Psssst! The Republicans and Chinese Communists (“Chi-Coms”) have something in common.
They both much preferred the foreign policy of George W. Bush to that of Barack Obama.
It’s one of the many fascinating revelations offered in Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Uses of America Power.
The author is David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Early in 2011, Sanger had lunch at the Central Party School outside Beijing. This is where the party’s leadership debates questions that are thought too controversial to air in public.
A retired general in the People’s Liberation Army sat down next to Sanger and, in a relaxed moment of candor, said:
“I sat through many meetings of the People’s Liberation Army in the 80s and 90s where we tried to imagine what your military forces would look like in 10 to 20 years.
“But frankly, we never thought that you would spend trillions of dollars and so much time tied down in Afghanistan and the Middle East. We never imagined that as a choice you would make.”
Chinese military parade
And, writes Sanger: “Not so secretly, the Chinese were delighted by the Bush-era wars. The longer the United States was bogged down trying to build democracies in foreign lands, the less capable it was of competing in China’s backyard.
“But now that America was emerging from a lost decade in the Middle East, the Chinese began to ask: How should China respond? With cooperation, confrontation, or something in-between?”
And the Chinese were equally thrilled that the United States had squandered so much of its treasury during the eight-year Bush Presidency.
In the decade following 9/11, the Pentagon went on an unprecedented spending binge. The defense budget grew by 67%, to levels 50% higher than it had been per average year during the Cold War.
According to Sanger: “An estimate [the New York Times] put together for the tenth anniversary of the [9/11] attacks suggested that the United States had spent at least $3.3 trillion.”
These monies had gone on
- securing the country;
- invading and trying to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq; and
- caring for wounded American soldiers.
“Put another way,” writes Sanger, “for every dollar al-Qaeda spent destroying the World Trade Center and attacking the Pentagon, America had spent $6.6 million in response.
“The annual Pentagon budget of $700 billion was equivalent to the combined spending of the next twenty largest military powers….
“The world had come to expect that America would underwrite global security, regardless of the cost. Obama was determined to change that mind-set.”
In short, America became financially and militarily vulnerable during the Presidency of George W. Bush.
And this flatly contradicts the standard Republican line: Obama is a weak President–and is betraying us to the (pick one or both) Muslims/Communists.
It also speaks volumes that the two most important members of the George W. Bush administration declined to attend the 2012 Republican National Convention. Just as they declined to attend the 2016 one.
That, of course, meant former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
And why was that? Perhaps it’s because polls show that a majority of Americans continue
- To blame Bush for lying the country into a needless, bloody and expensive war with Iraq.
- To blame him for presiding over the 2008 Wall Street meltdown.
- To see Dick Cheney as the Dr. Strangelovian manipulator of George W. Bush.
Even former President George H.W. Bush said he wouldn’t attend the convention.
It’s possible that Bush, Sr., didn’t want to serve as a reminder that his son left the White House with the lowest popularity rating of any modern President.
And that was just fine with those planning to attend the convention–especially its nominee-to-be, Mitt Romney.
They wanted to do with George W. Bush what Nikita Khrushchev and his fellow Communists did with the embarrassing Joseph Stalin: Bury him far from public view.
Romney certainly didn’t want the viewing audience to be reminded that the United States sharply declined in wealth and prestige during the eight-year reign of George W. Bush and a Republican Congress.
Romney and his fellow conventioneers also didn’t want to remind the country of something else: That Obama has spent most of his own Presidency trying to undo the harm his predecessor did, in both foreign and domestic policy.
Thus, now approaching the 2016 election, the Republican party finds itself torn.
Its leaders want Americans to believe that Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the Republic. Donald Trump, its nominee for President, has even accused Obama of being “the founder of ISIS.”
This ignores that ISIS didn’t join Al-Qaeda until October, 2004–more than a year after Bush invaded Iraq. And that it was Bush’s destruction of Iraqi stability under Saddam Hussein that enabled ISIS to spread like a cancer throughout Iraq and Syria.
So while Republicans rail that Obama is the worst President in American history, they know that most Americans believe that title goes to the last Republican one.
