Left Looking Right

... and vice versa. Over at the History News Network last week, Eric Foner wrote a decidedly left wing analysis of the current state of liberalism and the effects this election cycle had. Betsy Newmark penned a response from the right.

RARELY HAS A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION produced such widespread despair on the left. By any objective standard, George W. Bush has been among the worst Presidents in American history. One of the main purposes of elections in a democracy is to act as a check on those in power by confronting them with the possibility of being removed from office. If Bush can be re-elected after having alienated virtually the entire world, brought the country into war on false pretenses and mortgaged the nation's future to provide economic benefits to the rich, what incentive will other Presidents have to act more reasonably?

Sounds like a reasonable question to pose, in my opinion. And while Bush might possibly not the the absolute worst president in our country's history (Grant's administration was pretty bad) he is certainly near the bottom of the barrel. Betsy seems to disagree. (Emphasis mine)

There's the left's argument in a nutshell. The rest of the world is corrupt and bought with bribes from Saddam or is full of appeasers who believe that peace protests will change the hearts of dictators and help those who are oppressed. Military action is never the option so Bush is obviously a terrible president for daring to use force to protect our interests and help an oppressed nation.

There's one theme that I've really grown weary of hearing. The Bushies have developed such a hatred for most of the leading U.N. nations (and the U.N. itself) that the bitterness is palpable and they are choking on their own bile. And why? Because it hurts to be reminded that they were right and we were wrong.

Think back to the first Gulf War under Pappa Bush. Everyone was falling over themselves in their mad rush to praise the United Nations and their support in building a true, broad coalition of nations to take care of an urgent problem. Again, when we went into Afghanistan to track down bin Laden and his take out his Taliban supporters, the need for action was clear. Our allies jumped in to support us, and we were overflowing with praise for them.

Then came Iraq. The now proven wisdom of the countries that counseled patience and diplomatic solutions was viewed as a stab in the back by BushCo. When the reason for the war proved to be an illusion, their anger reached a boiling point. Now each and every one of them has chosen to latch onto the U.N. oil for food scandal as some type of vindication that these countries must be wrong about everything. "Old Europe" has become a derogatory phrase, and anyone who doesn't think that rushing in, guns blazing, is the best first approach to problems is an "appeaser" or lacking in "spine" or otherwise deficient. One of the few good things that the administration of George W. Bush has done is their refusal to join in with this national neocon rending of clothes and bitter attacks on our former allies.