With the difficulties in Iraq and the mountains of adverse opinion seminally invested in by media, and then our adversaries, and semi friends worldwide, the 'realists' came back into influence and power as the word neo-con suddenly became an expletive.
And now the results:
From the Economist on Freedom House's annual report:
OVER the past half century, it often seemed that the advance of democracy and basic freedoms--the right to speak and write without fear of persecution, to demand political change, and so on--was ineluctable. First the Europeans let their colonies go. Then the Soviet empire fell, and with it the communist monopoly on power in eastern Europe. And apartheid ended in South Africa.
Recently, though, freedom's progress may have come to a halt, or even gone into reverse. That, at least, is the conclusion of Freedom House, an august American lobby group whose observations on the state of liberty are a keenly watched indicator. Its report for 2007 speaks of a "profoundly disturbing deterioration" in the global picture, with reversals seen in 38 countries--nearly four times as many as are showing any sign of improvement.
An especially disturbing sign, says the organization, is the number of countries in all regions of the world where a previously hopeful trend has gone into reverse. They include Bangladesh (where the armed forces took over last year), Sri Lanka (whose civil war flared up) and the Philippines. Other backsliders included Nigeria and Kenya, accounting for more than one sub-Saharan African in four between them, plus the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. In both Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, former Soviet republics whose "colour revolutions" were warmly encouraged by Freedom House, there was regression. Only two countries, Thailand and Togo, made a clear leap forward last year, going from "not free" to "partly free".
No country joined the top "free" group, and a total of 43 countries, representing 36% of the world's population, now languish in the "not free" group. None of the eight "worst of the worst"--Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan--was credited with any sign of improvement.
Ironically many of the left today,, who attacked the Eisenhower, and Nixon administrations for cozying up to Latin American fascist dictators who mouthed pablum like musings about being "anti-communist", are exactly those whose criticisms of the Bush administrations efforts have totally short circuited the efforts they wished for in the 1960's and 1970's, and rendered a return to cozying up to absolutist tribal (like) autocracies who now mouth pablum like musings about being "anti-terrorist".
When the history books are written in 50 years, people will be asking why the Bush admin retreated from it's own best judgment about the nature of reality in this war, and resorted to being Jim Baker as Talleyrand. (even in conservative Muslim countries, where God-given sharia can be more popular than any law made by man, people tell opinion pollsters they want to elect their own governments- Economist)
In doing so they have discouraged our true friends among nations, emboldened our enemies, and given heart to those who think as it ever has been so it ever shall be.
Every time I see a picture of Mubarak, or Abdullah or a Faisal, I keep seeing Fulgencio Batista
There are those who say that freedom can never trump the Quran. I am among them. This should not change the unyielding pressure we bring to bear on all those nations who show glee at events such as the 2007 NIE, or the Iraq Study Group's atrocious ideas. It's just that in this case Bismarck has it backwards. Sometimes politics, and decisions taken are the result of the battlefield's ineluctable result, not the other way around.
In any case by losing sight of their ultimate goal, and taking counsel of their criticisms, at moments of high difficulty this administration abandoned it's primary strategic effort, and in doing so set back their place in history.
No doubt they can attempt justify this with 'how much can we be expected to do?' or 'look what happened in Gaza'. This begs the question of whether the dance can be avoided.
Human progress points in only one direction, and it is not towards absolutist religious oligarchy, and dictatorship. The Will and Ariel Durant's of 2075 will wonder why this was not obvious to those of us today, in decision making positions.
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