Why Barack Obama is a Boon for the Foreign Policy Legacy of George W. Bush

Let me double preface this thing before I get started:

I am not and never have been one of those liberals who thinks the Republican Party is Evil and Bad and always has been and always will be, etc. Not at all. I'm just as likely to bash the democrats for playing dumb party-politics (as Gertrude Stein never said: a politician's a politician's a politician...). That being said, I was not a fan of George W. Bush. His "leadership" as president seemed to be dispiriting to most people, most of the time. Not a good approach for a president of a liberal democracy, regardless of party.

It might be hard to believe but it's still possible for George W. Bush's presidential legacy to be considered, at least, a partial success and the rise of Barack Obama, I think, works neatly in his favor. Let me explain.

As of this writing (July '09) it's still possible that an American-backed democratically-elected Iraqi government will stabilize at some point in the next several years, and the U.S. will stumble into a massive economic windfall from their oil resources, more than paying for our two recent wars (actually, if you think about the Afghan and Iraqi invasions as entrepreneurial ventures, investments, I think they start to make a lot more sense).

So imagine if you will a U.S. friendly Afghanistan neighboring a U.S. friendly Iraq (a fairly big if, I know, but hang in there...). Add to that the recent unexpected victory of the "March 14 Coalition," the American-backed Lebanese Parliament, versus their Hezbollah/Tehran-backed opponents, in addition to Barack Obama's (for the most part) largely influential Cairo University speech AND the widespread moderate upheaval in the recent Iranian elections...it's not inconcievable that within the next five to ten years the middle-east will look significantly different than it did, say, in the fall of 2001. Even if American influence in the region is minimal and only lasts a generation or less it's still, I guess, better than nothing - not to mention the oil and geo-political advantage it gives us for that period of time (an advantage that would otherwise go to Iran or Russia or China or all three...).

George W. Bush's legacy has a much better chance of someday having (however briefly) a positive historical revival with Obama now in the White House than with McCain/Palin. Obama wields power in the most sophisticated (and powerful) of ways. He smiles a lot. He's wildly intelligent. Everyone wants to be his friend. So, on the one hand, we have this liberal, almost universally admired man in office who seems to represent all the most positive ideals the United States is said to offer while we continue to: occupy two foreign countries (including a Baghdad Embassy larger than the Vatican), strafe and bomb a third country (Pakistan) with CIA-operated drones, intimately influence the politics of the entire region. From the point of view of the United States, isn't that the best of both worlds? We get soft and hard power at the same time.

The President of the United States is not the ruler or owner of the country the way Kings used to be rulers of their countires. The President of the United States is (more or less) a temporary representative of the needs and wants of the United States at any given time. The president is a face, a personality which expresses those needs, both to its own subjects and to the rest of the world. But the State...the State remains the same. American power is still American power regardless of which party happens to be holding office. Doesn't it, on some level, benefit the State - in the big picture, over a long period of time - to be mixing up its representatives, to be alternating its personalities? When Obama won the election, didn't you think, on some level: We're the good guys again? Didn't it make it a tiny bit more palpable in your mind that we continue to occupy two countries, exert our influence throughout the Mid-East, etc? Admit it, I know you did. And I guarantee you untold millions of people around the world thought the same thing.

From a long-term historical perspective (or in other words, in the overall life-span of the country called America) does it really matter if one president was deeply unpopular and the one that came after him was beloved? I'm not so sure it matters. But I think it definitely matters what actions the nation takes at home and abroad, on offense and defense. I'm willing to take George W. Bush and his administration at their word when they said they didn't care if their actions were popular or not. I'm willing to believe Bush when he said History would be his judge. I think, compared to the popular political imagination, this seems like a cynical approach to government but will it prove harmful in a deep and lasting way? It very well might not.

In which case we can look forward to a Time or New Yorker article (if either magazine still exists in print form) in approximately 8-12 years titled: Is it Time to Rethink George W. Bush's Legacy?

Monopoly of Power

I can think of six highly violent incidences that occurred on U.S. soil in my lifetime. It's hard to forget any of these, not just because of how violent and out-of-the-ordinary each one was, but because of the immense television coverage surrounding each.

In chronological order (with related wikipedia links):

1. Ruby Ridge, 1992: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

2. WTC bombing, Feb. 26th 1993: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTC_bombing

3. Waco, TX Feb. 28th, 1993: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

4. OKC bombing, 1995: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKC_bombing
(and the subsequent lethal injection of Timothy McVeigh: http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Execution_of_Timothy_McVeigh)

5. North Hollywood Shootout, 1997: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

And of course:

6. Sept. 11th, 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

That's a nine year span of extremely violent attacks/confrontations on U.S. soil. Excluding the 9/11 attacks, of course, I wonder if that's a fairly "normal" amount of domestic violence. Like, for instance, what were the nine years like from 1983-1992? I cant think of the U.S. invasions of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), the TWA hijacking of flight 847 (1985) and Pan Am Flight 103 (1988) exploding over Scotland but none of those events took place on American soil and the hijacking and bombing only peripherally involved Americans.

I can't really think of any comparable domestic acts of violence of that scale in the 1980's but I'm sure there has to be some. Am I totally blanking out here? Can you think of any? (I just remembered the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_assassination). And if 1992-2001 was, in fact, an abnormally violent nine year span, I wonder if any economists have looked to see if there's a correlation between violent outbursts such as these and economic downturns like the one we're currently experiencing? Like, maybe, historically, every time there's an extremely violent ten year period it's followed within several years by some kind of recession. I don't know. Just a thought.

In any case, I always found these moments of violence extremely interesting. How could you not? I've come to think of them as little glimpses into our, at bottom, barbaric nature and how civilization and our civilized tendencies have largely, and successfully, contained (or repressed, depending on how you look at it) those tendencies. And, I wonder: if you live in a relatively peaceful society does that mean your society is A) peaceful by nature and thus not prone to violent outbursts or does it mean your society is B) the MOST violent and therefore the most successful at repressing and containing its own outburst of violence? I would have to say the U.S. is more B than A (though I bet the reality is all cultures are a mix of both).

What do you think?