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Juan Cole says good-bye to W
(3)and reminds us that the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves:
Bush is my slightly older contemporary. I knew guys like W. in college, the frat boys who painted the local lighthouse windows red in the middle of the night after binging on cheap beer and chasing skirts instead of cracking their books. The guys who were rude and arrogant because they did not know how to wear their inherited wealth gracefully, the loudmouths who parroted Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley without having the integrity of the former or the eloquence of the latter.
He asks a question that I ask frequently:
Why is it that wastrels who find faith are so insufferable?
And concludes:
W. wasn’t up to dealing with the Middle East. It is a complex, vital, fractious place and is notorious as the graveyard of modern presidencies. Carter was done in by Iranian hostage-takers. Reagan embroiled himself in Iran-Contra. Bush Sr. imprudently took on the Israel lobbies over loan guarantees for Israeli colonies on the West Bank, and that misstep helped cost him reelection.
W. is a frightful combination of ignorant, dull, and pigheaded when to succeed in the Middle East he needed to be well-informed, bright and intellectually agile.
Koshembos, I know all of this is well known. But if feels good to say it one more time.
And in the end, Juan brings it back to Shakespeare:
Our nation renews itself, and makes small revolutions with its political campaigns. We have the opportunity now, to choose truth over propaganda, responsibility over recklessness, compassion over brutality, altruism over self-interest, and ability over incompetence. We have the opportunity to repudiate the past 8 years, and to transcend them once and for all, to redeem ourselves as a nation. The persons we choose to serve us as first among equals in our republic can bring us shame or honor as a nation. But it is our choices as individuals that make us shameful or honorable in ourselves. We must never again allow a crew of crooked bullies to make us underlings, lest we be laid to rest in dishonorable graves.
Read all of Juan’s good-bye and good riddance.
George W. Bush, Juan Cole
3 Responses to “Juan Cole says good-bye to W”
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koshembos January 16th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Meddling in Middle Eastern culture or politics, require according to Juan Cole, knowledge of Arabic. I believe that Obama can understand the Middle East without knowing Arabic. I find Juan Cole arrogant, by his demands of Arabic, and very pedestrian in his analysis. Sorry, I have basic Arabic, but when I discuss Middle East politics with Arab friends we laugh at opinions such as Juan’s are mentioned.
As for Cole’s naming the settlements “colonies,” it only emphasizes his mediocre thinking. I am opposed to the settlements as much as he does, but history tells us that every occupation is followed by settlements. Thus, somebody living in the settlements of Seattle, for example, should try to avoid calling other Seattles “colonies.”
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Apologies from me, Koshembos. I wasn’t thinking about Cole’s highly pro-Arab Middle East philosophy when I made that comment to you but his put down, here, of GWB as a frat boy with delusions of grandeur. So it looked like I was baiting you, and I didn’t mean it that way. Sometimes I am a very ignorant redneck.
That said, I do think Bush’s militarism has been bull-headed and wrong whether he knows Arabic or not. He’s supposed to be well connected amongst the Saudis anyway so I’d think he’d know something about the culture.
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koshembos January 16th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I didn’t take it as baiting; one should be able to defend his arguments and opinions. Juan Cole’s pro-Arab tendency doesn’t really bother me. The Palestinian have my support for many, actually most, of their demands and grievances.
I do object to name calling, wrong analysis and ignorance of history in particular when they come from an historian.
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