fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Waiting For Jefferson

“Where’s the leader?” Bush, according to Woodward, has exclaimed in dismay about the Iraqi government’s dithering. “Where’s George Washington? Where’s Thomas Jefferson? Where’s John Adams, for crying out loud?” For a president to ask that question about Iraq, that tribal stew, is enough to cause one to ask it about the United States. ~George Will […]

“Where’s the leader?” Bush, according to Woodward, has exclaimed in dismay about the Iraqi government’s dithering. “Where’s George Washington? Where’s Thomas Jefferson? Where’s John Adams, for crying out loud?” For a president to ask that question about Iraq, that tribal stew, is enough to cause one to ask it about the United States. ~George Will

Perhaps Mr. Bush took his wife’s recommendation to read Camus’ The Stranger this past summer because he was beginning to appreciate the burden of time and the tedium of waiting for the arrival of the long-expected Iraqi Jefferson.  There is something remarkable about this little vignette that Will cites.  He asks, “Where’s the leader?”  Well, in fact, Iraq abounds in leaders.  Just not good ones.  Iraq has precisely the kinds of leaders one might expect from a country with its history: venal, self-interested, prone to employing violence to achieve their goals, preoccupied with settling old scores and motivated by factional loyalties that take priority over the good of the whole.  Bush found the “stew” and expected it to become fine cuisine overnight.  

Someone with a more decent appreciation for his own country’s history would know how exceptional and rare Washington’s conduct after the war really was.  Rather than exploiting his fame and his potential power, he lived up to the role of Cincinnatus and then returned when he was needed and departed again once his task was finished.  Later on this reputation was embellished and honed even more by storytellers, but the essence of the story was true.  Even in a society steeped in constitutional traditions, familiarity with classical republican examples, Old Whig ideals and Bolingbrokian Country suspicion of concentrated and corrupting power, such a man was rare–how ludicrous is it to have expected such a man, or even a man of parts such as Jefferson or Adams, to emerge from the rubble of Iraq?  Where would they have come from?  The slums of Sadr City?  The wild concrete jungles of Baghdad?  The Salafist strongholds of Anbar?  The theological schools of Najaf?  Iraq might have been unusually fortunate and found itself an Ataturk or Reza Khan, but even their relative successes required conditions that Iraq was never going to duplicate.  For Mr. Bush to even ask such a question about Iraq speaks volumes for what he will never understand about why the war’s political goals were misguided and doomed from the start.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here