I haven’t said much about foreign affairs lately, so let’s catch up a bit. The really big news, of course, is the death of Qaddafi in Libya. Some are touting it as a major step forward for “democracy.” While I’m glad the delusional tyrant is gone, don’t count me among those who believe the future is rosy in that part of the world:

Change is not always synonymous with progress.

Speaking of change, that would be nice for Venezuela. Yet it appears Hugo Chavez is hanging on, to the detriment of the country he rules:

And then there’s Iraq. President Obama has declared our mission complete by the end of this year, and most troops will be removed. While I am always glad to keep our soldiers out of harm’s way, this is a bittersweet withdrawal:

I realize we can’t stay forever, and that Iraq must stand on its own, but will this now be a vacuum that Iran will fill? How can that be a better scenario? No easy answers in the Middle East, but it would be tragic if Iran now becomes the neighborhood bully. What’s Obama’s plan about that? Or is this primarily a campaign strategy? Forgive me if my cynicism is showing.

Chapter eight of Mark Steyn’s America Alone has so much substance that I don’t wish to demean it by trying to force it all into one post. Let’s just cover the first part of the chapter today. The title? “The Unipole Apart: America vs. Everyone Else.”

Steyn begins the chapter with this question: “Can America win its ‘long war’”? He then proceeds to offer reasons to doubt the fire within America to maintain such vigilance. Keeping in mind that he wrote this before the “surge,” and before Iraq was relegated to the back pages of the New York Times, he nevertheless hits a nerve with his analysis because the root of the problem he perceives remains.

Four months after the fall of Baghdad, America, he says, was viewed as the “strong horse.” But that changed, he believes.

It was a range of factors, from the West’s defeatist media to the Bush administration’s wish to be seen as, so to speak, a compassionate crusader. Nice idea. But to the Arab mindset there’s no such thing. So the compassion got read by the locals not as cultural respect but as weakness. And the quagmiritis diagnosed by the media from Day One suggested that a hyperpower of historically unprecedented dominance didn’t have the stomach for a body count that in the course of a year added up to little more than a quiet week’s internal policing for Saddam. By comparison, some four million people died in the Congo in the couple of years either side of the turn of the century—and how many books or TV investigations have you seen on that subject?

“America is extremely good at destroying tanks,” Steyn comments. But that seems to be as far as it goes. The enemy in Iraq was not convinced that he was “finished.” Why not? He saw the squeamishness of American policy.

Washington made a conscious choice to give every Iraqi the benefit of the doubt, including the fake surrenderers who ambushed the U.S. Marines in Nasiriyah. The main victims of Western squeamishness in those few weeks in the spring of 2003 turned out to be not American or coalition troops but the Iraqi civilians who two years later were providing the principal target for “insurgents.”

America was a Gulliver that had awesome power, but lost the willingness to use it. That type of Gulliver becomes “ensnared by more motivated Lilliputians.” Steyn continues,

Do you remember when that statue of Saddam came down? It proved to be hollow. The Islamists think Western Civilization’s like that: tough exterior, but empty inside; protected by a layer of hard steel—the U.S. military—there’s nothing underneath.

What trend does Steyn see? He says all we have to do is look at what he calls “one trivial example”:

Just before Christmas 2003, Muslim community leaders in California applauded the decision of the Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano to change the name of its football team form the Crusaders to the less culturally insensitive Lions.

Meanwhile, twenty miles up the road in Irvine, the schedule for the Muslim Football League’s New Year tournament promised to bring together some of the most exciting Muslim football teams in Orange County: the Intifada, the Mujahideen, the Saracens, and the Sword of Allah.

That’s the spirit. I can’t wait for the California sporting calendar circa 2015: the San Diego Jihadi vs. the Oakland Culturally Sensitives, the Malibu Hezbollah vs. the Santa Monica Inoffensives, the Pasadena Sword of the Infidel Slayer vs. the Bakersfield Self-Deprecators, the San Jose Decapitators vs. the Berkeley Mutually Respectfuls.

Unbelievable? Too far-fetched? Don’t count on it.

More from Steyn in a future post.

I suppose I need to say something more about Egypt. Since I last wrote about the situation there, much has changed—not the least the abrupt departure of Hosni Mubarak, just hours after he said he wasn’t going to step down until September. Well, September arrived earlier than expected.

Then there was James Clapper, the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence, commenting in a House Intelligence Committee hearing that the Muslim Brotherhood is not necessarily an organization to fear. Here are Clapper’s precise words:

The term “Muslim Brotherhood” … is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera. … In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.

What are we to make of such an assessment?

This is the same Muslim Brotherhood that spawned Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. This is the organization that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and to the setting up of an Islamic caliphate from Spain to Indonesia.

This is a terrorist organization.

