Is Bush the man to carry out the Bush doctrine?

UPDATE 3:

Skeptics out there might take a gander at Dean for America: Homeland Security where Dean says:

Homeland Security starts abroad. Governor Dean would increase military, intelligence, and police focus on offensive operations against terrorists operating overseas.

Sounds like the Bush Doctrine to me. I think Dr. Dean might surprise a lot of people.

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UPDATE 2: Headline from 12/25 NYT -- Dean, Under Attack, Revives Feisty Style

I like.

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UPDATE: I just heard Tom Friedman on public TV tonight. (Some news show; I can never remember their title.) In part he spoke about Poland. He pointed out that Poland and the Poles are among America's few friends in Europe. The Poles like the USA, he said, and for more than Coca-Cola and Nike. They even like GW. Moreover, there is an enormous population in the USA of Polish heritage. Yet the Bush team spurns Poland -- one of our few friends in Europe. It makes me wonder how good a politician GW really is.

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I read how the US is treating the Poles here, also noticed by this guy. Of course I don't know military isues; whether the Polish request (above) was justified etc etc is way above my pay-grade. But the underlying article which promts the posts above -- here -- raises the question whether the Bush team knows what to do with the military victory we have gained.

Then I wonder whether Dean's trump card might be that Bush lacks the gravitas for the job and is not the best President to further his own Bush doctrine i.e. "taking the war to the enemy" which I think is not a half-bad strategy at all. I like Bush but he seems to be groping. Dean is a pugnacious fellow and far tougher. Part proof? Like Clinton, Dean is already attracting the frenzy of the extreme right who fear Dean's potential. much as they feared Clinton's.

Dean's question/statement about whether we are more secure now than before the Iraq war resonates. As I tell my fellow Seattleites who never saw a public good which they didn't want to buy, "there are a thousand good things -- the test of a smart leader is to know which ones to do and in what order." The jury will be out for a while on whether we can facilitate a turn-around in Iraq. Yes, the war has had enormous benefits for the Iraquis and we should ackowledge that. Yes Qadaffi has been forced to do something.

(And btw whether Operation Freedom has had much to do with Libya's actions, is not clear. Christopher Hitchens with his typical bluster, says yes. Juan Cole who actually knows about Libya, teaches about it, says no. And here is another example of how people (and this is human nature) who really don't much about a subject will seize on the opinion of someone else who doesn't know very much to justify their own opinion. I am not really laughing at Roger Kimball so much as laughing with him as no doubt I do stuff just as self-fulfilling as he is doing here i.e. looking for people who agree with me as sources of information. I mean I hope Kimball is correct about the positive impacts of GW's Iraq Adventure but citing Christopher Hitchens on a matter of fact as opposed to opinion seems sorta humorous.)

But one undeniable fact is that homeland security is now at Orange Alert, and in the very same week as Bush is supposed to have clinched some big deals. So I just look around me and answer-- for the moment -- Dean's question based on my commonsense.

Comments

[TM Lutas]

Yes, there is a lot of suck it up that's going on and it's not just Poland. The honest truth was said recently by Steven Den Beste when he remarked that the US could win 10 wars but that 8 of them would have to be nuclear. We're stiffing our friends and paying off the neutral to enemies simply because we don't want to fire up war number 3, the first one we'd have to use nukes in.

Poland, on the other hand, has achieved certain compensations. When Germany started sniffing around trying to climb back into Washington's good graces, supposedly they asked what military role they could fulfill. They were told that they could send troops to serve in the Polish sector under Polish command. The Germans were mortified. You can't eat german mortification, but I have no doubt that this one episode justified a heck of a lot of the expense.

We're likely to get out of our money and troop jam sometime in the next two years. Poland will come and collect their IOUs in good time and on their own terms. And for such stalwart service they should be recompensed generously and with a glad heart.

[Yehudit]

At least Bush acknowledges Poland's assistance, unlike Kerry. Poland wasn't happy with that. And Poland maybe getting all sorts of deals we don't know about.

[bryan]

Bush will be gone soon and then your economy and dollar will start to strengthen, that is if he doesnt start another war in the mean time..