Calpundit on Bush's Iraq Speech

Kevin Drum and I had similar reactions to Bush's recent speech, which makes all the right noises but is unfortunately belied by Bush's actions.

So I don't get it. I really don't. Hawks are in favor of scaring the Middle East into reform through force of arms, but George Bush isn't willing to take the political risks it would take to do that. Doves are in favor of softer efforts that rely on diplomacy and multilateral institutions, but Bush is pretty obviously not interested in that either.

In other words, he's not willing to do any of the things that might conceivably bring democracy and liberalization to the Middle East.

So: nice speech. But regardless of whether your ideas are good or bad, you're doomed to certain failure unless you're willing to seriously follow up on them. George Bush isn't, and since I think failure here has the potential to be catastrophic, I'll be voting for someone else next November.

This is the speech he probably should have started out the whole Iraq effort with, but unfortunately he didn't.

As I said just before the war started:

Those that are deceiving themselves into thinking Bush actually plans to follow through with the Grand Plans to democratize the Middle East are living in a fantasy world as should be readily apparent by now. Just because you hope something will happen doesn't mean Bush has any intention of letting it happen. And even if he does, the chances of it resulting in a government that's friendly to America are just about nil.

Boot Bush.