amply demonstrated over the last several decades. The US essentially has been in a state of perpetual war since the early 1960s, and not just the obvious military adventures (Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Bosnia, Afghanistan, numerous smaller conflicts) and the Cold War. When we don’t have a “hot” war going (and sometimes even when we do) we invent a pseudo-war: the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror. The excessive cost, unreasonable growth of government, and general erosion of our liberties are all painfully obvious to anyone who will look with honest eyes.
Whatever successes Bush has enjoyed (and there have been a some), clearly he is a friend and enabler of ever-growing federal government. That, as much as the lack of any significant* terrorist attack since 9/11, will be his legacy.
* There have been a number of events, such as automobiles driven into crowds, which neither the government nor the popular press characterizes as “terrorist” attacks, but in which the perpetrators were young Muslim males. These may have been solo acts, not directed by al Qaeda or any other formal organization. but in my opinion it is extremely unlikely that they were not in a real sense a part of the larger Muslim extremist movement.