For now, the army is in charge of Egypt, and it has been trained by and has ties to the U.S. military. The hope is that it will be able to maintain control and methodically lead the nation into representative government. Of course, the larger problem is that the people of Egypt are not practiced in the art of self-government. Indeed, it can be questioned whether any majority-Muslim nation can handle a legitimately representative form of government, given the Muslim mentality. Some say it has worked in Turkey, but there are signs it is breaking down there. We have tried to install workable government in Iraq; the result is still uncertain.

What of Egypt? Why should it be any different? I fear it won’t be, and if the attempt fails, the Muslim Brotherhood is waiting to pick up the pieces. In fact, it already has received the proverbial “place at the table.”

The next few weeks and months will be critical, not only for Egypt, not only for Israel and the entire Middle East, but critical for the United States as well.

Over Christmas, I took the opportunity to read former President Bush’s new book Decision Points. I did so for two reasons: first, I really wanted to “hear” what he had to say; second, as an American historian, I need to be up to speed on how this former president defends his actions.

Let me begin with what I consider to be its strengths.

The first strength is Bush’s informal writing style. You get the impression this is exactly how he would express himself if you were sitting across the table from him, asking him questions. There is a personableness in the writing that is attractive. You connect with the man.

Second, I appreciate his unapologetic appeal to his Christian faith as his motivation for not only his policies but for all of his life. He does not artificially separate faith from action, personal or governmental.

Third, I highly recommend his chapters dealing with the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent War on Terror. He takes the reader through that awful day in American history as seen through the eyes of the one most responsible for an American response. One understands how difficult it was for him to know what he should do next, yet he explains clearly why he came to his decisions on how to deal with terrorism. The title of the book is appropriate. He does focus on key decisions.

Probably the most significant decision for his presidency was whether to go forward into Iraq. This chapter is a step-by-step analysis of all the twists and turns of the diplomatic thrust to avoid war, and then the rationale for finally giving the go-ahead. Bush is particularly effective in detailing the actions of Saddam and the manner in which he thumbed his nose at international law and his manifold violations of the conditions he had agreed to at the end of the Gulf War.

Bush also clearly explains why he thought WMDs existed within Iraq. He goes to great pains to document the intelligence regarding WMDs, and just as great pains to show that nearly all congressional Democrats at the time agreed with this conclusion. He includes vote tallies on the congressional resolutions that gave him permission to use the military and identifies key Democrats who favored this action—the very ones who later accused him of lying.

So, as a primer on the rationale for how to conduct a War on Terror, this book is invaluable. I highly recommend these chapters. Even some of Bush’s most vociferous critics have had to come to grips with the necessity of his policies.

It’s on the domestic side of his decisions where I have more fundamental disagreements. He does a fine job of explaining the need for tax cuts and often advocates the vitality of the free market. Yet he then goes on to offer an apologetic for why he had to interfere with the market, especially with the big bailout at the end of his presidency. He says he did it to save the market ultimately, but I don’t find his logic persuasive. I believe he allowed some of his advisors to pull him away from fundamental principles.

Neither does Bush have a great appreciation or commitment to federalism. He sees a need and wants to get the federal goverment involved to solve the problem: No Child Left Behind and the prescription drug bill added onto Medicare are two of the most egregious examples. While I’m sure he is fond of the Constitution, I wish he had been more devoted to following it.

So, yes, I do have criticisms of some of his decisions. Yet one can’t read this book without coming away with a sense of the basic decency of the man. That comes across repeatedly.

George Bush is coming to my university this March as part of our National Leadership Forum. I plan to be there to hear him speak, along with his former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. I will do so with sincere gratitude for his prosecution of a war on terror that is essential to the future of this nation. I will also do so out of respect for a Christian brother who tried to do his best in a very trying time.

President Obama has announced that the Iraq War has ended. I hope he’s right, but I can’t say I have much confidence in his ability to discern such things. He did call former president Bush before making his televised speech. That was nice. He even commented that though he disagreed with the former president on the war that Bush was a genuine American who cared for the country and the troops. At least he refrained this time from the blame game. I was concerned the speech might go something like this instead:

Even though he kept himself from blaming Bush publicly this time, he did still take credit for bringing the troops home, neglecting to mention that it was the Bush plan for removing the troops that he was following. He also neglected to mention something else:

Now it’s time to put all this behind us. We’re supposed to focus on other things now, not that really expensive war:

The numbers tell the true story. Was the war expensive? Absolutely. Is it to blame for our current economic mess? Absolutely not. Obama and the congressional Democrats have figured out how to dwarf war spending many times over. Wasting $862 billion in one year is a new record. And look what it has accomplished:

But we’re supposed to believe the economy is heading in the right direction:

Words have lost their real meaning.