Dear Sir,

You inexplicable write “Bush is an honorable man who would have made a great commander in chief without Iraq and immigration.” It’s akin to reasoning “Paul would have been a good man if he hadn’t committed all of those crimes.” Furthermore, even if Bush 2.0 is a gent of the old school, it does not make him an honourable man.  After all, how many times has the president broken his oath to uphold the constitution? 

Respectfully,

John McKerrow

For once I have to disagree with my
favorite B.S.’er.

If you want to see a TRUE gent from
the “old school” take a close look
at Dr.Ron Paul.

Bush has done more damage to our families
and communities than will be realized
for many generations to come.
He is the “petty criminal grown strong.”

Simply disgraceful.

I feel sorry for good old Warren Harding being compared to Bush.

Bush would have been better off continuing being a drunk oilman.And America sure would have been better off he had never been ‘born again’ by the evangelical nuts and become a politician.

I think the point Taki was making is that Bush alone wouldn’t and likely couldn’t have gotten into the mess he and we are in now.  The key ingredient to making this mess was the Neocons.  Focusing on Bush is exactly what the Neocons and their Neoliberal allies want so that they can escape responsibility and move on to advocating a war with Iran.  Virtually the entire liberal establishment was in favor of the Iraq war, very much including the Mainstream Media.  Note that all of the Democrats running for President who were in Congress in 2002 voted for the Iraq war, except for Dennis Kucinich.

Since Harding, we’ve had a number of worse presidents: Hoover, Hoover on Wheels (FDR), Kennedy, and LBJ.  We’ve had equally bad: Nixon, Carter, Clinton.  Ask Lew Rockwell, and he’ll tell you that Harding in fact wasn’t all that bad.  Taki shouldn’t rely on the opinion polls of our soviet of Cultural Marxist American historians as to who the best and worst presidents were. 

As for bad advisers, let’s put the ultimate blame where it’s due, and pass the buck to where it stops: Woodrow the Worst, who was Hoover’s and FDR’s principal economic advisers (both men _petite functionaires_ in Wilson’s war machine), and the principal foreign policy adviser to JFK, LBJ, Milhous, Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Calvin C, Ike and Truman knew it all moonshine.

In passing, it ought to be observed that the Grundväter intended that the Senate be a big committee of the chief advisers to the president, esp. with respect to foreign policy, where its consent was also obliged.  G. Washington, in one of his two mistakes, stopped dropping by to so consult, and his successors did likewise. (His other mistake was Hamilton.) Even Andy’s Jackson’s kitchen cabinet would have been better than Col. House, Hull, Dulles, Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Dr.Merkwürdigliebe, Dr. Zib, and Miz Albright.
It’s not original from me: Let’s go back to Washington’s foreign policy—George Washington’s.

Edmund Burke III:

Blaming the advicers is an old monarchist trick “It is
not the King’s fault, but his advisers”.

Anyone in power will get a lot of advice, good, bad,
and indifferent. Who he chooses to listen, who he
chooses to associate with are what matters.

He chose to listen to a certain kind of people and
no one else, and he does not want to contemplate his
ever been wrong.

As far as I am concerned he is guilty of dereliction
of duty.

Of course Bush is at fault and I didn’t suggest otherwise.  What I did say was that blaming Bush alone and ignoring the role of the Neocons will allow the Neocons to get away with their role and survive to create a new disaster in the next administration (while the Neocons continue to push for a wider war, the one against Iran to begin in the last few months of the Bush administration).  Bush will be out of office within less than two years, never to hold a position of public influence again. As John Lukacs stated in a speech at the Hungarian embassy in D.C. recently, the Neocons remain a powerful and harmful influence with no end in sight.

Your assertion that Bush is really a good guy doesn’t
fly.  He chose whom to surround himself with. 

Biographers of U.S. Grant made similar excuses that,
“Grant himself is OK, it’s those mischievous
underlings doing all the bad things.” Didn’t fly
then, either.

“That’s the way it is.” I am sick of hearing that from people in private. The servile acquiescence to the Zionist control of the media has to be broken. Tell the truth about Israel and you are eliminated from public life. Findley, Percy, and McKinnon crossed the Israeli hard-liners and were erased. Trqafficant proved John Demanjuk was railroaded by the holocaust industry and went to jail for doing business as usual in DC.

