[H]e’s being yanked in a tug of war between his father’s side, which insists privately that Jeb is a realist who surely must have disapproved of the Iraq invasion, and his brother’s side, which publicly demands that Jeb go full-hawk, becoming the third Bush to use the military in Iraq....
Though Jeb is more apt to do his homework, he’s unformed on foreign policy, like his brother — except that his brother was elected before 9/11. Now the neocons who treated W. like a host body for their own agenda are swirling around Jeb, ready to inhabit another President Bush....
March 29, 2015
"Jeb, or '45,' as he is already being called, hasn’t even announced, and we’re already trapped in the byzantine psyche of Bushworld."
Writes Maureen Dowd.
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Classic example of a columnist hitting the deadline with something, anything.
This is way less substantive than wanderings of an idle mind. Much closer to a thousand monkeys in front of a thousand keyboards......
With a nuclear armed Iran, the US cannot invade the Middle East with conventional forces again.
And if the Sunnis and Shias go to war and start slinging nuclear devices at each other, well, that's just too bad, and anyway it will be their lookout.
"Republicans who want a loyalty oath on support for the Jewish state."
Poor Maureen. She really needs a man, like Granma said in "Parenthood," "She needs a man... Now!"
Maureen is playing to the secular Jews in New York City who wouldn't recognize anti-Semitism until the oven door closed behind them.
Obama will blow up the middle east in a fit of absentmindedness. At least he will fulfill one campaign promise.
Gasoline will be $10 a gallon.
W was not a neocon.
He was barely con.
Theocon, maybe.
W's image is mostly left projection.
I thought Dowd had retired.
Dowd has a Bush fetish, which more or less ruined her writing for a decase.
Dowd at her most incoherent.
"Thanks to the grandiosity and naïveté of W., Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz — another Jeb foreign policy adviser — U.S. Middle East policy is so muddled that, after occupying and blowing up Iraq, we are working with Shiite Iran to push back Sunni insurgents in Iraq and working with Sunnis and their Saudi Arabian allies in Yemen against a Shiite militia that has Iranian support."
In 2010... Biden told King “It [Iraq] could be one of the greatest achievements of this administration.” He continued, “You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Does Dowd have contacts in either camp?
With the rise of Iran and loss of US support, Israel is going to have to ally and cooperate with the "Arab" Moslem coalition, and that is going to come with a pricetag.
There is not going to be a "two-state solution" - Ariel Sharon made that impossible long ago - but the State of Israel may well be obliged to go "secular", i.e. no religious preferences.
No more Bushes and nor more Clinton's, but for very different reasons.
Jeb has money. Jeb has backing. Jeb has access to excellent advisors and campaign staff.
What I don't perceive Jeb as having are people eager to vote for him.
If Dowd knew as much about politics as she thinks she does, she'd understand that.
Now the neocons who treated W. like a host body for their own agenda are swirling around Jeb, ready to inhabit another President Bush.
It really is amazing that writing such as this passes for "political commentary" in what is supposedly the most august & respected newspaper in the US. I sit around with my buddies over beer & pizza & we all make commentary that crosses the full political spectrum that's way better than this. Can we get on salary at the NYT (or, if not salary, will the NYT at least pick up the tab for the pizza & beer)? Isn't there an editor at the NYT with the moxie to say & enforce "MoDo, this is blather. Try again."
Israel may have to furnish the Saudis and Egypt with nuclear weapons, just so that the sites will be widely dispersed, and Israel will not be sitting there alone as a target.
For all of our petty domestic squabbles, our next president may well have to be a wartime president, whether he - or we - likes it or not.
I'd like to think I got the jump on Ms. Dowd since it was in the comments sections on this blog that I remarked, I think about a week ago, on the ridiculous spectacle of Jeb Bush being forced to distance himself from Jim Baker over an extremely mild (and completely accurate) criticism of the Israeli prime minister.
Sadly, this is not much of a new development. Look at the abuse Rand Paul was subjected to for having the gaul to suggest the US and Israel might have divergent national interests. The same hawkish mentality that dominates Republican foreign policy also demands that any Republican candidate demonstrate unquestionable, unconditional fealty to a foreign power.
Jeb Bush. Everyone knows the name but hardly anyone outside of Florida knows the man. Will that work for him or against him.
"With a nuclear armed Iran, the US cannot invade the Middle East with conventional forces again."
'tis a pity, then, that Iran is not nuclear armed.
