I now have seen three things i have been saying here and elsewhere published in the last few days. Leslie Gelb in NYT about a possible three state solution in iraq; Dick Morris article about the domestic politics of the situation;and now Ralph Peters below about bush as a visionary who has adopted what once were Liberal views and his dismisal by the same intellectual elite--domestic and worldwide that also dismissed Lincoln for similar reasons. Peters in full below.
BUSH THE STATESMAN
By RALPH PETERS
November 26, 2003 -- HISTORY isn't a popularity contest. It judges by results, not yesterday's opinion polls. And history may prove as generous in its evaluation of George W. Bush as a foreign-policy president as his detractors are merciless.
Our president is becoming a statesman of vision and remarkable courage. Anyone noticed?
Readers from the left are rolling their eyes, of course. Everyone knows that Bush is an idiotic, warmongering buffoon who rejects the greater wisdom of the French . . .
Yet our "conservative" president has become a champion of the "left-wing" causes of human rights and the liberation of the oppressed. He's adopted the key internationalist goals of lifelong liberals. But the left refuses to support him.
Bush uses conservative means to achieve liberal ends on the global stage. In the process, he's revealed the left as more concerned with its dissident status than with practical results.
In foreign policy, Bush is a born-again idealist, not an ideologue. If one test of a true leader is the willingness to stand up to selfish, skeptical peers, Bush increasingly looks like the genuine article. He's revolutionized the foreign policy of the Republican Party and, unexpectedly, the right has proven more open to that change than the left. Just listen to the obsolete rhetoric of every Democratic presidential aspirant except Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Our president's a strategic pioneer, attacked by those who insist the world's still flat.
Much of Bush's domestic agenda, from his disregard of the environment to his disinterest in woman's rights, is deplorable. Yet, like Ronald Reagan, with his single-minded determination to end Leninist tyranny, Bush has realized One Big Thing - that international dangers define our times. As a result, a man mocked as living in thrall to his advisers has proven to be our most decisive president since Harry Truman.
History will recognize that this president did not choose to go to war. The War on Terror chose us. Options were illusory.
Bush sees that this war can't be waged on tidy fronts. Upheavals in the Middle East are essential and overdue. Not every one of our efforts there will succeed. The best results will be imperfect. But W. cracked the code: The fundamental problem of our age is not too much change. It's that global elites, from Paris to Pyongyang, reject change.
We have a president who's anything but conservative when facing the global future. Had his landmark speech of Nov. 6 - declaring that freedom, not false stability, is once again America's strategic goal - been made by a darling of the intelligentsia, it would have been hailed as the most important address of our generation.
But because George W. Bush made that speech, our intellectual establishment largely ignored it. He's given the left the policies they've clamored for - liberation, human rights, massive foreign-aid increases - and the left is proving its insincerity by rejecting its own doctrines when they come from a Republican.
Freedom for the wretched of the earth? Sorry, folks, the left didn't really mean it.
Since that remarkable speech, Bush reprised its themes in Britain - where even lefties heard him. His vision has made a stir among Middle Eastern intellectuals. And his arguments have special force, since deeds preceded the words.
But the American intellectual establishment won't give Bush one jot of credit.
Why is Bush so hated by our leftists? Indeed, the bile gushed at Bill Clinton seems quaint compared to the venom expended on Bush.
The problem is that Bush is too American. Since Vietnam, the intellectual elitists of the left have turned their backs on the American people in sniffy disgust, concluding, with Bolshevik distaste for popular democracy, that the intellectual vanguard alone knows what's best for the masses.
Elite disdain for our president is symbolic distaste for the "crude" American people.
Yes, I know that Dubya went to Yale. Didn't take. Yes, he was born to wealth. Didn't help. He'd still rather clear brush on his ranch than discuss Bauhaus architecture.
The American Everyman qualities that endear Bush to tens of millions are the very virtues his critics mock. He's straightforward, not subtle. He'd rather solve a problem than complain about it. He's so unsophisticated he still believes in God. And he doesn't believe that freedom's just another word for the lack of a tenured faculty position.
The PhDs and pundits just don't get it.
Last week, newspaper columns made fun of Bush's trivial gaffes while exchanging toasts with the queen. What the smug commentators missed is that the average American didn't see a fool, but himself or herself. We don't know just when to pick up the glass at a royal banquet. And we're suspicious of those who do.
When those Americans educated beyond all common sense snicker over Bush's grammatical blunders, their sarcasm makes Americans rally round the president. We don't speak perfectly, either. And we don't like it when stuck-up do-nothings laugh at us.
When Bush declares that some things are worth fighting for, intellectuals dismiss him as a vulgar jingoist. But some things are worth fighting for, and the American people know it in their guts. Off campus, patriotism isn't a dirty word.
The left has made a suicide pact with reality. But the rest of us aren't signing on.
One recalls another American president derided by American elites and disgusted Europeans, who had to make unpopular decisions, whose Cabinet had disruptive members, who had less-than-perfect table manners and who had to send young Americans to fight an "unwinnable" war so those who had never known liberty might be free.
Abraham Lincoln, of course.
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