Good analysis. When W was elected, I thought it was great that he had Cheney and Rumsfeld because they had been in HW’s administration and I thought that had gone exceedingly well foreign policy-wise. What I did not know was that both Cheney and Rumsfeld were either restraining themselves or being restrained during HW’s term and they wer…
Good analysis. When W was elected, I thought it was great that he had Cheney and Rumsfeld because they had been in HW’s administration and I thought that had gone exceedingly well foreign policy-wise. What I did not know was that both Cheney and Rumsfeld were either restraining themselves or being restrained during HW’s term and they were unchained during W’s term. In other words, they weren’t following their true POV with Bush Sr, and they could unleash what they really wanted to do under Bush Jr.
Wolfowitz was a disaster from A to Z. I also remember reading in Foreign Affairs a long article about the guys who planned the debacle in Iraq under W, and found out that virtually NONE OF THEM had any real experience in the Middle East and that a lot of their ideas/plans originated in their PhD thesis in school. The Iraq war gave these guys a chance to try out their theories in real life. And guess what? The theories didn’t work IRL. Another shocker from those Foreign Affairs articles was to find out how many, if not most, of the people sent to Iraq to run the CPA from the Green Zone had to get a Passport in order to go to Iraq because THEY DIDN’T HAVE A PASSPORT PRIOR TO THE WAR (!).
We sent a whole bunch of intellectuals with PhDs and no real world experience, who had never left the country, to run a post-war Middle Eastern Arab Muslim country, and it was a disaster. This was the genesis, the beginning, of the isolationism we are seeing writ large in Trump and the current iteration of the GOP. It may also be why Bush Jr kept his mouth shut during the past election.
During his first term, Dubya farmed out foreign policy to Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think he came to realize his mistake and changed course in his second term, firing Rumsfeld and sidelining Cheney. Unfortunately, his new team had its own problems. The only Bush 43 foreign policy success that comes to mind is his effort to fight AIDS in Africa.
Good analysis. When W was elected, I thought it was great that he had Cheney and Rumsfeld because they had been in HW’s administration and I thought that had gone exceedingly well foreign policy-wise. What I did not know was that both Cheney and Rumsfeld were either restraining themselves or being restrained during HW’s term and they were unchained during W’s term. In other words, they weren’t following their true POV with Bush Sr, and they could unleash what they really wanted to do under Bush Jr.
Wolfowitz was a disaster from A to Z. I also remember reading in Foreign Affairs a long article about the guys who planned the debacle in Iraq under W, and found out that virtually NONE OF THEM had any real experience in the Middle East and that a lot of their ideas/plans originated in their PhD thesis in school. The Iraq war gave these guys a chance to try out their theories in real life. And guess what? The theories didn’t work IRL. Another shocker from those Foreign Affairs articles was to find out how many, if not most, of the people sent to Iraq to run the CPA from the Green Zone had to get a Passport in order to go to Iraq because THEY DIDN’T HAVE A PASSPORT PRIOR TO THE WAR (!).
We sent a whole bunch of intellectuals with PhDs and no real world experience, who had never left the country, to run a post-war Middle Eastern Arab Muslim country, and it was a disaster. This was the genesis, the beginning, of the isolationism we are seeing writ large in Trump and the current iteration of the GOP. It may also be why Bush Jr kept his mouth shut during the past election.
During his first term, Dubya farmed out foreign policy to Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think he came to realize his mistake and changed course in his second term, firing Rumsfeld and sidelining Cheney. Unfortunately, his new team had its own problems. The only Bush 43 foreign policy success that comes to mind is his effort to fight AIDS in Africa.