George W(oodrow Wilson) Bush

The American president holding the all-time record for an inability to pursue genuine US national security interests was formerly the one-time political science professor turned politician, Woodrow Wilson.

The Geek maintains that ole Woody has been replaced. By George W. Bush, one time playboy and part-time fighter jock turned politician.

There is irony to the situation. Both Woodrow and George were motivated in their successful quest to harm the interests and standing of the United States by the same driving force.

Both men gave ideology primacy over a realistic assessment of American national interests and American national security. Both men chased the same mirages, making the world safe for democracy and abating the nuisance of war.

Sure the details are different. That's the nature of history. Detailed differences but broad similarities if not identities.

Wilson ordered two invasions of Mexico. He ordered the Navy and Marines to Central America. Sent troops to revolutionary Russia twice. Worst of all, he sought American intervention in World War I in pursuit of his vision of a New World Order but leading instead to World War II. (He was also instrumental, if not critical in creating a country once known as Yugoslavia against the advice of an expert commission as well as dismembering the old Ottoman Empire, again against the advice of those who were experts on the Mideast.)

Not bad as a record of policies for today without a thought for tomorrow. Hard to beat.

However George W. Bush has done it. Let's go to the record. A misfought war in Afghanistan, which has served only to strengthen and spread the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Then there is the totally unnecessary war in Iraq, which has served only to increase the perception that the US is on an anti-Islamic crusade while frittering away American military capabilities and weakening the political will of the American public to make some hard choices and go through some necessary and very painful changes.

Worst of all, the Bush Administration has managed single-handedly and single-mindedly to do a fine job of starting a new confrontation with Russia. That represents a masterstroke of international relations that boggles the Geek's mind.

The first question is one of motivations. What was the reason which links all these stunning debacles which has cost the US most if not all of its international credibility and stature?

The short answer is ideology. The longer form is the current administration is full of neocons firmly convinced in the face of historical and cultural evidence that American style democracy replete with separation of church and state, ethnic and gender equality, liberal institutions, an independent judiciary and an affection for free-market economics can be successfully translated in a short time frame by force of arms.

In short, the current administration and its crew of neocon ninnies has updated and expanded the old Wilsonian dictum of teaching-the-Mexicans-to-elect-good-men.

In Afghanistan the administration was presented with two clear alternatives.

One was a sharp, short campaign directed to the end of killing the Taliban chieftan Omar, his henchmen and as many Taliban jihadists as possible along with bin Ladin, Zawahiri and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership cadre along with as many jihadists as possible and then getting the hell out. We would then let the Afghans sort out what came next. The goal was to abate a clear and obvious menace to the US. Not create a better Afghanistan.

The second envisaged creating a Little America in the deserts and mountains of the tribal country. This task would be accomplished by a few US troops on the ground, a huge passel of American firepower overhead, a bunch of local proxies from the various ethnic minorities and regiments of civilian contractors. Time was not of the essence.

We know which option Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and company took. We are watching how it turns out every day now, nearly seven years after the first bomb fell.

Eliminating Saddam Hussein was pure self-defeat in terms of real US national security interest. Under Saddam, admittedly a very un-nice person, Iraq along with Syria under Assad were watertight bulkheads against the stream of Islamist jihadists from points east. We didn't have to ask them, bribe them or threaten them. It was in the national interest of both Iraq and Syria to keep the uncontrollable jihadists out and to tightly control their own clients.

The toppling of Saddam along with the completely counterproductive alienation of Assad fils ended the blockade of the jihadists along with further destabilizing the Mideast. Other than the fact that Saddam was thoroughly unpleasant primarily to his own people and Assad's regime pursued policies in Lebanon in ways the current administration (and Israel) found annoying there is no justification for either the adventure in regime change or the alienation of Syria.

Neither has increased American national security. Both actions have lessened our security and weakened our capacities.

At this point the ideologues of the current administration would have given the Progressive internationalists of Wilson's day a run for the prize of foreign policy idiocy. But, the neocons had one more set of blunders to haul out to the disadvantage of the US.

Bush, et al, for reasons that escape explanation even by a psychiatrist, just had, absolutely had, to treat Russia as if it were a defeated, has-been power now prostrate in the rubble of a lost war, reduced to, at best, second class status. For years the current administration's tone in speaking to or about Russia alternated between patronising and condescending with occasional gusts of hectoring.

As the Geek has posted before on several occasions, the current administration failed to recognise the historic insecurity of Russia, its centuries of feeling massively inferior to the West, and its decades of seeing itself as inferior compared to the US. The current administration failed to treat Russia as the Great Power it believed itself to be--regardless of any reality.

It isn't so very hard to treat a second rate power as if it were actually of Great status. We did that for years and years with respect to France and even longer with our absurd pretense that Taiwan was really, really and truly China. Doing the same with Russia wouldn't have been nearly as difficult and the rewards would have been greater.

In the event, we ignored Russia's claims and stated interests regarding the independence of Kosovo. Then we made the catastrophic blunder of not taking the Kremlin's offer of using their ballistic missile warning radar in Azerbaijan.

(Yes, it wasn't as good a radar as the one we were going to build in the Czech Republic. But, we could have "partnered" with the Russians in upgrading theirs Sure, they would have stolen everything they could, but we would know just what they stole.)

Then, taking a handful of rock salt and rubbing into old wounds, the current administration loudly sang the praises of democracy (and NATO membership) in and for Georgia. This was complemented by a similar chorus on behalf of the Ukraine with its large Russian population and important Russian naval base.

The brilliant Bush team headed by the incomparable Decider Guy, even before the current Russo-Georgian contretemps, had gone a long way to resurrecting the corpse of the Cold War from the graveyard of history. Not even Woodrow Wilson could do the equivalent.

The next question is this. Who can better deal with the mess left by the current administration? The Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator (and Cook County machine pol) Barack Obama and his foreign policy "expert" running mate, Joe Biden, or the one time Navy zoomie and ever-so-muscular opponent, John McCain?

The Geek has his idea.