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“I Thought the Iraqis Were Muslims!”

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!” ~The Raw Story Give George credit for at least being able to keep that much straight.  I had remarked earlier on Mr. Bush’s […]

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!” ~The Raw Story

Give George credit for at least being able to keep that much straight.  I had remarked earlier on Mr. Bush’s astonishing ignorance in my post on the plight of the Christians of the Near East, noting that there was probably no deliberate intent on Bush’s part to drive Christians out of the region by means of his dangerous, Islamist-empowering policies of democratisation and instability, since he could not possibly even know that there were any there in the first place.  This is, alas, what comes of having a President who is surprisingly uncurious and, from everything I have heard, does not do much reading; this is what comes, I fear, from having our first MBA president (though I speak here with some prejudice as an academic whose impression of business school students and their distant cousins, economics majors, has been, shall we say, intellectually unimpressive); this is what comes of having a “legacy” nominated and elected President with no more qualifications to run the executive branch of the government than I have to pilot a jumbo jet.  Many were the apologists in ’01, ’02 and even as recently as ’04 defending Mr. Bush’s, er, colloquial style.  As Stephen Colbert memorably said in his scathing mockery of Dobleve: “We [Bush and Colbert] are not brainiacs on the Nerd Patrol.”  No one would have ever confused Mr. Bush with someone who had studied on an issue long and hard.  All the zingers about Bush being a glorified frat boy with connections were correct, and the people who rallied around Bush with the old, “They said the same thing about Reagan’s intellect” should apologise for having tarnished the name of Ronald Reagan, no intellectual giant certainly but seemingly a curious mind, by comparing him to this ignoramus.  The sad thing is that, in raw intelligence, I expect that Mr. Bush might even have above-average intelligence (I have to think that even a “legacy” does not get this far without some mental agility), but for whatever reason he has never cultivated, honed or learned how to use it.  That is his loss, and our tragedy.

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