Washington is terrorized by AIPAC’s laundering of US foreign aid to Israel. It seems that a small percentage is returned to buy US elections. Bush is the tip of the iceberg. Americans no longer own America, Zionism does. And it bought it with our money.

“An honorable man” has to live with the world as it is. Bush does that. It is up to the American people to provide him with a free country to govern. That means millions willing to proudly bear the false accusation of “anti-Semite.” Taki has been so attacked. I have been. We all should be. Until we are all “anti-Semites” America will not be free.

“Bush is an honorable man who would have made a great commander in chief without Iraq and immigration.”

You forgot to mention 9/11. Did the US government let it happen (in which case Bush is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty), or did they (elements within the US admin and military-industrial complex)make it happen, as argued by the 9/11 truth movement, and if so, what was Bush’s role in this?

While the attacks were going on, Bush simply continued to sit there, listening to the children read The Pet Goat. The normal procedure had America been under a genuine terrorist attack, would have been for him to dive for cover. Instead, he remained where he was, exposing himself (and the children) to danger.

According to <a href=http://21stcenturycicero.wordpress.com/911/the-pentagon/911-conspiracy-norman-minetta-talks-about-cheney-orders>Norman Mineta’s testimony</a> to the so-called 9/11 commission, but ommitted (surprise, surprise, from their final report, as was that of firefighters who heard explosions in the WTC buildings long before they fell), Cheney’s behaviour was even stranger.

Cui bono?

There should be a thorough, independent, investigation of what happened on that dreadful day.

Oh, I forgot to mention the repeated assaults on the Constitution represented by the so-called Patriot act,the Military Commissions Act, the John Warner Defense Authorisation Act, the Illegal Domestic Wiretapping Programme, Martial Law Presidential Decision Directive 51, Destruction of the Dollar, Amnesty and the North American Union.

Still, how did this bunch of nitwits persuade Bush
about five minutes after 9/11.  Maybe another
Godfather analogy applies.  Michael Corleone became the
Godfather in the hospital when they again came to whack
the old man, but he was there to personally save him.
Maybe Wasps have a vendetta gene too.

One thing, if Hillary gets elected, some people
will think that it will be an improvemente over
necon-ruled Bush.  As in what was once Yugoslavia
there are those who yearn for the good old days of
Tito, when you could leave in peace with your
neighbors, there are those now who appreciate Bill
Clinton more, because at least he knew when to
backtrack when he made a mistake.

Bush is no “gent of the old school”, but a spoiled
child of wealth and privilege, from a long line of
crooks and war profiteers. Certainly, he has no sense
of duty to his country, and his view is the views of
the modern CEO classes---who stripped America of her
economic sovereignty, and his foreign policy views are
inspired by the notorious Zionist ideologue, Natan
Sharansky.

I’m not sure you can get worse then that. The reason
that Bush surrounded himself with the likes of
Feith, Wolfowitz, Kagan, Podhoretz, Abrams, Perle, P
ipes, Cheney, Abraham and Kristol because that was
his CHOICE of people who shared his world views.

You can’t get worse then an alliance of Blue Blood
Wall Street Bankers and War Profiteers, bloodthirsty
Zionists.

No Taki, I admire noblisse oblige, but find none
in this spoiled brat, drunken frat boy, failed businessman, the latest
in a long line of war profiteers and big business
insiders that suck the blood of the American Republic
for personal profit.

See Kevin Phillips’s book on the Bush Dynasty.

Taki, Why do you continue to roll out this boring old
trope of Bush being duped by crafty,hook-nosed
Likudnicks?  It misses the point. The “decider” is also the “responsible one”.

When will you call a spade a spade and stop laying
this Iraq fiasco at other people’s feet? I know you
are from the same upper crust cloth as W, but give
it a break and hold the guy responsible.  There isn’t
an ounce of “honor” in that sad little dry drunk and
enabling him won’t get you invited for milk cocktails
in Crawford.  Let it go.

