Gerard Baker thinks George Bush should ask How’m I doin’?, except that he might not like the answer.
What we have now is a situation in which the world’s only superpower, with the largest economic and military advantage any country has ever enjoyed on Earth, is pinned down like Gulliver, tormented by an army of fundamentalist Lilliputians.
As John O’Sullivan points out on The Corner:
Baker is not a European appeaser complaining about U.S. unilateralism.
Quite the contrary. He was and is a supporter of the Iraq intervention and a defender of a strong U.S. role in the world—as readers of his work in the Times, The Weekly Standard, and The National Interest know.
But he is not a self-deceiver either. And it is plain that Bush, Condi, and the administration have lost their way and perhaps their self-confidence too.
If Bush does not learn and apply the lessons of the present crisis, he will leave office as a failure. What is worse, the world will have moved further toward a real and bloody clash of civilizations.
I know I’m not the only one deeply disappointed in both Bush and Rice. It seems that the fears that he was morphing into his father were all too well-founded.
Scary, sad day.
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