What did a GWB Presidency look like?

[The Minsky Moment]

There's a very famous moment in the 08 campaign when a very fine person at a GOP rally starting shouting nonsense about Obama being a Kenyan Islamic terrorist and McCain made a point of saying no that's wrong and Obama is decent and honorable but just wrong on policy.  It was a beautiful moment and exemplified McCain's character.

And then McCain lost.

When Obama became President and a bunch of "low information voters" came out demanding that government stay out of their Medicare and joined up with the very fine people and their very fine opinions about Obama's religious affiliations and citizenship, that was time for the GOP leaders to emulate McCain and steer that opposition in more productive directions.  But some of them looked around licking their 08 electoral wounds and thought, yeah but McCain lost.  Maybe there is some way to fuel this rage and energy further and create voter mobilization for us against this powerful Obama coalition.  And in 2010 some self-proclaimed true believers got into Congress, playing with this fire either out of conviction or opportunism.

But the problem with that kind of politics is there is no logical stopping point.  Once you embrace the paranoid style, the attention naturally flows to the loudest, the shrillest, and the most amoral.  All roads lead to Trump.

In the short run the traditional GOP held together enough to nominate Romney but when he lost that made successive failures from the conventional wing of the part, three if you include the discredited GWB.  By 2016, it wasn't just Trump - Ben Carson polled at or close to 1st for months and Ted Cruz ended up with more delegates and votes than Kasich and Rubio combined.

Raz is right, you can trace this all back as far as you want - back to John Birchers and Senator McCarthy, back to Father Coughlin, back to Lindy and the original America First, back to J Edgar Hoover and the Red Scares. But none of that leads inevitably to now, the 2008-10 period was a key moment, and the effect of Romney's defeat on the credibility of the traditional wing pushed it over the brink.

[The Minsky Moment]

My theory is that the Trump Presidency came about because the Bush Presidency convinced the Republican establishment that they should shift from opposing the Imperial Presidency to embracing it, because they could get so much shit done.

The one political truism since Herbert Hoover is that the party that holds the Presidency always supports the Imperial Presidency.  The 50s isolationists closed their eyes while the Dulles Bros ran their schemes, Nixon was allowed to rule imperiously until he got entangled in a grubby political burglary, the small government zealots cheered while Reagan vastly expanded the budget and sent troops and planes willy-nilly across the globe, the traditional defenders of sovereignty lined up behind GHWB's New World Order (until Clinton was in charge and then it was the turn of the peacenikky Democrats to cheer bombing the Balkans).

[Eddie Teach]

If the larger forces at play you are referring to are the lying neo cons who caused the US to go to war, then yeah, we are in agreement.

I knew I could count on someone to come along and insist that no, there are no other forces at play in anything other than the designated "EVIL PERSON" you need to make sure stays satisfyingly vilified.

And I was betting with someone that it would be you first. Thanks for the $10!

No way you found a sucker who'd make that bet.

[crazy canuck]

If the larger forces at play you are referring to are the lying neo cons who caused the US to go to war, then yeah, we are in agreement.

I knew I could count on someone to come along and insist that no, there are no other forces at play in anything other than the designated "EVIL PERSON" you need to make sure stays satisfyingly vilified.

And I was betting with someone that it would be you first. Thanks for the $10!

But he did find a sucker that believed his line, so not a total loss for him

You are a great enabler for Berkut.  At least someone accepts his version of history.

[Berkut]

Are you really that convinced that there were no other factors involved in the second Gulf War than "lying neocons"? I mean....really?

Nothing? Nothing at all? And you think 50 years from now, when objective historians are writing about this conflict, the chapter on "Lead up to the war" is just going to be 30 pages about the bullshit Bush and Cheney were feeding everyone? Because that explains the entire thing, right?

Am I nuts here? Is saying that there is more involved in the second gulf conflict than just some right wings douchebags lying about WMD intel really even controversial outside the frothing ex-MoveOn crowd?

