Liberalguy

Bush can take pride in scorn By Mark Davis (bio)

There was a familiar quip Hillary Clinton used on campaign stops this year. It usually involved some snide reference to how America’s image supposedly has been damaged during the Bush years, punctuated by a line that always drew hoots of approval from audiences that shared her loathing of the president:”The whole world is going to breathe a sigh of relief,” she would proclaim, “when that moving van pulls up to the White House on its way back to Texas.” She is, of course, largely correct. The sigh of relief will not issue from the whole world exactly, but from large parts of it. You certainly will hear it from the Middle East, where terrorists and their millions of fans will discharge enough celebratory gunfire to pepper an entire desert with spent shells. The devil George W. Bush will no longer be there to impede their goals. You will hear it from the portions of Latin America smitten with the thuggery of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. Mr. Bush will no longer be there to oppose his poisonous socialism and reckless saber rattling. There should be a particularly loud sigh from North Korea, recently chastened by Bush administration diplomacy, a seeming oxymoron to the finger-wagging critics who have lied for years that this president seeks to wage war first and ask questions later. With the Bush thorn removed from their sides, the North Koreans indeed may be free to rethink their recently improved behavior. No doubt about it, from Kim Jong Il to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, tyrants the world over will utter the sigh of relief happily anticipated by Bush-haters at home and abroad. If the Bush years are followed by the McCain years, I hope those sighs are muffled by the anticipation of additional moral clarity from the American president. But wouldn’t that mean more hate would be heaped on us from around the world? We should all hope so. There has been no shortage of ridiculous articles this year evaluating how America’s image will need serious refurbishing after the “damage” exacted by the Bush years. One would presume that the most “damaging” element of the Bush legacy has been the seven years of the war on terror. Oh, how he – and we – are despised from the cafés of Paris to the sidewalks of Berlin, from the coffee shops of Cairo to the market squares of Caracas, all because we have spent the years since 9/11 trying to reform the part of the world that wishes we were all dead. It is equal parts sad and scary that an entire political party and millions of its adherents in America believe that we should guide foreign policy by how much of the world likes us. This is as fundamentally stupid as trying to raise a child by being a buddy instead of a parent. That is a sure recipe for a rotten, indulged, unappreciative kid. If you think it an insulting condescension to analogize America and the world to a parent’s lessons for a spoiled child, you are completely correct, and that is my precise intent. Much of the world deserves such derisive regard, and worse. Europe doesn’t know what an enemy is any more. The Middle East is so filled with murderous lunatics that rational voices are drowned out. And from Latin America to Asia to Africa, there is so much tyranny, terror and corruption that no single U.S. president could possibly make a sizeable dent. But this one has tried, and for that he is despised by America’s enemies around the world and political enemies at home. He should wear their scorn like a badge of honor. I would love to see a day when America is admired consistently from continent to continent. But let the world admire us because we have done the right things, even when unpopular, not because we changed our definition of what is right to appease evil leaders and misguided masses around the globe.