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Bush’s Learning Problem
 When
I was a kid learning to play
chess, I couldn’t wait to move my queen. She was the most
powerful piece on the board,  so I wasted no time using her to
attack.
Guess what? On his next turn, my opponent captured her. It hurt
my little feelings, but those were the rules. I soon learned to take into
account the danger that if I exposed her too soon, I would lose her. When you
move a piece, you have to think about how your opponent may respond to it.
I
guess President Bush never learned that lesson.
A
few years ago, he was using expressions like regime change, axis
of evil, global democratic revolution, and ridding the earth
of tyranny without stopping to think how his opponents might react. He
apparently thought they would realize he meant business and fold.
Slight miscalculation. As a North Korean general told an American
reporter, “We see what you’re doing to Iraq. Well, you’re
not going to do it to us!”
It
seems that Kim Jong Il, a pretty evil sort of guy, wasn’t in any mood
for regime change, or democratic revolution, so he drew his own practical
conclusion from Bush’s words: “I’d better get me some
nukes!”
I’m not saying he was right, but I see his point. You
shouldn’t need a high-tech crystal ball to predict that if you threaten
to overthrow all the tyrants on earth, some of them are going to take
countermeasures. Bush may not be the brightest bulb on the circuit, but why
didn’t anyone in his circle of geopolitical wizards foresee what his
tough talk would provoke? Are they flabbergasted that North Korea
accelerated its weapons program and may now have barged uninvited into the
exclusive “nuclear club”? The regime that was once to the
international community what Pluto is to the solar system may suddenly
have acquired new stature.
Bush
has responded with his usual resolve: this is “unacceptable.” Do
tell! Well, we sort of knew that. Even the Communist Chinese, also members
of the club — not to mention the South Koreans and Japanese —
are alarmed at the prospect of having a nuclear-armed crackpot next door.
Condoleezza Rice is probably taking the news pretty hard too.
![[Breaker quote for Bush's Learning Problem: Why his enemies keep surprising him]](2006breakers/061012.gif) If
only Kim had known Bush would find his nukes “unacceptable,” he might
have changed his ways and held free elections! But it may be too late for
that now. Too bad. It would have been inspiring to see millions of emaciated
North Koreans triumphantly holding up purple forefingers as they emerged
from the voting booths. Alas, the prospects for democracy in North Korea
remain, for the time being, dim.
This
is only the latest achievement for Bush’s foreign policy, matching his
transformation of the “new” (and democratic) Middle East. Now
that the Iraqi people’s aspirations to freedom have been realized, it
would seem that there are no more worlds to conquer. If only the liberal
media would report the positive developments, instead of making it sound as
if the streets of liberated Baghdad are unsafe!
William Schwenck Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan, once complained
to the president of a railway company, “Sunday morning, though
recurring at frequent and well-established intervals, always seems to take
this railway by surprise.” And the most predictable patterns of human
behavior, in the same way, always seem to take the Bush administration by
surprise. For it, as for Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is always another
day, and it never allows the past to darken its irrepressible optimism about
the future.
Finally, the question must be faced: Is this man all there? If Kim is
crazy, what is Bush? This is not a jeer. Experience — reality —
seems to teach him nothing. It’s beyond political ideology; maybe
it’s a religious delusion reinforced by an inner circle of sycophants
— “the madness of King George,” as it were.
Bush’s actions and policies get increasingly hard to defend.
Old allies edge away from him. People who wish him well hardly know what to
say. New revelations, as in Bob Woodward’s State of
Denial, confirm the disturbing impression of inflexible dysfunction
and refusal (or inability) to contemplate alternatives. It’s
symptomatic that he can’t imagine how the world looks to his
enemies, whom he can describe only in rigidly moralistic terms, as if they
must know how evil they are.
Sensible statesmen don’t act this way. Neither do normal
people.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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