[Threviel]

The analysis then pointed to Bush the younger finishing up what the elder could not do, described as an obsession. The rest probably lived in neo-con lala land dreaming that the Iraqis would welcome them and that it was a first domino in a great world going-democracy domino.

So... What other pressing factors were at play?

[crazy canuck]

Are you really that convinced that there were no other factors involved in the second Gulf War than "lying neocons"? I mean....really?

Nothing? Nothing at all? And you think 50 years from now, when objective historians are writing about this conflict, the chapter on "Lead up to the war" is just going to be 30 pages about the bullshit Bush and Cheney were feeding everyone? Because that explains the entire thing, right?

Am I nuts here? Is saying that there is more involved in the second gulf conflict than just some right wings douchebags lying about WMD intel really even controversial outside the frothing ex-MoveOn crowd?

Are there other factors for that particular war.  No not really.  If the big lie had not been told the US would have had no support from the other allies who entered the war (and particularly the UK) and the chances of the Bush administration pushing ahead alone would have been very remote.

You are conflating two things here.  Your thesis seems to be not that war at that particular time was inevitable but that a war with Iraq at some point was inevitable.  We will never really know the answer to that.  What we do know is that the wars Bush started never really ended.  The big lie brought us to where we are now.

[grumbler]

Are you really that convinced that there were no other factors involved in the second Gulf War than "lying neocons"? I mean....really?

Nothing? Nothing at all? And you think 50 years from now, when objective historians are writing about this conflict, the chapter on "Lead up to the war" is just going to be 30 pages about the bullshit Bush and Cheney were feeding everyone? Because that explains the entire thing, right?

Am I nuts here? Is saying that there is more involved in the second gulf conflict than just some right wings douchebags lying about WMD intel really even controversial outside the frothing ex-MoveOn crowd?

You are arguing with CC. That's always a losing move.  He can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

[The Brain]

I think in regards to the Iraq war, close on we look at history as the actions of people pushing things. IE, we went to war with Iraq because Bush lied!

As you get a longer view, history tends to look at underlying factors, with the players (often) being seen as more the people shaping specifics rather then driving the broad strokes. I think the Arab Spring and other things have made people less interested in casting Iraq War 2.0 as some kind of evil plot by the NeoCons and more recognition that it was the outcome of larger forces at play. This was something that I said even at the time - Iraq was never "stable". It was a powder keg whose lid was held tightly down by a brutally authoritarian dictator. It was no more stable than Yugoslavia was under Tito, probably a lot less so in fact. Saddams antics that led to the second war was part of his need to keep the lid on that powder keg.

I suspect in the long run, nobody will look at the the second round of the Iraq war as something driven by some personalities anymore than people look at WW1 and say that it was started because the Kaiser did this or didn't do that. Even Saddam was playing to forces beyond his own control.

And yeah....Trump has certainly made everyone look one hell of a lot better. And the Shrubbery's second term was a lot better than his first (once he ejected the Anti-Christ from his cabinet).

Is the argument that the US would get militarily involved in Iraq anyway after a "natural" fall of the Saddam regime?

No, the argument is that the fall of the Saddam regime would see a war in Iraq whether the US instigated that fall or not.

I think absent the internal issues with Iraq, the Shrubbery does not start a war.

I think absent the Shrubbery, the internal issue in Iraq result in a war when Saddam is gone anyway.

The key, as I was pointing out, was not the Shrubbery, but broader issues. As is (almost) always the case in these things.

If it's a war where the US doesn't get involved then what would it matter to the US?

[DGuller]

I'm not sure I get your point, Berkut.  If what you're saying is that sooner or later US would've been involved in a war that cost us many trillions and many thousands of lives, because Iraq was just that unstable, then I don't see where that conclusion comes from.  Okay, so Iraq could've become another Syria, why would we give any more shit about that than we did about Syria?

[The Minsky Moment]

Are there other factors for that particular war.  No not really.  If the big lie had not been told the US would have had no support from the other allies who entered the war (and particularly the UK) and the chances of the Bush administration pushing ahead alone would have been very remote.

