George W. Bush and the next thousand days

His popularity in decline, and his enemies- driven into a frenzy by the ineffectual spleen and frustrated hatred of six long years- at last sensing blood in the water, George Walker Bush's last thousand days in the White House were viewed quite differently by two very different men this past week.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s pre-JFK reputation as a distinguished historian will not, I hope, be too much diminished by his latter-day incarnation as a Democratic shill. Even so, it might be better for his reputation for logic and objectivity if he stopped writing about living people.

It is a poor historian indeed who tsks-tsks at a "preventive war" waged to enforce the most basic of the armistice conditions which ended a previous war (Saddam Hussein to destroy those WMD's within ninety days under UN supervision), against a foe who subsequently committed an act of war against the United States by conspiring to assassinate its president (George H.W. Bush). Like Mr. Bush's critics generally, Dr. Schlesinger chooses to ignore more history than he remembers where the leadup to the Second Gulf War is concerned!

Nor does it befit a distinguished historian to preemptively criticize decisions not in fact made and actions not in fact taken because his subject is so irredeemably evil that he must be planning them. There is no evidence that Mr. Bush is planning a war against Iran, preemptive or otherwise; what we have instead is a reasonable statement by Mr. Bush that no option has been removed from the table.

Dr. Schlessinger would be on farm firmer ground in criticizing the administration in which he himself served. I don't know, but somehow I doubt that he would really suggest that it was unworthy of President Kennedy to threaten preemptive war over offensive missiles sited- but not used- in Cuba, even resorting in fact to a blockade (an act of war under international law, even if one uses euphemisms to describe it) in order to prevent more such weapons from being put in place!

Somehow, I don't think John F. Kennedy would have much time for the approach to foreign policy Dr. Schlesinger has embraced in his incarnation as an apologist for the dominant McGovern wing of the Democratic Party.

Dr Schlessinger's argument is not even the work of a good propagandist. Iran has the avowed intention of committing genocide against the people of Israel. It is shameful enough for Dr. Schlesinger to suggest that, in view of that avowed intent, preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power would not be a just cause! Does he really believe that the use of force against a gun-waiving maniac promising death to a group of children would only be justified after he's actually killed a couple?

But more would be involved in Iran nuking Tel Aviv and Haifa than "merely" a means to genocide. Israel, too, is a nuclear power; the cause Dr. Schlesinger considers unworthy is in reality nothing less than the avoidance of all-out atomic war in possibly the most volatile part of the world, and quite possibly drawing both the United States and Russia into the conflagration!

As it happens, Israel will almost certainly do what is necessary itself to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, or from being in a position to use it. The preventive war Dr. Schlesinger preemptively condemns President Bush for waging against Iran is unlikely in the extreme. But that doesn't prevent a great historian with apparently too much nostalgia for his heady days in the West Wing from foregoing his trade for that of bad propagandist and partisan shill. He would do far better to conform his outlook on the world to that of the President he himself served.

Natan Sharansky, on the other hand, is not a man whose trade it has ever been to chronicle history. His lot has been to live it. He was one of the brave men who spoke out for freedom in the Soviet Union when to so was to place one's very life in danger. He is one of those who would die under those Iranian mushroom clouds Arthur Schlesinger it deems unworthy of America to appeal to force, if necessary, in order to suppress.

On that ground, as well as the grounds of both personal moral authority and the cogency of his argument, his assessment of the Bush presidency seems to me to be by far the more credible.

HT: Real Clear Politics