What Iraq? It is now part of iran in all but name, and I expect that will be corrected fairly soon.
Dowd was quite clever and readable when she was musing on cigars and blue dresses. She should have stuck with that sort of thing.
Sorry. I read "Iraq" rather than "Iran."
As fot Iran not being nuclear armed, that should at best be modified with a "yet." Actually we do not know how far along they are, but I suspect the time element is dependent more on trigger controls and delivery vehicles than nuclear explosive capability.
Maureen Dowd is uninteresting. She's like a rabid baseball fan, who watches every Yankee game on TV, pontificates on every Yankee game, but has never once in her life played a simple game of catch. She's a sideline commentator, without substance, experience, insight or wisdom.
The Bushes were the ruin of Maureen Dowd. She is positively demented when it comes to them.
We will know when they start testing.
When I want the real inside scoop on what is happening in the republican/conservative spheres, I always turn first to the NYTimes. Or vox. Or cnn.
It's obvious from the comments that many people here do not happen to care for Maureen Dowd, but can any of them point out something she wrote in that article that they want to push back on or they believe wildly misses the mark?
I think Dowd gets drunk - or high on peyote - and then makes this stuff up, perhaps after reading some Harold Robbins first for inspiration.
Or maybe she watches House of Cards on TV while drinking absinthe.
Howsoever she comes up with her stuff, who cares? It has no basis in rationality. She's clearly her own biggest fan.
George Bush (41) showed that successfully dealing with aggression by a Muslim nation (as well as successfully managing to avoid international violence from the collapse of the Soviet Union) isn't enough to assure reelection.
George W. Bush (43) showed that if military action to eliminate aggressive Muslim regimes that (1) had used weapons of mass destruction against foreign and domestic enemies and that (2) had provided sanctuary to a terrorist group that had killed thousands of Americans, could not could not be accomplished within an election cycle, these accomplishments could and would be undone by a successor president.
I've read G.W. Bush's book about his father, "41", which I recommend. I'm convinced that both 41 and 43 were trying to do the right thing, but they didn't fully comprehend the domestic political problem. I see no reason to think that "45" would do better.
"forced to distance himself from Jim Baker over an extremely mild (and completely accurate) criticism of the Israeli prime minister. "
Yes, the political left is ready to abandon our only democratic ally in the middle east.
Our best non-democratic ally rejected the Muslim Brotherhood and is being savaged by the left.
When Saudi Arabia falls and gasoline is $10 a gallon, you will be satisfied and then you can run on that platform in 2016.
MoDo has a Bush problem. Among others. MANY others.
@Michael K:
"Yes, the political left is ready to abandon our only democratic ally in the middle east."
Jim Baker is not of the "political left." Try to separate the actual argument from its proximity to other issues you consider "left." Of course nobody is saying the US should "abandon" Israel. However, it should insist that Israel abandon its settler colony and come to terms with its Palestinian neighbors. It has more than enough power to secure itself against a nascent Palestinian state, and the notion that Israel's "existence" is threatened by Hamas or Hezbolla is laughable.
Frankly, the US-Israel relationship is absurdly lopsided. Israel has received billions of dollars of US taxpayer money and unconditional support at the UN, from which it benefits immensely. Comparatively, Israel provides little to the US and actually imposes certain costs. Despite this, Netanyahu is free to act in a manner that would be considered absolutely intolerable if it were the head of any other country. Can anyone honestly imagine Congress inviting the prime minister of Japan to come and give a speech designed to increase opposition towards our diplomatic posture towards China? And unlike Israel, we are legally obligated to come to the defense of Japan in the event that they are attacked.
"When Saudi Arabia falls and gasoline is $10 a gallon, you will be satisfied and then you can run on that platform in 2016."
To who, exactly, is Saudia Arabia going to fall in 2016? You have a cartoonish view of the region, and I cannot imagine the sources from which you obtain your information.
"George Bush (41) showed that successfully dealing with aggression by a Muslim nation...isn't enough to assure reelection."
Iraq was not a Muslim nation, insofar as it was not a theocracy; its government was secular.
"George W. Bush (43) showed that if military action to eliminate aggressive Muslim regimes that (1) had used weapons of mass destruction against foreign and domestic enemies and that (2) had provided sanctuary to a terrorist group that had killed thousands of Americans...."
Afghanistan was not aggressive, and Iraq, to repeat, was not Muslim, and it had not been aggressive toward us...or toward anyone else subsequent to our having contained them after the first war against Iraq.
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