Mistakes, History And The Bush Presidency
By Robert Klein Engler (05/13/07)
CHICAGO--(12 May '07) There seems to be no end to the obstacles the Democrats place in front of President Bush these days. Then there is the drive-by media that blames him for everything from global warming to overweight children. You'd think George W. Bush was going to be on the ballot again, when in fact his administration is coming to an end.
How will the Bush administration be judged by history, if there is a judgment that can extract itself from politics? Certainly, many feel the Bush administration has made mistakes, but all administrations do, so how are these mistakes any different from other past presidents and their failures?
It is possible that future historians will see the two great mistakes made by the Bush administration stem from the same source. The Bush administration was mistaken about the importance of culture and civilization in shaping national and international events. In short, they were bad anthropologists. Bad anthropology fools us into believing that American values will be readily accepted abroad or that foreigners will readily assimilate to American values when they live in the U. S.
This bad anthropology also leads to a misunderstanding of the two current enemies of the United States: Iran and Mexico. Iran, the U. S. and Mexico have different world views shaped by their culture and religion. The differences in these world views cannot be smoothed by oil or folded into tacos. The Bush administration's attempt to wage a politically correct war in Iraq and it's support for an open border with Mexico demonstrates how a failed anthropology leads to failed foreign and domestic policies.
In the summer of 1993, Professor Samuel P. Huntington's article "The Clash of Civilizations?" appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs. He wrote, "The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics."
Professor Huntington further argued that the future source of conflict in the world would be along what he called "cultural fault lines." These fault lines are where two different cultures meet. We could expect conflict when Western Civilization or nations confront Islamic and Latin Civilization or nations. This is what is happening now with the U. S. One conflict is happening far away and the other is happening in our neighborhoods.
At the time, Huntington's article garnered interest among academicians, but not among many politicians nor among policy makers. Yet, in the intervening years, much of what Huntington predicted has come to pass. Most specifically, ignoring what Huntington wrote has lead to the two great mistakes of the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and immigration reform.
It becomes more evident each day that the single cause of unrest and terror in Iraq is Islam and support by Iran, while at home, there seems to be no end to the number of illegal aliens Mexico is sending to live in the United States and the special interest groups that profit from their cheap labor.
Instead of a secure border and a policy to either contain, conquer or convert Iran, we are left with policies that are halfway measures. A path to citizenship or an Iraqi strategy that ignores the Islamic threat from Iran are policies that tread water. In spite of them, the tide is rising and sooner or later cultural conflicts will swamp either this administration or the next one.
Were the Bush Administration's mistakes avoidable? It is hard to imagine given the business and political interests that brought this administration to power, how it could have accepted the analysis of a cultural conflict with Islam, or the necessity of mass deportation to maintain the integrity of the U. S.
When the Democrats prefer defeat in Iraq and amnesty for all who manage to make it into the U. S., it is hard to imagine how their policies make the nation more secure than the Republican policies they oppose. Given the Democratic alternatives of open borders and multiculturalism, the half steps forward by the Bush Administration may be seen as prudent policies by future historians compared with the backward steps of the Democrats.
Those nations born from liberal revolutions like the U. S. and France that ignore the clash of civilizations, may eventually succumb to the absolutism of Islam and the migration of foreign peoples. A civilization of true believers will always dominate a civilization addicted to relativism, no matter how enlightened they believe that relativism to be.
At the very least, the mistakes of the Bush Administration postponed the disintegration of the U. S. for a generation. Perhaps that is as far into the future as anyone who wants political power is able to see.
Robert Klein Engler lives in Chicago. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School. His book, A WINTER OF WORDS, about the turmoil at Daley College, is available from amazon.com.
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