My biggest criticism of George W. Bush - of the entire Bush clan, really - was that he would never defend himself or his policies, but just sat there and let the Democrat Left beat and pound and bludgeon the bejeesus out of him day in and day out for eight years, unopposed. By such means was his presidency destroyed, his party crippled, and a communist dictator elevated to power from which he cannot be removed should he choose not to leave at Noon EST, January 20th, 2017. Or, at the very least, the caustic, lying, insane, treasonously Ameriphobic and Islamophilic ideas that the Left brainwashed the American public into dogmatically believing remain, cripplingly entrenched, to this day. Even after riding off into the Crawford sunset, Dubya remained a mute punching bag and scapegoat.
Until now.
Finally:
In a closed-door meeting with Jewish donors on Saturday night, former President George W. Bush delivered his harshest public criticisms to date against his successor on foreign policy, saying that Barack Obama is being naïve about Iran and the pending nuclear deal and losing the war against the Islamic State....
The former president, who rarely ever criticizes Obama in public, at first remarked that the idea of re-entering the political arena was something he didn’t want to do. He then proceeded to explain why Obama, in his view, was placing the U.S. in "retreat" around the world. He also said Obama was misreading Iran’s intentions while relaxing sanctions on Tehran too easily.
According to the attendee's transcription, Bush noted that Iran has a new president, Hassan Rouhani. “He's smooth," Bush said. "And you’ve got to ask yourself, is there a new policy or did they just change the spokesman?”
Bush said that Obama’s plan to lift sanctions on Iran with a promise that they could snap back in place at any time was not plausible. He also said the deal would be bad for American national security in the long term: “You think the Middle East is chaotic now? Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren. That’s how Americans should view the deal.”
Bush then went into a detailed criticism of Obama’s policies in fighting the Islamic State and dealing with the chaos in Iraq. On Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of 2011, he quoted Senator Lindsey Graham calling it a “strategic blunder.” Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw those troops, but the idea had been to negotiate a new status of forces agreement to keep U.S. forces there past 2011. The Obama administration [pretended] and failed to negotiate such an agreement.
Bush said he views the rise of the Islamic State as al-Qaeda’s "second act” and that they may have changed the name but that murdering innocents is still the favored tactic. He defended his own administration’s handling of terrorism, noting that the terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was captured on his watch: “Just remember the guy who slit Danny Pearl’s throat is in Gitmo, and now they're doing it on TV.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but where was this from 2001 to....well, up to right now? This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Republican Party - or "establishment," if you prefer - that they obstinately refuse to engage in what was known as the "permanent campaign" back during the Clinton years over two decades ago. The Democrats never stop campaigning, they never stop criticizing and sniping and agitating and smearing and cheating and lying and plotting. That would seem to make it obligatory upon the GOP to follow suit simply for their own political self-defense. Campaigning is not something you can leave in the back of the proverbial closet, only to be trundled out for a few months every other fall. That quaint notion ceased to exist long, long ago. And yet Republicans refuse to admit it, and consequently continue to lose national election after national election, and get their heads handed to them in every policy confrontation with the Democrats in-between.
If President Bush had ever bothered to defend his administration's handling of terrorism at all, to say nothing of with vigor equal to the deranged leftwingnut "anti-war" jihad waged against him, perhaps, just perhaps, Barack Hussein Obama would never have seized power to begin with, and Dubya's years-tardy remarks would never have been necessary.
But even if not, since when is it a bad thing to give as good as you get - and, preferably, better?
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