Rusted Sky

You hear that word a lot about Bush. His war plans were incompetent. His economic initiatives incompetent. Hell, anything he does results in screams of rage about his incompetence, and if he did nothing the folks who believe in his incompetence would scream about that.

But I don't think he's incompetent. I believe he's doing the best job he can, in a job that got pretty damn hard on 9/11 and hasn't gotten any easier since. Cal Thomas in an article over at RealClearPolitics - The 'Incompetent' Bush Administration looks at some of the supposed incompetencies, and finds them unpersuasive. His thought is that the Democratic party is so desperate to regain control that nothing else matters. But I don't think Bush even cares much about that. He's got other things - more important things - to worry about than whether Reid or Pelosi are mad at him for one thing or another.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has repeatedly stressed that the war with terrorism will be long, difficult and frustrating. It is unlike any war the country has fought and so all comparisons - from the time it is taking, to the number of casualties - are imperfect. It is not a war America chose to begin; it is a war the United States could not escape.

This war was unavoidable, because religious fanatics concluded a new strategy was needed after Arab states lost five wars to Israel. They viewed Israel as strong - until the Lebanon fiasco - and the United States weak. That weakness, they determined, wasn't in military might, but in staying power. They calculated the United States lacks the stomach for a long war, especially one fueled by religious fanaticism.

Seeing America as religiously weak and morally challenged, the islamofascists are determined to strike us where we live. The Clinton administration failed to see this war coming, but Democrats do not regard its minimal response to terrorist attacks as incompetence or weakness. Condemnation is reserved exclusively for President Bush, who they say misjudged the war on terror by attacking Iraq. But the war was coming and would have come with or without the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. If the United States and the rest of the coalition does not defeat the insurgents in Iraq, that country will become a terror state and the price we will pay when future attacks against America are launched from an islamofascist Iraq, allied with Iran, will make 9/11 pale in comparison.

At a symposium last spring on "Islam and the West," which was sponsored by The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations noted, "The human species is facing a huge historical, cultural problem... For reasons that have very little to do with the U.S., we need to face the fact that we'll be living with this for a very long time." Mead said it isn't just an Arab problem, but an Islamic world problem, which transcends borders and regions. "If you don't understand this, you're deluding yourself," he said.

A very long time. And it wouldn't have mattered much on 9/11 whether Kerry or Bush had been President leading up to that date. It's the time of the Long War - a generational one. Bush realizes this. I've yet to see a Democrat talk about it without a 'But' at the end going off and blaming Bush.

But anyway... it's been my experience that folks who complain loudly about other people's competence are usually trying to hide their own incompetence. The louder a Democratic politician hollers about Bush's supposed incompetence, the more inclined I am to think they're a jackass. Cynthia McKinney kind of proves that theory out.

J.