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As a result of the Iraq war's alienation of the Muslim world, "Osama is rubbing his hands in glee," Horne told Kamiya. "Everything's going his way.... I think I would have kept out of Iraq altogether and used special operations to track down al-Qaeda."
The desire to equate the spread of al-Qaeda and so-called "Islamofascism" with the horrors of the Third Reich has led the president and neo-cons to yearn for laudatory comparisons between Bush and the aforementioned Winston Churchill. So understandably, another of the favorite reads at the 1600 Pennsylvania Book Club has been historian Lynne Olson's "Troublesome Young Men," an account of the Conservative members of Parliament, led by Churchill, who opposed Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler. Their sturdy resolve eventually led to Chamberlain's resignation and Churchill's ascendancy to 10 Downing Street.
Yet despite what Olson describes as Bush's "wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak," she believes, "the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out - but they're between Bush and Chamberlain."
Writing in the July 1 Washington Post, she noted, "Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders. Nonetheless, he was convinced that he alone could bring Hitler and Benito Mussolini to heel. He surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise."
What's more, she wrote, like Bush, Chamberlain saw no need to build up a strong coalition of international allies, laid claim to "unprecedented executive authority," and ran roughshod over civil liberties. He scorned dissent, the media and Parliament.
In contrast, Churchill believed that, "As the world's two most prominent and powerful democracies, the United States and Britain had a responsibility to serve as exemplars of democracy for the rest of the world.... To be fitting role models, he argued, both countries had to do their best to ensure that the 'title deeds of freedom' were strongly safeguarded within their own boundaries."
Despite the presidential reading list, those who forget history still tend to repeat it. This White House even forgets history of its own making. Thus, despite the absence of a plan for rebuilding Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam - the administration's downfall - there now is no plan for the inevitable withdrawal from Iraq, a task that will be an enormous, time-consuming and dangerous undertaking of logistics, lives and resources.
Instead, in response to Senator Hillary Clinton's query about such preparations, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman accused her of reinforcing "enemy propaganda."
President Bush, better start leafing through your biographies of Churchill to learn more about strategic retreat. Look in the index under "Dunkirk."
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