Taki’s descent from Spartans and German military
ancestors explains his genetically determined loathing
for neocon warmongers.While worse than Alcibiades in
inciting others to unnecessary strife, from which they
stay at a distance, Kagan-Kristol, etc. are especially
hostile to the “anti-democratic,” warlike
Spartans and Teutons. I suspect that Taki noticed this
before going on the warpath against his and my
favorite target of attack.

although the part about Bush being a gent can be dismissed as an effort by taki to inject a little humor into a very serious assessment of the mans presidency...the rest of the analysis is a clear eyed view of the constellations through a high powered telescope on a clear crisp northern night.

until and unless some political figure in america takes a stand against this fifth column of likudniks and dual allegience impostors and calls them out in public and by name, i am afraid we are in for more of the same as a consequenses of their aspirations to conquer and intimidate.

the dual allegience neocons use the same strong arm tactics around the world as they like to do with american politicians… i.e. threats and bribes and smear tactics to get them to comply with their ideology.

On the subject of any Bush politician as a gentleman, I remember being amused at the lengths to which the news media went to cast GHW Bush as a gentlemanly elder statesman once his imbecilic spawn was coronated emperor.  It’s as though we all were expected to forget that this ignorant, opportunistic prick ruled arrogantly, launching invasions and using the military as his own personal hit squad, and using thevice-presidency and later, the presidency to increase his family fortune.

The Bush family has long been a pox on this country.  That should be evident to anyone who has bothered to review the records of Prescott Bush and George H. Walker.  If there is a gentleman anywhere among that breed, he has been well hidden from public view.

Jeeze Almighty and all that jazz, Taki makes a couple of sensible, well connected rationalizations out of the great tragedy of our times, and the farces rise up in their partisan multitudes swinging ignominiously left and right like clueless thugs.

With such shallow human capitol as these Taki, the old republic is dead for sure, and there is absolutely no hope of aborning anew in such fouled human soil the squandered promise of 1776. Today’s polluted across America’s landscapes “...don’t know...don’t know that they ‘don’t know...and don’t care that they don’t know...”

I have long suspected Bush is being blackmailed on his foreknowledge of 911 by the Neo’s Taki named. I think how they did it was to let him in on a small secret by telling him an ‘attack’ had been planned but they didn’t inform him of what was REALLY planned. Remember on 911 Bush was a relative newcomer to the Presidency, I reckon they may have told him the Planes would crash into the buildings in the dead of night, ‘there will be few, if any casualties, Mr President.’

Take another look at the Man’s face as he sat there in the Florida school with the black kids. You can almost read his mind, he’s thinking, ‘those cunning bastards, they tricked me into going along with this, now I’m in deep .... The LIED to me but it’s too late now. I’ll have to go along with them, or else.

Taki’s metaphor of a “cancer on the Presidency” is good, but the carcinogen metastasised around 50 years ago and it was not neoconservativism; it was the overreliance of Presidents on bureaucratic, mechanically-minded “experts”, beginning around the time of Eisenhower and then growing to full malignancy under JFK.  (Oh alright, yes FDR contributed to this problem, but HE - and not Bush Sr - was America’s last real patrician, “old school gentleman” President.  The Bushes are nouveau riche parvenues and Taki of all people ought to understand that - but then Taki’s generosity toward lesser and weaker people is never to be underestimated, true aristocrat that he is.)

Still, with reservations I’ll agree with Taki’s assessment - typical of Taki’s magnanimity of spirit - of Bush Jr as a man with some residual virtues of the old school.  (Yet I’d still like to see him put on trial for war crimes; “honorable men” sometimes commit crimes too, you know, and as Taki is a student of Bushido he knows - and perhaps ought to be reminded here - that Honor is not a static personal quality, but rather a static aspiration.)

But then, Aeschylus (or was it Sophocles?) said, “call no man happy until he is dead”, because you can’t judge the quality of a man’s life until it’s over.  If Hitler had died in 1938, his reputation would have been very high today; if Nixon had died in 1974 his reputation would have been lower, as he would have died without publicly acknowledging his mistakes (or at least, some of them) as he did later in life.

When Nixon died in 1994, I imagined Christ welcoming him and embracing him, and saying, “But Richard, there’s just one thing I want you to know:  You really ARE a crook!”