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FOR REPUBLICANS: A WARNING ABOUT CLASS WARFARE
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 26, 2018 at 12:07 amA 2012 book offers timely advice for Republicans who believe that serving the interests of the wealthiest 1% will maintain their party in power.
It’s Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising use of American Power, by David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Divided into five sections, it dramatically covers the following subjects:
Afghanistan and Pakistan – How Obama sought to disengage from the former while readying plans to occupy the latter should its growing nuclear arsenal pose a threat to America.
Iran – To prevent the Iranians from building nuclear weapons, Obama authorized a malevolent virus to be inserted into that nation’s computer system.
Drones and Cyber – American drone attacks have wiped out much of Al Qaeda’s leadership—but increasingly strained U.S. relations with Pakistan. And while America has launched cyber attacks on Iran, it remains vulnerable to similar attacks—especially by China.
Arab Spring – America was totally surprised by the popular revolts sweeping the Arab world. And Obama had to balance showing support for the revolutionaries against jeopardizing America’s longtime Arab—and dictatorial—allies.
China and North Korea – The United States found itself financially strained to meet its worldwide military commitments. This forced Obama to use a both persuasion and containment against both these potential adversaries.
And in its section on the Arab Spring, there is an unintended warning to Republicans and their Right-wing followers.
David Sanger (Copyright, Creative Commons)
Sanger analyzes why the vast majority of Egyptians felt no solidarity with Hosni Mubarak, the general/dictator who ruled Egypt from 1981 ti 2911.
Mubarak came to power after Islamic fundamentalists assassinated President Anwar Sadat during a military review. They believed that Sadat had committed the unpardonable crime of signing a peace treaty with Israel.
Mubarack often warned Washington that only he could prevent Egypt from being dominated by fundamentalist, anti-American groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
But, writes Sanger, he achieved the very opposite:
“By leaving his citizens without a social safety net, by failing to invest in the country’s crumbling infastructure…he paved the way for the Brotherhood’s success….
“In a land where the state delivers so little, even the smallest [medical] clinic” as provided by the Brotherhood “will win respect and loyalty.
“So when it came time to vote, most Egyptians decided to cast their ballots for candidates they knew could provide something—Islamist or not, it almost didn’t matter….”
Hosni Mubarak (Copyright, Presidenza della Repubblica)
One such Brotherhood supporter, who grew up in the poor, agricultural region of Beni Suef, was quoted as saying:
“The Muslim Brotherhood came into my village, and brought lorries of fruits and vegetables,” selling them at discounted prices. “They supported medical clinics”–and thus won the hearts of the people they served.
Fast forward to Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican Presidential nominee, and his vision for America.
As Romney saw it, questions about Wall Street scandals and income inequality were driven only by “envy.”
On January 11, 2012, after winning the New Hampshire primary, Romney appeared on NBC’s “The Today Show.” Host Matt Lauer noted that many Americans were concerned “about the distribution of wealth and power in this country.”
“I think it’s about envy,” replied Romney, whose own fortune has been conservatively estimated at $250 million. “I think it’s about class warfare.
“I think when you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent… you’ve opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of ‘one nation under God.’”
Romney added that it wasn’t necessary to have a public debate about the inequality of wealth distribution in this country.
“I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like,” Romney said. “But the President has made this part of his campaign rally.
“Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it’ll fail.”
Romney did not mention that, in 2007, the richest 1% of the American populace—of which he is a member—owned 34.6% of the country’s total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%.
Thus, the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country’s wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%.
Romney claimed that Obama’s focus on this issue was just “part of his campaign rally.”
Clearly, now-ousted rulers like Mubarak and Muammar Quaddaffi believed “it’s fine to talk about these things” like vast differences in wealth “in quiet rooms.” That is, so long as they and their 1% rich supporters were doing the talking.
But over time their remoteness from the vast majority of their impoverished fellow citizens sealed their doom. When enough people broke into open revolt, even the military decided to change sides.
Mubarack was forced to resign, and Quaddaffi—after waging war against his own people—was captured and murdered.
If Romney’s—and now Donald Trump’s—vision of “everything for the 1%” is allowed to prevail, they and their ultra-privileged supporters may truly learn the lessons of class warfare.
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