You are overstating the case.  The case is that Bush people manipulated and "sexed up" the intelligence to make it seem stronger and more solid then it was and to add unsupportable claims like an al-Qaeda connection to Saddam, and then took aggressive steps to silence dissenting voices, in at least one case (Plame) crossing the line into criminality.

There was some real intelligence on WMD albeit inconclusive.  It's wrong to say there weren't other factors; not only were there other factors but those factors were the primary motivations for the war; Bush insiders have gone on record saying that the WMD claims were significant for public messaging but not the principal motivation for Bush's neocon-heavy security team. There is no way to no for sure, but it's quite possible that Bush would have gone to war even with less international backing.

[Berkut]

I'm not sure I get your point, Berkut.  If what you're saying is that sooner or later US would've been involved in a war that cost us many trillions and many thousands of lives, because Iraq was just that unstable, then I don't see where that conclusion comes from.  Okay, so Iraq could've become another Syria, why would we give any more shit about that than we did about Syria?

We don't care about Syria because we don't see ourselves as the proximate cause of the violence there.

My point is that absent the Shrubbery pushing US involvement, the violence still happens. That the Shrubbery was involved just changed some of the actors in the play, the play was going on either way.

So when people say shit like "The Shrubbery started a war that killed 500,000 people!" I think it is hyperbolic bullshit and betrays that the people making claims like that care a LOT more about the "The SHrubbery started...." part then they do about the "....killed 500,000 people" part.

My point is that the conflict has as its basis underlying unresolved issues that were going to result in violence absent some kind of really amazing intervention, and that objective and dispassionate evaluation of Gulf War 2.0 in the future will NOT be focused on GW Bush and his sketchy ass crap about WMDs.

[Berkut]

Are there other factors for that particular war.  No not really.  If the big lie had not been told the US would have had no support from the other allies who entered the war (and particularly the UK) and the chances of the Bush administration pushing ahead alone would have been very remote.

You are overstating the case.  The case is that Bush people manipulated and "sexed up" the intelligence to make it seem stronger and more solid then it was and to add unsupportable claims like an al-Qaeda connection to Saddam, and then took aggressive steps to silence dissenting voices, in at least one case (Plame) crossing the line into criminality.

There was some real intelligence on WMD albeit inconclusive.  It's wrong to say there weren't other factors; not only were there other factors but those factors were the primary motivations for the war; Bush insiders have gone on record saying that the WMD claims were significant for public messaging but not the principal motivation for Bush's neocon-heavy security team. There is no way to no for sure, but it's quite possible that Bush would have gone to war even with less international backing.

And I said this AT THE TIME.

The real argument for intervention had nothing to do with WMDs that existed today.

It was stupid to make the argument based on that, but that does not, at all, take away from the actual reasons to justify going to war.

They sure as hell were never MY reasons for supporting the war.

[Valmy]

I supported the war because I was desperate for any means to end the sanctions which were so devastating to Iraq.

But the war was disastrously mismanaged...naturally.

Knowing some people who participated in that war though, the rank and file infantry thought they were going in to find WMDs and were greatly demoralized and angry when they discovered there were none. So if that was never the casus belli it might have been a good idea to get the army on board with the real reason for their mission.

But that would have required Dubya to be a competent and moral leader.

But even if that war had never happened he was still a horrible President for many other reasons. That was just one thing.

[Berkut]

If on Dec. 8th Rooselevt got up and said "We should to to war with Japan because they are all a bunch of Allah worshipping suicide bombers!" that would be a dumb argument for war. If we found out later that Roosevelt KNEW that what he was saying probably wasn't even true, it might even be an illegal argument.

That doesn't take away from the rather good arguments for war that we know existed.

Now, those other arguments may not even be good arguments. But to pretend they don't even exist is just simply dishonest. And that is what the nutbars want to insist on - the war happened because Bush lied about WMDs, period, full stop.