‘(Oh alright, yes FDR contributed to this problem, but HE - and not Bush Sr - was America’s last real patrician, “old school gentleman” President.’

Patrician, yes. A gentleman? Surely you jest.

“But then, Aeschylus (or was it Sophocles?) said, ‘call no man happy until he is dead’”

Sophocles, _Oedipus the King_, last line: “Let us then call no man happy, until he passes beyond the borders of this life, free from pain.”

The American neo-SA Brownshirt louts (masquerading as conservatives) whose hatred for FDR and for the British are inseparable from their apologetics for Hitler, never cease to astonish and to alarm me.

If hating Roosevelt automatically makes a Nazi, does your Roosevelt whooping make you a Stalinist?

No, liking Roosevelt means that you are grateful that
he and Chuchill gave Western Civilization a 50 years
life extension, which we ought to have put to better
use.

I’ll accept that Hitler was a vile bastard who was worse than Roosevelt or Churchill. But let us face facts. Roosevelt put the final knife in the constitution and the bill of rights, long before Bush II. He destroyed the old republic and replaced it with the welfare-warfare state of today’s America.  Not to mention all the support he gave to such heroes of democracy as Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Josip Broz Tito, Ho Chi Minh and so on.

Roosevelt and Churchill waged brutal total war for their brand of global imperialism just as Stalin, Hitler, and the Japanese militarists waged it for theirs.  The combined efforts of all these killer tyrants left western civilization in ruins, but this was the logical working out of the ideologies of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.  These are still the official ideologies of what used to be western civilization, but what is now, thanks to Roosevelt, Churchill and their successors, simply a consumerist culture of death.  Unhappily, these ideologies and particularly the one which was victorious in WWII, liberal democracy, have now been spread throughout the world.

Kirt Hidgon is correct in his comments.  If anyone wants to learn more about FDR and World War II they should read Thomas Fleming’s book on FDR and the War entitled The New Dealers War.  Here is some Amazon information on that book:
The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II (Paperback) by Thomas J. Fleming (Author) From Booklist
A prolific historian of proven popularity takes on, hammer and tongs, FDR’s leadership during World War II. The domestic politics of the New Deal continued during the war, Fleming reminds us, belying the national unity reified by recent lionizing of the war generation. Pearl Harbor embarrassed the isolationists but didn’t quiet doubts about American involvement in the war, especially with an ally like Stalin. In reaction, New Dealers led by Henry Wallace and Harold Ickes promoted the war as a crusade to bring the New Deal to the postwar world. FDR’s personal contribution to this was the doctrine of unconditional surrender, which Fleming, citing disquiet about it among Allied generals, regards as an obstinate blunder. Meanwhile, opponents of the liberals succeeded in terminating many New Deal programs and ousting Wallace from the vice presidency. FDR has been proved deceitful before, in the light of which fact, some of Fleming’s suspicions (e.g., that FDR ordered the U.S. war plan leaked in 1941) seem plausible. Moreover, Fleming is never tendentious. For reputation revising, he’s the man. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Wall Street Journal
“Roosevelt haters will love this book and even admirers will find themselves frequently disconcerted.”
Flint (Michigan) Journal
“Sure to be the most controversial history book of the year...A scathing commentary that will have partisans howling in protest.”
Book Description
Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming brings to life a flawed and troubled FDR struggling to manage World War II. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt’s famous Rainbow Plan, then spiraling back to FDR’s inept prewar diplomacy with Japan and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader on a journey through the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation, and the world as the New Dealers strove to impose their will on the conduct of the War. In bold contrast to the familiar, idealized FDR of other biographies, Fleming’s Roosevelt is a man in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds that he could not handle and frequently failed to understand some of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe. Among FDR’s most dismaying policies, Fleming argues, is his insistence on “unconditional surrender” for Germany (a policy that perhaps prolonged the war by as much as two years, leaving millions more dead) and his often-uncritical embrace of and acquiescence to Stalin and the Soviets as an ally. The New Dealers’ War is one of those rare books that force readers to rethink what they think they know about a pivotal event in the American past. About the Author
Thomas Fleming, a widely respected historian and compelling writer, is the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including most recently Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America; Liberty! The American Revolution; Bunker Hill; Now We Are Enemies, and biographies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. Fleming is a frequent guest and contributor to NPR, PBS, A&E;, The History Channel, and The Today Show. He lives in New York City and Westport, Connecticut.
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Too many of the comments on Roosevelt are made by
people without a proper background of history.

