Well, yeah, I think she’s disgusting too, but her disgustingness would not be anybody’s problem except her own were it not for the enormous, and I still say largely uncritical, exposure that she is being given. One would think she was more important than Michael Jackson’s and Tom Cruise’s love lives, for goodness sake.
The one area where I am becoming increasingly disappointed in GW is his utter failure to provide any kind of articulate leadership in the GWOT. The situation cries out for a little Tony Blair-like continuous explication of our aims and progress, and it has not been forthcoming. Although I do believe that actions speak louder than words, I am nostalgic for Winston Churchill, who was much better at words than actions. The President is surrounded with capable people who can take care of the action. What we desperately need is more and better words. Bush is creating a vacuum that is being filled by Cindy Sheehan.
I don’t agree with you about history vindicating that the defense of freedom does not require the advance thereof. Certainly Ronald Reagan was a major advancer, not to mention Woodrow Wilson, Ike, and FDR, to name a few. I would say that overall the world has actually been lit by the torch of liberty, largely through American effort and sacrifice, however reluctantly made. There has been a rather remarkable advance of democracy and free markets since the American revolution, and I don’t think it’s coincidental at all. For example, the seizure of California and Texas from Mexico by the U.S. is pretty universally considered to be the antithesis of the advance of freedom, and yet, according to a recent poll in Mexico, 46% of its citizens would emigrate to the U.S. given the opportunity. There has not been a similar poll of citizens of Mexican descent in California and Texas, but I am quite sure that the percentage that wish to go back to mexico approaches zero. After all, they are free to return any time they want to. One could argue that this is about economics rather than freedom, but the correlation between economic prosperity and political and economic freedom is indisputably high.
The tiger we have by the tail in Baghdad is a real tiger that exists, whether we have it by the tail or not. I can think of a few appendages I would rather have it by, but the tail is better than nothing.