... Lind does not paint a pretty picture [of GWB and what he represents]: an illegitimate president whom the conservative faction of the Supreme Court installed in the White House after a majority of American voters rejected his candidacy, Bush has "used the power of the presidency to promote the economic and foreign policy agenda of the Southern far right." Its principal features are a regressive tax cut, "the plundering of nonrenewable natural resources" and the substitution of a "'faith-based' religious charity" for the New Deal-Great Society social safety net at home. Lind hopes that "for the sake of America as well as the world" the advocates of this "bizarre strategy" will be defeated in 2004. This "aberrant president," Lind asserts, is "one of the worst in American history."
... Lind is greatly troubled by Bush's foreign policy, describing it in a chapter title as "Armageddon." He sees Sept. 11 as giving Bush an excuse to expand his efforts to cancel treaties and withdraw from international conventions, plan a war with Iraq and endorse Ariel Sharon's uncompromising assault on the Palestinians. Bush's national security plan for what the world would look like in the 21st century is "almost hallucinatory in its vivid detail." We would maintain our status as the world's sole superpower by "shrugging off international law and diplomacy" and waging "'pre-emptive' wars against regimes that might pose speculative threats, even if they did not threaten the United States and its allies with imminent danger." The "political muscle" for Bush's foreign policy, Lind states, is provided by the Deep South's "unilateral militarism, which is compatible with a contempt for civilian diplomacy." That foreign policy is also, in his view, indifferent to world opinion on environmental protections, arms control, trade and international justice. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/books/review/12DALLEKT.html>
BTW, the online version of this review does not include this eye-catching subhead shown in the print edition: "Michael Lind sees George W. Bush as an axis of evil all by himself, to say nothing of his friends."
Carl
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