George W. Bush

Righty: Thank God this courageous man was chosen to lead our country during its most unsettling crisis since the Civil War. Bush had the guts to challenge Islamic terrorists and hunt them down where they live. (Can you imagine if Gore had been president on 9/11? He’d probably have scolded the terrorists for releasing pollutants into the atmosphere over lower Manhattan!) Unlike most politicians, who flip-flop at the merest squeak from their latest focus group, Bush has sacrificed his poll ratings to make unpopular decisions in the name of American security. Think about it: while half the Muslim world has been plotting to attack the U.S., we’ve gone six years without a single terrorist incident on American soil. Give the man a break. Years from now we’ll be honoring Bush for turning the tide against terror. I just hope he lives long enough to see it happen.

Lefty: From his mangled syntax to his catastrophic war in Iraq, Bush has sealed his reputation as incomparably the worst president in American history. Nixon may have been just as villainous, but at least he was a competent villain. Bush is so willfully ignorant, so aggressively stupid that he makes Warren G. Harding look like a genius. (If I couldn’t laugh at Bush I’d pop an artery.) With his insane crusade against Saddam Hussein, his establishment of evil American gulags, and his Orwellian penchant for wreaking havoc in the name of "freedom," he squandered all the international goodwill we enjoyed as a nation after 9/11. Bush is a fundamentalist Christian fanatic who claims to receive his foreign policy advice from God. What more evidence do we need that the man is unfit to be president of a small-town travel agency, let alone a world power? We have our own Supreme Court justices (bless ‘em) to thank for electing him in 2000. What rankles me even more is the willingness of the American people to submit to Bush and his reign of terror. We should have impeached him long ago for lying to us about Iraq; by now we should have been charging the barricades to bring him down.

The New Moderate:

I remember a moment, shortly after 9/11, when it looked as if our unprepossessing Prince Hal was about to transform himself into Shakespeare’s heroic Henry V. As he stood atop the ruins of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in hand, and shouted for retribution, George W. Bush seemed to embody the strength and eloquence of a natural leader who had just discovered his powers. Here he was, tossing aside scripts, prudence and namby-pamby diplomacy for an honest, from-the-gut response to an international outrage. Unfortunately, that was the high-water mark of his presidency.

Nearly everything since has been a disaster. The natural leader with the middling mind and fiercely patriotic heart made the fatal error of letting his sinister entourage think for him. (Not that his own thinking would have been much of an improvement.) Bush should have dispatched his advisors at the first mention of "hidden WMD" in Iraq. But he was too ignorant and too unsure of himself to prevail over them. Since then, with his policies come to ruin, he has bravely stood his ground -- like a deer staring into the headlights of an onrushing car.

Meanwhile, the reputation of the United States lies in tatters. Our misguided war in Iraq has plunged us into a futile struggle that could last for decades and bring our overextended empire to ruin. A couple of black-market atomic weapons smuggled past U.S. border security would drive home the message in a hurry.

Hard as it may be to believe, Bush’s domestic record rivals his foreign policy for disastrous implications. His pigheaded stance on the environment is enough to cause mass apoplexy among people who care about this planet. His carefree spending has dug a deep budgetary hole that will take decades to remedy. He’s been too lax on illegal immigration and too eager to curtail civil liberties. His no-child-left-behind education policy has turned our public schools into test-prep centers when we desperately need them to educate.

Worse yet (at least from The New Moderate's centro-centric perspective), Bush has polarized the American people like no other president in memory. Under his watch, the republic has essentially split, like some great amoeba, into two separate and mutually hostile cultures: the red and the blue, godfearing Middle American conservatives versus "progressive" coastal liberals. As usual, thinking moderates are caught in no-man's land. At least we can thank Bush for making our moderate movement necessary.

I don’t believe the man is evil; I don’t even believe he’s stupid. Shallow, yes. Impulsive, check. Insulated and uninformed, certainly. Beholden to ruling-class interests, mais oui! But more to the point, Bush II is simply beyond his depth in the presidency.

In peaceful times he might have succeeded; the odd combination of his affable down-home personality (grammar snobs be damned) and upper-establishment connections would have served him well. Despite the Katrina relief disaster that was flogged to death in the major media, Bush seems to have genuine respect for minorities. He doesn’t weigh the political advantages of his policies, much to his credit. (He’s the opposite of Bill and Hillary in this department.) But Bush will never escape the opprobrium of having led us into a disastrous and totally unnecessary war. That’s his legacy, and unfortunately all of us will have to live with it.

Summary: George W. Bush isn’t exactly evil; he’s more like your average ruling-class mediocrity who bit off more than he could chew. The downside is that all of us Americans will be paying for his mistakes for decades to come.

Terrorists

Righty: These bloodthirsty fanatics represent the gravest threat to Western Civilization since the Turks advanced to the gates of Vienna in 1683. (Remember what religion those Turks believed in?) We’ve done nothing to deserve their hatred; they’re simply jealous because we’re living in comparative luxury while they’re still shacking up with camels. We need to do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist attacks, even if it means temporarily surrendering a little of the freedom that we take for granted. I don’t mind being searched at the airport, because I have nothing to hide. I don’t mind having my phone tapped, because I’m not talking to overseas terrorists. We need to find the people who ARE talking to them. Muslim terrorists are the most vile criminals on the planet. They kill for the sheer joy of seeing innocent people blown to bits, based on the dictates of a brutal desert religion that exhorts the faithful to shed the blood of infidels. Lefty and his crew profess shock that we humiliate captured terrorists, that we don’t grant them the full rights accorded to prisoners of war. Believe me, ordering these scumbags to form naked pyramids is a laughably mild punishment compared to what they deserve. Why should we grant them a shred of mercy when they’re utterly merciless toward their victims? I say we boil them all in oil -- Arab oil.

