George W Bush, tragic character

[0007]

It is hard to label "tragic" anyone as cheerful and optimistic as President George W Bush. Perhaps more than any leader in history, Bush is a Christian. Religious conversion is the defining experience of his life, and it is in his nature to convert others.

snip....

The more Bush preaches idealism, the more the course of events pushes him towards imperial methods. The sort of "Iraqification" Washington has in mind does not differ much from what I foresaw in early October: "He wins who best can tolerate instability. Once upon a time the British were quite good at that. They ruled India with a tiny civil service and a small army, recruiting local forces and using them to excellent effect in a fragmented, multi-ethnic sub-continent. In essence it means recruiting Turks to patrol Basra, Kurds to patrol Tikrit, Shi'ites to occupy Baghdad, while offering bribes, territory and other inducements to Iraq's neighbors to meddle....

snip..... One might say that the American tragedy is the incapacity of Americans to understand the tragedy of other peoples. America can cherry-pick out of the nations those individuals who wish to be Americans, but it cannot force back on the nations its own character.

More.....in complete form.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK25Ak01.html

[izzie]

1. Nice read. This paper has some good items.

n/t

[0007]

2. It has a lot more than our rags!

Ain't it a shame that one has to go out of the country to find out what the world thinks?

[Name removed]

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[Martin Eden]

11. and the winner is....?

....the side that prints the most articles?

[0007]

12. Could anything of substance that contained much truth be found,

in those articles praising this man? True, one would not have to leave the country to find such non-sense. But to find praise for Mr. Bush outside of the United States is nearly impossible.

[pippin]

3. Often think of Isaih Berlin

when I think of Bush, Bushites and Liberals:

"In one of his most famous essays, 'The Hedgehog and The Fox' (1953), Berlin focused on the tension between monist and pluralist visions of the world and history, and drew the line between different authors and philosophers. As the Greek poet Archilochus said: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." The Hedgehog needs only one principle, that directs its life."
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/berlin.htm
and from Berlin himself:

"Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are in sole possession of the truth: especially about how to live, what to be & do—& those who differ from them are not merely mistaken but wicked or mad & need restraining or suppressing. It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right, have a magical eye which sees the truth & that others cannot be right if they disagree."

[0007]

4. I find Berlin extremely interesting. Are there any recording of him?

"Virginia Woolf, who first met him at a dinner in New College in November 1933, said that he looked like a swarthy Portuguese Jew and talked with the vivacity and assurance of a young Maynard Keynes."<\b>

[lapauvre]

9. Amen

You said it all.

[teryang]

6. Insight into literature but not character

The dim son of the former president is a brutal self centered egoist. His feigned born again affect is a complete pose. The Discourses are the operative text and no machination or lie is beneath him. He is like the devout christian who wouldn't hesitate to put a little poison in an opponent's drink or a little anthrax in his mail.

I also expect that the CIA analyst would know something of Sophocles and these other allusions. It is operator, not the analyst who hasn't read them. We can be assured that the dim son hasn't either. Men of steel do not trouble themselves with the effete pastimes.

I find the tone supercilious and misleading. Some references seem on point, others completely off base. I guess the reader is supposed to feel stupid after reading this.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. Yes, a tragic figure...

like Caligula. Or Nero. Or Richard III.

[Gin]

8. he is tragic...he has been handed a golden opportunity....to do wonderful

things as president...instead he serves the wealthy, and the gods of power and greed.

He has harmed his spiritual progress by pandering to the richest common denominator. How sad!

[0007]

10. I think you're giving junior too much credit for even coming close..

to being a spiritual person. His progress as a human being in this life is so subtle 'tis hardly visible for even the dullest and apathetic.

[littlejoe]

13. The only thing tragic about Bush is

what he has done to America, and it's stature as a leading force of democratic ideals in the eyes of the world.

[littlejoe]

14. If Bush is a christian, then I'm the sixth Beatle