Curtis Bowman

The Failure To Get Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora

Bush and Cheny continue to deny that Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape at the battle of Tora Bora.

Well, they would, wouldn't they?

As far as I know, no one of any seriousness who isn't a Republican shill denies that OBL escaped. For example, Peter Bergen recently wrote an excellent article entitled "The Long Hunt for Osama" for The Atlantic, in which he took up this issue, among many others that touch on OBL's current whereabouts.

An earlier post on this blog — How Not to Finish the Job in Afghanistan and Iraq — talked a bit about what happened at Tora Bora.

Update - August 7, 2005: I have more to say on the topic of Tora Bora in this recent post — "Gary Berntsen on the Failure to get Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora".

Todd Gitlin on Bush's Mental Arthritis

I don't believe that President Bush is a stupid man, but he is clearly simple-minded, inflexible, and ignorant.

Todd Gitlin nicely summarizes Bush's character with regard to intellectual matters:

This is the Bush who was on display in all three debates, the Bush of brute repetition. His sloganeering was, I want to suggest, more than a tactical move to overcome noise. It was more than an advertising method. His rigidity is the shell of his thoughtlessness. Dogma protects him from the perplexity that he finds deeply disturbing. He pumps himself up with bluster. Recycling slogans is only incidentally a stratagem; it is the mind of the man.

There are moments when Bush leaks this truth about himself, a truth to which no witness, friend or foe, has yet mustered contrary evidence. During the second debate, "I'm not telling" was his response when asked whom he had in mind as a Supreme Court nominee in a second term, and followed it up by failing to name his mistakes. One of his more striking statements during four years in office is this remark to Bob Woodward in 2002: "I'm the commander. See, I don't have to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation. Not Paul O'Neill, not Paul Bremer, not Christine Todd Whitman, not Richard Clarke. Not America. Like it or lump it, America. Love me or leave me.

This mental arthritis explains many things about Bush's administration: ignoring warnings that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on the United States, insisting that Saddam Hussein was buddied up with al-Qaeda and building weapons of mass destruction, refusing to plan for postwar Iraq, blowing off budget deficits, declaring that the economy is making splendid progress, piling tax cuts on tax cuts while reasons toss with the wind, closing the administration to press scrutiny.

Karl Rove has been known to say that if you have to explain, you're losing. So he found himself a candidate who wouldn't know how to explain if he wanted to. No wonder he and Bush are a matched pair.

Republicans are right. Character does matter — especially a radically flawed one.

Bush's Faith-Based Presidency

Read Ron Suskind's fascinating article about Bush's immunity to doubt — and his ignorance of the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.

Here's One Conservative Who Won't Vote for Bush

Conservative Robert A. George explains in The New Republic why he won't be voting for President Bush in the coming election.

Here's the heart of Mr. George's argument:

Two of the core principles at the heart of modern conservatism are a belief in the virtue of smaller government and a conviction that government must be accountable to the public. Those principles were enunciated ten years ago in the Contract with America, which helped Republicans take full control of Congress for the first time in four decades. That document sought "the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money." In this context, Bush's first term has represented a betrayal of conservative values. 

It's not simply a matter of outrageous spending or enlarged government programs--both offenses of which this administration is guilty, as manifested in a 25 percent domestic discretionary spending hike, a half-trillion-dollar Medicare expansion, and the ripping away of free-market agricultural reforms enacted over the past decade. The president continues to pursue tax cuts, as any conservative president would. But a government that cuts taxes and continues to spend ultimately becomes as amoral as one that raises taxes and spends. 

Yet the Bush administration's free-spending fiscal record only hints at its larger rejection of conservative principles. The more fundamental betrayal arises from the administration's central focus: an ill-defined "war on terror" that has no determinable endpoint and that is used to justify an unprecedented expansion of executive power. To make matters worse, this administration shows little inclination to demand accountability from those who serve within it. In turn, the Republican Congress--ignoring its 1994 vow to "restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives"--appears disinclined to check the powers of the executive. Together, these factors endanger the long-term health of the republic. 

It is a good thing Bush has an idealistic streak that informs his vision of the world. That idealism leads him to a belief that "freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world." But, without demanding accountability from his administration, that messianic zeal is being corrupted, and his policies are lurching out of control. Without a defined, limited overall vision of the war on terrorism and a corresponding commitment to government accountability, Bush can hardly claim to be the champion of "conservative values."

Take the time to read Mr. George's entire article. It can't have been easy for him to write this essay, and it certainly won't win him many friends among his fellow conservatives.

I complain about conservatives who shill for President Bush despite his innumerable blunders in office. I'm glad to learn that Mr. George puts his conservative principles before a specious loyalty to a failed presidency.

Roger Sandall on Post-Colonial Chaos

Roger Sandall, retired anthropologist and author of The Culture Cult, clearly possesses the willingness to confront the unpleasant reality of post-colonial Africa, rather than make excuses for it:

The disagreeable fact must also be faced that in Africa life has always been cheap, that extraordinary cruelties have been all too common, and that anything even vaguely resembling notions of human rights in its traditional societies were entirely unknown.

The painful consequences of this sad state of affairs bombard us all too frequently. How many people in the West care any longer?

More: You might also want to read Gavin Kitching's "Why I gave up African studies."

The Curse of Dick Cheney

If Dick Cheney's reputation for competence is as much of a mystery to you as it is to me, then you'll want to read T. D. Allman's article "The Curse of Dick Cheney."

Allman isn't the first person to look at Cheney's history of bad judgment and ineptitude. Not quite two years ago Joshua Micah Marshall wrote an article entitled "Vice Grip" that covers some of the same territory as Allman's article, but also helpfully goes into the mindsets of the crony capitalist world and the political influence game that produced Cheney.

Kamikaze Pilots vs. Suicide Bombers

Apparently, surviving kamikaze pilots don't like being compared to suicide bombers.

I can't blame them for not tolerating the comparison. An upstanding kamikaze pilot would never plow his plane into an office building filled with civilians.