Bush’s remarks yesterday, from his vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas, with Rice at his side, raise once more the question of whether he believes the things he says—whether he’s really so clueless about the world that his actions so deeply affect. ~Fred Kaplan, Slate

Clueless?  Who?  Surely not George “I Thought the Iraqis Were Muslims” Bush!  After all, he did at least get the Muslim part right.  What could he have said that was so shocking?  Well, Mr. Kaplan tells us:

“Everybody wants the violence to stop,” Bush said in answer to the session’s first question. But of course this isn’t true. If it were, he could have imposed a cease-fire in the first few days. He and Rice explicitly wanted the violence to continue, wanted Israel to pummel Hezbollah, so that when the time was ripe for a settlement, Israel could come to the table with a huge advantage.

Then Bush made a statement that curiously veered off script: “People understand that there needs to be a cessation of hostilities in order for us to address the root causes of the problem.” This contradicted Rice’s mantra of the last two weeks—that there should be no cessation until these root causes are addressed. Did he understand what he was saying? Everybody skipped over it in any case.

 But at least he’s fairly sure that there is violence going on and it has something to do with Muslims–you know, those people who are like the Iraqis, the ones with the religion of peace.  With the Galbraith anecdote about Bush’s ignorance about the Sunni/Shia divide, I can only imagine what the briefing was like when someone tried to explain the mosaic of Lebanese ethnic and sectarian differences! 

But this wasn’t the end of the confusion, as Kaplan explains:

A short while later, a reporter asked why U.S. troops wouldn’t participate in the international force that a proposed U.N. resolution envisions for a wide buffer zone along the Israel-Lebanon border. Bush’s reply was jaw-dropping:

[I]t’s like Darfur. People say to me, ‘Well, why don’t you commit U.S. troops to Darfur as part of an international peacekeeping?’ And the answer there is that the troops would be—would create a sensation around the world that may not enable us to achieve our objective. And so when we commit troops, we commit troops for a specific reason with the intent of achieving an objective. And I think command-and-control and logistical support is probably the best use of U.S. forces.

What I find a bit more stunning is the explicit parallel between Lebanon and Darfur, where Mr. Bush and the House of Representatives are sure genocide is happening.  The parallel is just sitting out there for someone to give it a very negative spin, if one were so inclined.  Maybe what Mr. Bush meant was that, if he wasn’t willing to send forces into Darfur to stop what he considers to be genocide, he certainly wouldn’t send them to Lebanon.  So, all right, this is a bit odd, but it is probably not that bad of an idea that we won’t be sending American soldiers into Lebanon for any reason.  But Bush soon gets back on message:

Then Bush moved on to his favorite theme—the titanic struggle between good and evil, freedom and terrorism, and how it accounts for all the world’s conflicts. “The lynchpin of [American] policy,” he said, “is to support democracies.” Speaking of Lebanon’s prime minister, Fouad Siniora, he said, “We want the Siniora government to survive and be strengthened.” But Hezbollah is “trying to stop that advance of democracy. … Hezbollah is trying to create the chaos necessary to stop the advance of peace. … It is the great challenge of this century. … As young democracies flourish, terrorists try to stop their progress.”

Once again, Bush demonstrated that he doesn’t understand what makes young democracies flourish or why Hezbollah has appeal even to many nonterrorists. He doesn’t seem to realize that democratic governments require democratic institutions and the resources to make them thrive. He evinces no awareness that the longer Israel bombs Beirut into oblivion, the harder it becomes for Siniora (who has few resources) to retain legitimacy—and the easier it becomes for Hezbollah (which has many more resources) to gain still greater power.

Obviously Mr. Kaplan thinks everyone should just live in a tyranny and die.  Or so the White House would have you believe.  But of course Mr. Bush seems confused about Lebanon–his decisions vis-a-vis Lebanon, besides being appalling, stand in complete opposition to his stated objective of expanding democratic government across the region.  This is not so inexplicable, if we conceive of the real goals of U.S. policy in the region as an extension of American hegemony and the hoped-for shoring up of Israel’s strategic position (that current policy is actually undermining American influence and Israeli security is neither here nor there to the ideologues who cooked up these bad ideas).  But, yes, according to the stated policy of demoliberation Bush’s statements appear wacky and hard to explain.  There are other gems, priceless in capturing Mr. Bush at his finest:

Bush replied:

My attitude is that a young democracy has been born quite quickly. … You know, I hear people say, ‘Civil war this, civil war that.’ The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box.

That’s certainly comforting for the victims of sectarian violence over the last year.  It’s as if the man lives in his own universe, where voting resolves all things.  If the people vote against civil war (and let’s say, for the sake of argument, they did this), that must mean no civil war can happen–they voted on it, after all!  The people of Spain in the early ’30s also had a few elections, and yet somehow still had a civil war; ditto Switzerland in the nineteenth century.  If you vote, do you get a magic, protective cloak that keeps you from becoming the victim of violence at the hands of your neighbours?  If so, I want to complain to someone, because I have not yet received my magic cloak, and I have voted several times!  Fred Kaplan has some very effective commentary on Bush’s remarks here:

Again, does the president really believe this? The main thing Iraqis expressed at the ballot box was that Sunnis wanted Sunnis to rule, Shiites wanted Shiites to rule, and Kurds wanted to secede. The election, inspiring as it was to behold, served as little more than an ethnic census. In the absence of democratic institutions to mediate disputes and legitimize outcomes, it might even have hardened the social, political, and religious conflicts that are now—by the testimony of Bush’s own top generals—erupting into civil war.

But democracies are peaceful, Fred.  Didn’t you hear?  Whoever heard of violence breaking out because ethnicity and religious sect were made into forms of political identity and the basis for political contestation?  Besides, as the President said: “I thought the Iraqis were all Muslims!”  Kaplan concludes:

Where’s the proof that the president understands what he’s talking about?

Fred, we’ve been asking the same question for years and have not been able to get any closer to an answer.  We may not be able to find it because it may not exist.