Bush must face reality of force-fed democracy

[AGENDA21]

Spreading democracy around the world has become the Bush administration's manifest destiny.

That's the doctrine oozing from the scrap heap of reasons the president has given for invading Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein and continuing the U.S. occupation. It grew in significance last year when President Bush pronounced, during his second inaugural address, that "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture."

And now, as pressure mounts on the president to explain why U.S. forces remain in Iraq as that fractured country slips deeper into civil war, Bush increasingly offers up the need to democratize the world as his raison d'être for hanging on in Iraq. In other words, Iraq is the Khyber Pass of the president's defense of America. It's the passageway through which he wants us to believe freedom must flow to the rest of the world.

"In this new century, the advance of freedom is a vital element of our strategy to protect the American people, and to secure the peace for generations to come," Bush said last week to a gathering organized by the Freedom House, an organization based in Washington that advocates spreading democracy. "We're fighting the terrorists across the world because we know that if America were not fighting this enemy in other lands, we'd be facing them here in our own land."

That's the kind of grandiose vision of this country that journalist John L. O'Sullivan espoused in 1845, when he invoked the phrase "manifest destiny" while claiming that America had a divine right to expand its borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The right of our "manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us," O'Sullivan wrote, was inextricably linked to "the great experiment of liberty and ... self government entrusted to us."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/wickham/2006-04-03-bush-democracy_x.htm

[YDogg]

1. But what has he got to lose, personally?

Seems as long as he's alive, he'll not suffer from his foolish/harmful decisions. I don't think the PNACers really care about the long-term, because they won't be around all that long. And we know that bush doesn't care about how history regards his efforts.

[rodeodance]

2. Bush is very concerned about his legacy--his place in the history books

[LisaLynne]

3. I go back and forth on that.

Does he care? I think he does because I think he thinks he's the greatest thing ever. I don't really seeing him being the type to go off with all his money and laugh while he's sipping margaritas and not lifting a finger for the rest of his life. Cheney, I think, is like that. I think he's an evil man who, as long as he is rich and has some power, doesn't care about what people think of him. I think Bush might actually WANT people to think he's wonderful.

On the other hand, will he ever know or will people keep him isolated enough that he will only think that only the stupid liburls hated him?

[YDogg]

4. I don't think he cares about his legacy

I think he figures he won't be around, so he doesn't care. And I agree that he will be kept isolated after he leaves office. Any chance he'll ever do anything like Habitat for Humanity? No way, unless there is some sort of carefully scripted effort to rehabilitate his image, and make him look "down to earth." I think he'll hole up somewhere and wait for the rapture.