They talk about his cozying up to Stalin, and even
of choosing the wrong side of the war as if Stalin
and Hitler had been on display on the shop and he
was equally free to choose one or the other. 

For the record:  Roosevelt did not choose between
Hitler and Stalin. He chose between Hitler and
Churchill. He chose between an aggresive paganism and
Western civilization which meant Christendom. Stalin
was the price that had to be paid for victory. If there
is a book that you should read it is “Democracies
against Hitler” by Alexander J. Groth. It is a
depressing book about how weak and unprepared
democracies were to stop the pagan onslaught of
Nazi Germany. Whether Churchill and Roosevelt liked
Stalin more than they should is a debating point. That
they desperately needed him is not.

Look at the dates. The war started in 1939 when
Germany, **allied with Russia**, invaded Poland. Then
it invaded Belgium, Netherlands, and France in 1940
while Stalin watched. The communists parties of those
nations preached fraternity towards GErman soldiers.

England fought on, and Roosevelt tried to get the US
to join **England** in the fight.  England was not
precisely pure as the driven snow (ask in Ireland about\
that), but at that point it defended Western
Civilization and its values.

It was only in **1941** that Germany invaded Russia,
thus giving England an ally - and England was not in
shape to be picky about allies then, it took what it
could get.

Eventually the US joined in the fight, with the results
that half of Europe was freed. The other half was
temporarily lost - and Churchill knew how temporary
that was.

That Roosevelt made mistakes, no one doubts. So did
Churchill. But they were right on the main point, which
was that Hitler should be stopped, and that half an
Europe was better than none. And it is curious that
those who nitpick at Roosevelt’s mistakes are many of
them the intellectual descendants of the isolationists
of the Thirties and Forties, who, as Lukacs points
out, showed considerable lack of consistency is their
lack of isolationism in the Fifties when they preached
a Crusade against communism, as if half an Europe in
totalitarians hands was an worse options that all of
it in totalitarian hands.

It was William Buckley and the so-called ‘conservatives’ that wanted a crusade against communism at all costs. The survivors of the Old Right were not half as enthusiastic. I think it was John Flynn, who was one of the most anti-FDR journalists in America, that denounced the Cold War as a ‘a job-making boondoggle’.

When in doubt blame the Jews; a strategy that never gets old

For the benefit of anyone who is unaware of it, the Thomas Fleming referred to by Mr. Burke is distinct from the Thomas Fleming who edits the marvelous paleo magazine Chronicles.  But I imagine the two Drs. Fleming would have very similar opinions on FDR, WWII, and many other issues as well.

Martin:

Do you have any ideological sympathies for fascism?

Do you think that the fascist ideology ought to
be followed?

Because if you do, you are at least consistent in
bemoaning a war that destroyed the chance for it to
flourish.

But if not, if you think that we are better off
without it, pray tell, do you know if it could have
been stopped in an effective way that was more in
accord with your ideologigal preferences? Please
explain how.

(As a sometimes practicioner of alternative history
games, I must warn you cannot have recourse to
“alien space bats” to obviate difficulties)
not

Oh yes, the old neocon trick. If you dare criticize, you must be on the side of the enemy.
What I’m asking for is a much more honest appraisal of FDR, rather than the crooning and hagiography that is seen as the only decent opinion one can have on Roosevelt.
On the subject of fascism, it is interesting that before the war, Roosevelt (and Churchill) expressed admiration for Benito Mussolini, and his Brains Trust professors got ideas from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia.

Oh, and considering how Roosevelt treat Japanese Americans, he might have learned other trick from the fascists. They were pretty good at rounding up innocent minorities.

Martin: Like it or not, it was Roosevelt who destroyed
fascism while your intellectual forebears though that
it was enough to say that they disapproved of something
for it to be gone.

