Mideast Uprisings Bode Well for Bush’s Freedom Agenda


The Washington Post has a helpful interactive map providing an overview of the ongoing unrest in a dozen countries throughout the Middle East, with tabs for Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

Any of these uprisings could end badly of course, but the possibilities are exciting.  Can there be any doubt that these Mideast insurrections are feeding on each other’s energy?  And, would any of them be happening if it were not for the successful toppling of the baddest Mideast despot of them all?

Plenty of commentators have written about vindication for Bush’s “freedom agenda” for the Middle East.  I don’t know that I have much to add to the current situation, but I do want to boast about discussing this more than two years ago.

From “Bush, Reagan, Moral Clarity and the Politics of Evil“:

For better or worse, Bush’s legacy will always be inextricably tied to the war in Iraq. This means, as I’ve written before, there is a chance Bush will be remembered years from now as the man who planted the first stable democracy in the heart of the Arab Middle East. If some day Islamic fascism joins Soviet communism in the category of defeated ideologies, a President’s clarity about the United States as a bulwark against evil may again be a large part of the reason.

I’m just sayin’…

4 thoughts on “Mideast Uprisings Bode Well for Bush’s Freedom Agenda

  1. One of the requirements of correlation is some evidence of causation. Otherwise it is called coincidence. As appalling as I found the pervasive lying to the American public and the violation of international law in attacking a country that hadn’t attacked us, I’d like to find some good in the Iraq action. I’d like to think that people would ask for our support of any kind. They don’t. I’d like to think that the model of overthrow spread. The militaries here seem to be holding these back from becoming violent civil wars and seem to be controlling insurgencies. If anything they are learning from the mistakes of Iraq and roundly rejecting the progenitors of Iraq. Some good from an illegal, collossally mismanaged venture.

  2. dano, Iraq attacked American and British planes policing the no-fly zones for more than a decade, from 1991-2003, on a weekly and almost daily basis. The country violating international law was Iraq — Saddam was in continuous violation of more than a dozen UN resolutions when the U.S. led a coalition of more than 40 countries to liberate the country and overthrow Saddam. (“Mismanaged” I’ll give you.) If you’re looking for evidence of causation, Gadhafi himself acknowledged the significance of the Iraq war in Libya’s 2003 decision to give up its nuclear program. Finally, the idea that the Bush administration “lied” about WMD in Iraq has always been absurd — what possible motive is there to tell such a lie when you know the lie MUST be discovered? You could make a case that the administration was guilty of believing what it wanted to believe about WMD, but there is no question they believed it, as did the Clinton administration and every Western intelligence agency.

  3. I won’t copy my other comment from facebook, I’ll respond to your comment here. The legal international solution to violations of UN sanctions are more sanctions and these were made. Under international law, invasion is only justified as retribution for attack. The intelligence and the dialogue are clear from the insider’s accounts by Scott McClellan, John Snow, Valerie Plame and others and there aren’t any disputing accounts. The intelligence said that there was no evidence of WMD being produced, except where there were holes due to the almost complete lack of human intelligence. Lack of human intelligence, under US military policy this century, is not to have a military action when there is lack of human intelligence. Although in the latest stage before the war, according to Plame, even the human intelligence supported the lack of WMD. McClellan and Snow talked about the policy formulation for war ignoring the intelligence, not using it. Bottom line: Iran orchestrated Chalabi. Chalabi orchestrated Cheney. Cheney orchestrated the government, bringing Bush along. That was the disgusting motivation. Besides that, Bush was a vacuum, he has never had any policy motivation, for good or anything else. All he has is marketing and profit motivation for he and his “investors”, in private and in government.

  4. Pingback: No Easy Choices in Libya | All That Is Necessary…

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