Liberals' View of Bush

[erpowers]

I listened to Seymor Hersh on the radio last night and he did something that some liberal seem to be doing. Hersh went further than any other liberal/democrat I have heard recently. Hersh seems to believe that Bush is a real idealist and had to be dragged into this Iraq war. He also believes that Rumsfeld and Cheney had to be dragged into this Iraq war. My problem with Hersh and some other liberal is that they still seem to believe that Bush is not aware of why this war is being fought. I asked this question on a radio station last night and I will ask it hear again. What will it take for liberals to realize that Bush did not have to be dragged into this war, that he went along because he liked the plan.

[lonestarnot]

1. Never thought he was dragged ...drugged maybe but not dragged

in drag maybe (dick and bush) but not dragged. He went happily into Alice's Wonderland straight through the looking glass.

[soleft]

2. I believe he is an idealist and did not have to be dragged

However - as opposed to Cheney Rumsfeld and the other PNACERS, I don't believe Bush is a Straussian. I believe Bush has a true Messiah complex and believes if he can liberate the world people will convert to Christianity and be saved. He wasn't dragged, but he is being used by those who really understand what's going on.

[theorist]

3. Hersh seems to think that the Bush isn't a full blown neocon.

Hersh's analysis is that the neocons running the government are self-described utopians: invading Iraq will lead to a domino effect of spreading democracy and other such nonsense. If these guys had to sell the war to Bush, it probably didn't take much. The prospect of turning Iraq into a capitalist/corporatist's wet dream would have been enough.

I think that Bush is more of a neo-con follower than a thinker. The stovepiping of intelligence was necessary for the plausible denial defense that the top officials are using now, so obviously, Bush wasn't willing to put his presidency on the line a la Johnson. If you ask me, he wasn't dragged into this debacle; he climbed into the back of the pickup truck (i.e. he wasn't driving). :)

[hippiechick]

4. Cultist, more than idealist - is how I read it ...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19684&mode=nested&order=0


<snip>
... About what's going on in terms of the President is that as virtuous as I feel, you know, at The New Yorker, writing an alternative history more or less of what's been going on in the last three years, George Bush feels just as virtuous in what he is doing. He is absolutely committed -- I don't know whether he thinks he's doing God's will or what his father didn't do, or whether it's some mandate from -- you know, I just don't know, but George Bush thinks this is the right thing.

He is going to continue doing what he has been doing in Iraq. He's going to expand it, I think, if he can. I think that the number of body bags that come back will make no difference to him. The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a price he has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. So, he's inured in a very strange way to people like me, to the politicians, most of them who are too cowardly anyway to do much. So, the day-to-day anxiety that all of us have, and believe me, though he got 58 million votes, many of people who voted for him weren't voting for continued warfare, but I think that's what we're going to have.

</snip>

[Calvinist Basset]

5. To which liberals are you referring?

All the liberals I know would never claim that Bush et al were dragged unwillingly to war--but were happy to embrace the action!