I'm on a roll!

President Bush initiated a war against the country of Iraq. Perhaps it was based on some kind of animosity towards Saddam Hussein. He well may have had no reason. That's possible. We'll never know, will we? Eventually a half million persons perished although, admittedly, I stopped counting about three years ago. As the newspapers stopped publishing numbers. We all lost interest. What's done is done. But that is background, for the present post.

Where was the president's big failure? ...Of course, killing people is pretty standard stuff ...the powerful of this world do it all the time... Arguably his real failure is in what we so far have not been able to properly digest. We have not been able to draw our lessons. Again. We need to understand. The nation I mean. When do we go to war and when not? For example --and we'll just focus on the elites and intellectual classes --these two groups need some kind of a theory. But ---- and this is my point ---- after our nation's experience Bush's presidency and his practices or his behaviors we not been able to draw a message. We have not been able to draw a message, as we need to due to the consistency that foreign policy requires. So, there's my gripe.

What happens therefore is that we have no clear precedent for future behavior. Of course, other countries are just scared of us. Big deal. But what about how America or the U. S. thinks of itself? How should we conduct ourselves in the future? Did Bush clarify what we should do in the future? I do not think so.

A few comments about Mr. G. Bush now. G. Bush seems like someone that really went off on his own tangent in life. That is very individualist. Isn't it?. He is a great individualist: Connecticut to Texas. A real self-made man. But that kind of individualism does not tell us what to do now in Iran. And where are these perps now? One may assume that persons like B. and Cheney will just continue saying "I am right," which does not help set an example for the identity of a nation. Saying only that one is better/righter entails refusal to participate in the life of others - of the nation. Hmmm … sounds a bit like the diagnosis would be dementia, related to a strange case of American “Individualism.” “I am right, and if you do not agree – screw you.” That is however not 1) how democracy works, it is not 2) how modernity has proceeded up until now and, also, not 3) really how the capitalist system functions either.

Need I say any more? The president of a modern democracy has an obligation, and this part Bush knew – an obligation to contribute to that particular nation’s role in history. Bush tried and failed, and it is because he never did identify with nation but in a case of demented American Individualism syndrome thought history pre-empted nation. He was clawing away at (or trying to efface) the existence of the group. This is the trap that the conservative tradition leads to.