Of course, there was some similarity between Benito
and FDR.  You could say that taxonomically they
belonged to the same genus. But that is as useful in
evaluating either of them as the knowledge that
potatoes are of the same genus as deadly nightshade.

It is only when some genius decides that this
taxonomic relationship means that either we can eat
deadly nightshade salad, or banish potatoes from our
diet.

In ideology, taxonomy will carry you only so far.

I am sorry, my phrase got truncated.

“It is only when some genius decides that this
taxonomic relationship means that either we can eat
deadly nightshade salad, or banish potatoes from our
diet that problems start.”

‘Like it or not, it was Roosevelt who destroyed fascism while your intellectual forebears though that it was enough to say that they disapproved of something
for it to be gone.’

Isn’t this the kind of blah the neocons say with regards to ‘islamofascism’?

Martin:

Prio to World War II fascism was seen as the wave
of the future, while liberal democracy was on its way
out (and the fact is that it was in a serious crisis and
thre was doubt that it would survive). So was capitalism

After World War II fascism was a bad memory to be
forgotten, while liberal democracy was the way to go.

So, they did the job, didn’t they?

The contracepting, feminizing, sodomizing, pornographying culture of death are the fruit of liberal democracy, with cloning and universal genetic control by the ruling elite just around the corner.  Huxley’s Brave New World and That Hideous Strength of CS Lewis are hard upon us.  Yes, they did the job, didn’t they?

@Kirt Higdon

Well, where were the warriors who stood what you
believed for?  It was their job to oppose Nazi
paganism. Why didn’t they do it?

You want an outcome, you fight for it, and the
Christian warriors which you yearned for that would
set the world to rights were not available, were they?

What was available was Roosevelt and Churchill, with
all their flaws. If you wanted something better you
should have provided it, instead of bitching.

The world is full of people who sit in the cafe and
moan about all that is wrong in the world. The ones
who actually so something about it are few and far
between.

I correct myself, you are no Nazi apologist. You are
an apologist for the “sitting in your but and bitching”
position.

What makes you think I’ve never done anything to support my beliefs, Adriana.  I’ve saved lives at the doors of abortion clinics; I’ve served time in jail for that.  During the time of the Nazis, Catholic figures such as Pius XII saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews and other refugees and did it without slaughtering hundreds of thousands of German civilians.  You do sound - forgive me for saying so - more and more like a neo-con, with your attitude of kill-all-the-evil-doers-and-bomb-the-hell-out-of-their-countries-and-countrymen.

I do not doubt that, if put to the test you would
have done what so many other Catholics do, shelter
Jews and those persecuted.

But I know that you would also have prayed for the
Allied armies to get there as fast as possible to
chase the Nazi away so that everyone could get back to
their regular lives.

Unfortunately Christian self-sacrifice could only go
so far. After that you needed Allied armies.

So, do not bitch about the ones who provided them. If
they did not do the job as well as you’d like, at
least they took it on, when others thought that
things would get better all by themselves.

As for the war, granted that invading Russia was what
eventually did Hitler in, but it was very much a touch
and go affair. The situation was desperate for Stalin
for a while, and had a few things gone wrong, it would
all have been over. The material aid that the US gave
Stalin might well have provided the margin for victory.

You live in a world in which the Nazis were defeated
and you think that their defeat was pre-determined. It
was not. Western Civilization with all its defaults was
on a desperate struggle for survival, a struggle it
might well have lost.

As for my saying that Roosevelt and Churchill did not
have any other choice, what I meant, all other choices
were even worse.

The mistake in this discussion is not to realize that World War II was not an unique event but an extension of The Great War.  Had Germany and England settled that conflict with treaties, as was about to happen before our doughboys went “over there,” Hitler would never have come to power and America would have two strong allies today:  Germany and Japan; instead we have that comatose welfare recipient England and our arrogant little client state Israel to watch our flanks.  I’m for establishing a strong relationship with Iran and waiting for Germany to purge itself of the last vestiges of Adenauer-ism.

I am not personally acquainted with George Jr., but I can say that the other members of the family are, in fact, very respectable, and respectable people.

**Correction**

“..respectful and respectable..”