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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (540727)	2/15/2004 5:20:25 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769667

George W. Bush -- grand strategist By Tony Blankley THE WASHINGTON TIMES The Boston Globe — the respected, liberal newspaper owned by the New York Times — ran an article last week that Bush critics may wish to read carefully. It is a report on a new book that argues that President Bush has developed and is ably implementing only the third American grand strategy in our history. The author of this book, "Surprise, Security, and the American Experience" (Harvard Press) to be released in March, is John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University. The Boston Globe describes Mr. Gaddis as "the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation's most eminent diplomatic historians." In other words, this is not some put-up job by an obscure right-wing author. This comes from the pinnacle of the liberal Ivy League academic establishment. If you hate George W. Bush, you will hate this Boston Globe story because it makes a strong case that Mr. Bush stands in a select category with presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and James Monroe (as guided by his secretary of state, John Q. Adams) in implementing one of only three grand strategies of American foreign policy in our two-century history. As the Globe article describes in an interview with Mr. Gaddis: "Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy follows. It envisions a country's mission, defines its interests, and sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy's grandeur lies in its durability: A single grand strategy can shape decades, even centuries of policy." According to this analysis, the first grand strategy by Monroe/Adams followed the British invasion of Washington and the burning of the White House in 1814. They responded to that threat by developing a policy of gaining future security through territorial expansion — filling power vacuums with American pioneers before hostile powers could get in. That strategy lasted throughout the 19th and the early 20th centuries, and accounts for our continental size and historic security. FDR's plans for the post-World War II period were the second grand strategy and gained American security by establishing free markets and self-determination in Europe as a safeguard against future European wars, while creating the United Nations and related agencies to help us manage the rest of the world and contain the Soviets. The end of the Cold War changed that and led, according to Mr. Gaddis, to President Clinton's assumption that a new grand strategy was not needed because globalization and democratization were inevitable. "Clinton said as much at one point. I think that was shallow. I think they were asleep at the switch," Mr. Gaddis observed. That brings the professor to George W.Bush, who he describes as undergoing "one of the most surprising transformations of an underrated national leader since Prince Hal became Henry V." Clearly, Mr. Gaddis has not been a long-time admirer of Mr. Bush. But he is now. He observes that Mr. Bush "undertook a decisive and courageous reassessment of American grand strategy following the shock of the 9/11 attacks. At his doctrine's center, Bush placed the democratization of the Middle East and the urgent need to prevent terrorists and rogue states from getting nuclear weapons. Bush also boldly rejected the constraints of an outmoded international system that was really nothing more that a snapshot of the configuration of power that existed in 1945." It is worth noting that John Kerry and the other Democrats' central criticism of Mr. Bush — the prosaic argument that he should have taken no action without U.N. approval — is rejected by Mr. Gaddis as being a proposed policy that would be constrained by an "outmoded international system." In assessing Mr. Bush's progress to date, the Boston Globe quotes Mr. Gaddis: "So far the military action in Iraq has produced a modest improvement in American and global economic conditions; an intensified dialogue within the Arab world about political reform; a withdrawal of American forces from Saudi Arabia; and an increasing nervousness on the part of the Syrian and Iranian governments as they contemplated the consequences of being surrounded by American clients or surrogates. The United States has emerged as a more powerful and purposeful actor within the international system than it had been on September 11, 2001." In another recent article, written before the Iraqi war, Mr. Gaddis wrote: "[Bush's] grand strategy is actually looking toward the culmination of the Wilsonian project of a world safe for Democracy, even in the Middle East. And this long-term dimension of it, it seems to me, goes beyond what we've seen in the thinking of more recent administrations. It is more characteristic of the kind of thinking, say, that the Truman administration was doing at the beginning of the Cold War." Is Mr. Bush becoming an historic world leader in the same category as FDR, as the eminent Ivy League professor argues? Or is he just a lying nitwit, as the eminent Democratic Party Chairman and Clinton fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe argues? I suspect that as this election year progresses, that may end up being the decisive debate. You can put me on the side of the professor.

To: calgal who wrote (540727)	2/15/2004 5:20:34 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Service disservice By Linda Chavez Any hopes the press would give President George W. Bush a fair shake in the coming election were dashed this week when the White House press corps reacted to release of the president's National Guard records like raw meat thrown into a tank of barracudas. The controversy surrounding the president's service in the National Guard from 1968 to 1973 surfaced briefly during the 2000 election but quickly disappeared. It became a hot topic again during the 2004 campaign when leftist filmmaker Michael Moore endorsed retired Gen. Wesley Clark for the Democratic nomination (Mr. Clark quit the race on Wednesday), saying the election would come down to a face-off between the general and "a deserter." Not content to let Mr. Moore's libelous accusation sink into the cesspool of oblivion where it belongs, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe then revived it — this time on behalf of another Democratic candidate. On ABC's "This Week" on Feb. 1, Mr. McAuliffe said: "I look forward to that debate when John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, is standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard. George Bush never served in our military in our country" — a claim that is patently untrue. And Sen. Kerry didn't do much better two days later, when he responded to criticisms about the McAuliffe canard by saying on Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes": "I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard. Those are choices people make." On Tuesday, the White House released records that show Mr. Bush put in the requisite number of hours in the period in question when he was assigned to the Alabama National Guard, while he worked on a political campaign, in 1972 and 1973. What's more, Mr. Bush didn't sit around "with nothing to do... [taking] turns delivering antiwar lectures," as columnist Richard Cohen described his own time in the Guard during the Vietnam War. "The National Guard and the Reserves were something of a joke. Everyone knew it. Books have been written about it," claims Mr. Cohen. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, learned to fly one of the most difficult fighter jets of the era, an F-102 — an exercise fraught with danger. Two men from Mr. Bush's unit crashed during the period he was flying these aircraft, according to William Campenni, a retired Guard pilot who served with Mr. Bush. Nor did enlisting in the National Guard guarantee a soldier would not be sent to Vietnam. National Guard units were sent to Vietnam, and certainly Mr. Bush had no way of knowing before he enlisted whether his unit would be one of them. But the White House press corps wasn't interested in these details. No, they were hungry for blood. In one of the more acrimonious press conferences in recent memory, reporters lashed out at press secretary Scott McLellan, repeatedly questioning the president's veracity and the factual record presented at the press conference. "You keep saying he served — he fulfilled his duty, he met his requirements. You're not saying he drilled, he showed up, he attended. Is that intentional?" one reporter asked accusingly. To which, Mr. McLellan responded. "No, he recalls performing his duties, both in Alabama and Texas. I said that in response to [another] question." "Define that," pushed the reporter. And so it went — for 15 pages of official transcript. This tempest in a teapot is all about undermining the president's credibility. It is being waged not only by Democrats, whose tactics are questionable but also whose motive — regaining the White House — is legitimate, but by the press as well. And that is not acceptable. When those in the press corps behave like partisan attack dogs, the public suffers. The Boston Globe, which raised questions during the 2000 election about the president's service in the National Guard, now admits its source of information is a man named Bob Fertig, a founder of Democrats.com. This vitriolic Web site accuses the president of everything from drug use while in the National Guard to current insanity — for which it recommends invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office and actually offers a petition visitors can sign to that effect. No wonder Americans increasingly do not trust the news media. Linda Chavez is a nationally syndicated columnist