Category Archives: Bush

Updated: Bush Should Slither On His Belly to Bashar

The White House is furious that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has traveled to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Assad is not the only Middle East leader Pelosi is speaking to. Omigod! Diplomacy!

Trust Pelosi to give as good as she gets; she has pointed to the hypocrisy of the administration, having said nothing about the “the recent visits by Republican members of Congress.” The U.S. also participated “in a regional security conference in Baghdad last month that also included representatives from Iran and Syria.”

But here’s the real difficulty, as the press sees it: “The United States has poor relations with Syria, accusing it of interfering in Iraq.” Come to think of it, Bush, like the snake he is, should be slithering on his belly to Bashar to thank him for serving as the US’s pressure relief valve vis-a -vis Iraq.

Although the cable cretins don’t bother to report about them, and the administration smears reporters who try —millions of Iraqis have been displaced and uprooted in the aftermath of our invasion. Syria has been incredibly generous to these poor refugees. Together, Jordan and Syria have taken in 1.6 million fleeing Iraqi refugees. “On 20 October, Ron Redmond, UNHCR chief spokesman, said some 40,000 Iraqis are now arriving in Syria each month.” Take into account that these figures date back to October 2006.

Pelosi ought to thank the Syrian president for extending to the Iraqi refugees the use of its public schools and the health care system, although they “have to travel out of the country every six months to renew their visas and cannot hold work permits, resulting in high unemployment.” [I’m sure they don’t risk popping back to Iraq when visa renewal falls due, despite McCain’s assurances.]

IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) reports that “the majority of Iraqi refugees in Syria live in the suburbs of Damascus, in deteriorating socio-economic conditions.” That’s where Pelosi should be headed.

Update: Of course, American interests in the Middle East are not to be conflated with Israel’s. The two countries have completely different interests in the region (the one “lives” there, so to speak; the other often makes life impossible for those who live there). The fact that Bush should be speaking to Bashar doesn’t mean that Israel ought to be doing the same. Israel would be in better shape if it didn’t aim above all to please or emulate the US. Syria wants Israel to return territory acquired due to Syria’s aggression. Israel should reject this “option” if it cares to survive. However, time and again Israel has shown that it is no more than an American satellite.

Further reading:

From Russia With (Less Than) Love

Who’s the Boss — Israel or the U.S.?

Slouching Towards Socialism

Bush, Socialism

“Bully for Bush. The president has achieved another milestone in his mission to bridge the philosophical gap between conservatism and left-liberalism. ‘The Decider’ recently endorsed the socialist concept of a wealth gap, and promised to do his level best to level the playing field through the familiar distribution schemes…””A more meaningful measure of economic health is the ability to afford basic necessities: food, housing, clothing, hygiene, health care, telephone and transportation, to use the Fraser Institute’s gauge. More crucially, the freer a society, the less likely government is to placate the envious by taking from those they envy. In unfree societies, that’s precisely what governments do: pacify the multitudes by mulcting the few…”

“Whether he is addressing the ‘wealth gap,’ galvanizing government to ‘create jobs’; capitulating to climate-change crazies or rabbiting on about renewable energy —Bush just cannot tell his left from his right.”The excerpts are from my new column, “Slouching Toward Socialism.” It leads the Commentary Page on WorldNetDaily today. Discuss.

Deadly Decider

Bush, Government

Here’s what another, far-less dangerous, Decider had to say about war powers:

“No offensive expedition of importance can be taken until after they [Congress] have deliberated on the subject and authorized such a measure.” —George Washington

It goes without saying that having the cockroaches in Congress debate something, guarantees nothing.

The deadly Decider is still on the loose and dangerous.

Gene’s Healey’s paper, “The Arrogance of Power Reborn,” is well-worth reading, but will probably need to be updated with Genghis Bush’s exploits.

To paraphrase the French political scientist Pierre Rosanvallon, the Bushies speak like Tocqueville but think and act like Robespierre.

Bush Babbles About Government Job Creation

Bush, Economy, Government

From last Night:

The Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs.

Question: The Iraqi government has its own money? $10 billion of it?

In any event, government job creation schemes are predicated on government taxing, borrowing or inflating the money supply. Such programs are politically popular because they are visible. However, for every job “created” by government, an unidentifiable job will, tit-for-tat, be destroyed in the private sector.

Fox News, keen to hype this good-news story, may broadcast images of earnest Iraqi men and women put to work by Nuri Kamal al-Maliki (read the American taxpayer). Invisible will be thoseÂ thrown out of work because private economic activity has been crowded out by taxing or borrowing to finance these job programs. Government borrowing (and Iraq is all about borrowing: American borrowing) serves to reduce capital available to the private sector (Iraqi, Americanâ€”your choice, whoeverÂ you believe is really funding this latest scheme). A further diminution of assets occurs when government expands the money supply and causes inflation in order to finance job creation schemes.

Creating good, long-lasting employment lies in producing goods or services for which there is a legitimate consumer demand. A rise in consumer demand for a product, reflected in relative higher prices, galvanizes business to hire more workers and produce more of the commodity. Hence jobs in the private sector are real jobs because they are sustained by consumer preferences. Unsustainable government make-work schemes merely usurp the wishes and needs of consumers, and substitute them with the fancies of bureaucrats, who, in turn, are beholden to their political masters.

Sustainable jobs in Iraq will be created by the private sector. For that, ordinary Iraqis require peace and the rule of law. These preconditions are unlikely in the chaos of a civil war, created by Bush’s adventure in the region.

Bush remains oblivious to an immutable principle, once understood by conservatives: Top-down central planningâ€”economic or politicalâ€”is doomed to fail.