HE MEANT WELL

 This was written a while back but, in view of the Afghanistan snafu, it seems timely.

by Michael X.

Post 9/11, a shorthand version of the immediate aftermath looked like this: American popular opinion demanded a response; somebody's nose had to be bloodied; Saddam looked like a good target; the Bush Administration went for regime change; they accomplished it; they walked away. Having achieved victory, they were confident that what they did to Iraq will serve as a deterrent to anyone who may be contemplating attacking the U.S. in the future.

But there is something wrong with this story, isn't there? The Bush Administration didn't quite walk away. And there are some today, myself included, who would argue that they, in fact, didn't even accomplish the mission.

Back on May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush addressed the nation while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. You may also remember a sign on the USS Abraham Lincoln that said "Mission Accomplished." It is important to note that the sign was put up by the crew of the ship with the tacit approval of the officers. I inferred from this that the military sure thought the mission was accomplished and, by extension, that the war was over. Bush even said at the time that this marked the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The nation was relieved and applauded. Too bad Bush didn't ask The Wolf, a character from movie Pulp Fiction, for his opinion. The Wolf might have told the Bush war cabinet:  "Let's not suck each other's dick quite yet." Soon, to the chagrin of conservatives, Americans were to find out that the U.S. was about to embark upon a great Neo-Con Wilsonian inspired adventure in nation building.

Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat. He thought of himself as a Progressive and a reformer. Wilsonian foreign policy's objective was to foster "world peace" (he wanted to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony). Wilson formulated a 14 point plan to achieve world peace and thought that the U.S. should actively participate in the spread of democracy around the world, by military intervention if necessary.

In the 1960s, a group of leading liberal intellectuals left the liberal establishment and decided to call themselves "conservatives." This was the birth of the neo-cons. The neo-cons may have distanced themselves from the leftward movement by the Democrats but they remained Wilsonian on foreign policy. Who are these neo-cons? Go to the Weekly Standard or, I regret to say, the National Review and you will find out soon enough.

Fast forward to 2003. Influential people convinced Bush that the democratization of Iraq was a desirable and doable objective. From what I can ascertain, this new mission came as a surprise to the military. They had not planned for it. Had they known, they might have secured Iraq in a different fashion.

What is it about George Bush that allowed himself to be persuaded to embark upon the democratization of Iraq? I would begin the answer by echoing the words of WFB when he was asked to describe Bush Sr.'s politics. He said (I'm para-phrasing), "George Bush may be conservative but he is not a conservative." 

And the apple did not fall far from the tree.

Bush Jr. certainly had some conservative views but he held them without the benefit of thoughtful consideration. That is to say: To the extent that Bush is a conservative, he is by temperament rather than conviction. He really is a "compassionate" conservative. And what is a "compassionate" conservative? To be a compassionate conservative in politics means one governs or legislates by emotion rather than thought. In other words: Bush is a conservative "do-gooder." Let us remind ourselves here of what that term "do-gooder" means: an earnest, naive, often impractical reformer or humanitarian. Evidence: the democratization of Iraq (misguided reform) and open-borders immigration (misguided humanitarianism).

The war to install democracy in Iraq never succeeded. And even if it did, the central question would remain: Iraq might be better off - but would America? Did Bush really think democracy in Iraq would be contagious to the rest of the Middle East? And what did Bush think Iraq would do with its democracy? Democracy is only a means to an end. If the ends are against America's best interests, who cares about the means? Did Bush and the Washington brain-trust think that Iraqis and others in the middle east would commit cultural suicide just because they had democratically elected leaders?

Our political elites, and all too many others, don't realise that self determination is a privilege that comes with moral maturity. Middle Eastern societies may be ancient but they have been in a state of arrested development for centuries. They have not become morally fit for democracy. Homes and schools are not democracies precisely because we can't trust the morally immature mind to do the right thing. The people in the middle east don't enjoy an enlightened morality. Their societies, for whatever reason, have not evolved.

Now, here we are, over ten years later, still trying to convince Muslim societies about the benefits of emulating western civilisation's way of life - the futility of which has been pointed out by numerous commenters. And then there's the money. It costs about 4 trillion dollars a year to operate the American federal government with about a trillion of that being borrowed. There is not a nickel available to civilise the middle east. Sooner or later, America's enemies will realise that they should be encouraging the U.S. in its middle east democratization project. It, along with another misguided Bush/Obama project: massive open-border immigration will eventually bring America to its knees.

On immigration, Bush got positively mushy. Promoting massive immigration, both legal and illegal, was just another example of Wilsonian Progressivism. In Wilsonian Progressivism, benevolence trumps self-interest. In fact, Wilsonians go further and say, without a trace of irony, that ignoring our self-interest temporarily, is really in our own best interest. Always in the long term, of course. Success for social dreamers always occurs in "the long term." So, for Bush, massive immigration, legal or illegal, while temporarily bad for the U.S. would be, in the long run, good for America. Furthermore, it was the right thing to do.

Like all other do-gooders, Bush wants to look in the mirror and say to himself, "I am a good man." Because he sees himself as a "good man" without ulterior motives, it does not occur to Bush that his feelings about illegal immigration are just narcissistic indulgences and that this same narcissism makes him oblivious to how destructive to America his policy on this matter really was.

During his tenure as president George Bush was more than just sympatico to Mexicans. In his heart, he felt he was Mexican - and this goes for the entire Bush family. Bush, speaks forcefully and confidently and, dare I say it, with joy in his heart, when speaking his version of Mexican-Spanish. Bush was, and is, a "bleeding heart." But for whom does he bleed? Did he bleed for Americans? Did he bleed for Mexican illegals? Or did he bleed for his own unsatisfied desire to be considered a humanitarian? No wonder he hated those who opposed his amnesty bill. God help you if you thwart do-gooders while they are lusting after virtue.

Bush thought that protecting Americans was protecting them from physical harm. While I do not deny the importance of that, Bush failed to appreciate that protecting America is really about protecting its values and culture. His mind was structurally blind to the damage that this massive illegal immigration was causing. The importation of Mexican culture on such a large scale cannot help but dilute American culture. Bush, in his own way, was undermining American culture as much as Blair had undermined British culture. Blair considered British culture unenlightened and wanted to bring it under the wider "progressive" European Union. Bush was similarly minded at least to the degree that he favoured a North American Union.

Eleven million illegal immigrants are in America and they are continuing to come across the border by the thousands every day. They all want Social Security and access to schools, hospitals, and welfare. And then there's the cost of building new infrastructure to accommodate them.

In the next election, Americans need to watch out for any candidate who shows the slightest inclination toward neo-con Wilsonian adventurism in foreign policy and/or progressive immigration (read: open borders) in domestic policy. The staggering costs of military adventurism and illegal immigration are a potent one-two punch that could cripple the U.S. economy. The cultural consequences of large scale immigration, legal or not, could be lethal to the American dream of freedom and prosperity.

Without a wholesale regime change to  dramatically change the American political culture, the path ahead for the U.S. and, indeed, western civilisation itself, will find itself on a perilous road.