The Law of Unintended Consequences
Reader comment on item: Bush the radical

Submitted by Robert H. Stern (United States), Dec 1, 2003 at 16:55

I find it strange that you do not see the irony of this president, of all people, suddenly becoming the messenger of democracy to the Middle East. I do agree that sixty years of bipartisan hypocrisy regarding dictators in our own hemisphere, Africa, Asia and the Middle east should come to an end but do not think the Bush would have gotten to this point if he had not misjudgred the Iraq situation so badly. This is also the Administration which, when it set up the Department of Homeland Security, made sure that its employees would be hired under a "spoils system" rather than a civil service methodology and, through the so-called "Patriot Act" has worked to take liberties away from Americans.

It is of course, the Bush family, along with the other American oil barons who have perpetuated a system of dictatorship, deprivation and denial for decades so long as it filled their pocketbooks; the concept of enlightened self-interest never seems to have entered their minds until now when we are facing an ideological threat in many ways more frightening than either communism or fascism.

Politics have always made for strange bedfellows and while I am no great fan of this president, do think that even if he came to his conclusions for what I consider the wrong reasons, he nevertheless has put us where we should have been a long time ago.

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