The Columbus Dispatch - October 17, 2003
Bush father-son split over U.S. policy becomes clear GEORGIE ANNE GEYER
It's not as though Osama bin Laden gave a Jihad Award to Ariel Sharon, or Donald H. Rumsfeld gave his Good Pal Award to Condoleezza Rice. It's not even as though Dick Cheney gave his Favorite Foreigners Citation to the French.
But nearly astonishing is the news from College Station, Texas, this week: The First Father, former President George H.W. Bush, has given his own most treasured award to Sen. Edward Kennedy, DMass.
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An interesting turn of events but not entirely unexpected.
What's on display here, as 41 and 43 publicly disagree in somewhat subtle ways, is not yet another father-son tug of war, but a schism between one house of the church of imperialism - wholly secular but religous for public consumption, possessing some awareness of limits, fond of intricate geopolitical, 'game theory' Kissingerian manipulations (the stuff of John Le Carre novels) - and the newest edition to unholy mother church: the true believers.
The believers have faith in either their own flawless intellects or the power of the sky-father god.
Some of them believe in both.
It is the marriage of these two types of believers - represented at the top tier by the union of the born again Dubya with the self believing neo-cons - that has created ripples of disturbance on the dark side of the force.
What George the First is saying to his son, in effect, is 'it's okay to be an imperialist bastard but there are smart ways and dumb-ass ways of doing things and you're doing it the dumb-ass way.'
Everyone familiar with the father's detailed explanation for why he didn't press on to Baghdad in 1991, an explanation that includes a prescient description I must admit of what we're now seeing, the explanation of an old CIA hand who has some understanding of cause and effect, should not be surprised that he's displeased with the sloppy methods of his boy's administration.
DRM
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