Lefty: Of course terrorists are a threat to innocent people; nobody disputes that much. But we need to do some serious soul-searching to uncover the reasons they hate us -- and do something about it. We’re so mind-numbingly self-righteous as a nation; we can’t even see that we bring terrorism on ourselves through our imperialistic foreign policy, our unquestioning support of Israel and our sickening materialism. I’m not justifying terrorism, of course; I’m simply explaining it. As for the treatment of captured terrorists, we can’t allow ourselves to stoop to their level. The torture of suspected terrorists (emphasis on "suspected," since we don’t allow them to be tried) flagrantly defies the Geneva Conventions. On a more human level, it should grate against every honorable instinct of a decent nation. And the suspension of our civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorists is nothing but a bogus excuse for an evil administration to steer us toward fascism. A government that curtails our freedoms in the name of freedom is perverted. It’s a scenario right out of Orwell’s 1984. We’re in desperate need of a regime change before more of our rights are eroded by this stupidly fanatical administration. By comparison, the terrorists have only the slimmest chance of affecting our lives.

The New Moderate:

You’re right, Lefty: it wouldn’t hurt us to understand why the terrorists hate us, and to use that knowledge to make them hate us less. President Bush II explained that terrorists hate us because of our freedom. (By tampering with our civil liberties, he did his best to make sure they’d resent us a little less on that score.) But come on -- let’s peel this onion and uncover the real reasons for their hatred.

Do they hate us for our excessive wealth? Sure, but not enough to kill us because of it. Do they hate us for our lewdness and lasciviousness, our liquored lifestyles and seminude womenfolk? Undoubtedly, though probably not enough to launch a jihad in our direction. Young people throughout the Islamic realm seem to regard American pop culture as a guilty pleasure.

Now let’s peel some more. Do the terrorists hate us for meddling in their corner of the world... for regarding their nations as mere spigots for the flow of fuel... for supporting Israel as a de facto fifty-first state? Now the oil is beginning to boil.

And what about their radicalized religion, which exhorts the faithful to spread Islam over the face of the world by sword and bloodshed -- and promises an eternity of orgasmic bliss to those who die in the name of Allah? Well, duh! Should we be shocked that they’re coming after us?

We can’t do anything about our freedom and wealth, despite Bush’s efforts to curtail the former and redistribute the latter to a small tribe of hereditary tycoons. We can’t do much about our increasingly degenerate culture, though we probably should for our own sakes. But we can definitely check our national impulse to bounce uninvited onto every piece of turf that represents a potential U.S. interest. We have too many interests.

Should we be Israel’s ally even at the risk of Islamic animosity? Absolutely. Should we be granting it (as we do now) over 200 times as much foreign aid per capita as we grant Africans and Latin Americans? Absolutely not. Israel is over fifty years old now; it has to learn to walk on its own sooner or later. We just need to make sure that its neighbors respect its right to walk there.

As for the fierce desert religion that has fueled terrorism on an unprecedented scale, our options are few and potentially futile. We could shut down all the madrasses that teach jihadism to new generations of the faithful within our borders. But the schools would simply regroup somewhere else and fill those young minds with more vehement fanaticism. The real solution is for Islam to reform itself from within, ASAP. If it doesn’t, the West will have to reform it by force, and that could take centuries. I have a sickening suspicion that if Islam and the West come to blows in an all-out war, we’ll eventually see crescents atop the churches of Europe and America. We might have technology on our side, but the Muslims have fanaticism. Fanatics generally get what they want.

Back to the terrorists and how we treat them. Terrorists aren’t soldiers, even though Bush II seems to be fond of describing them as "enemy combatants." Terrorists fight on behalf of no state or government; they’re simply mass murderers on self-appointed missions. I don’t believe they’re entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions or, for that matter, to the customary respect we grant legitimate military personnel. Should we subject terrorists to physical torture? No. We’re better than that. But I think we’re entitled to wear them down in captivity, interrogate them under blazing lights and even stack them in naked pyramids while silly female soldiers pose for pictures in front of them. All terrorists, simply by being terrorists, forfeit their right to civilized treatment.

One bone of contention (and it’s a major bone): for God’s sake, let’s determine whether the suspected terrorists we round up and lock away are, in fact, actual terrorists. Yes, terrorists deserve to be treated like vermin, but not while the adjective suspected is still attached to them.
Our leaders need to address this nasty issue right now. They can start by revoking the portion of the so-called Patriot Act that conveniently allows us to toss all suspected terrorists into our scattered gulags, where we leave them to rot without recourse to representation. Imagine if the Almighty were to condemn all suspected sinners to hell. That’s essentially what we’re doing under the Patriot Act. It’s unworthy of us. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff before we condemn anyone.

Summary: Obviously we’re right to hate terrorists, but we should try to make them hate us less by modifying our meddlesome foreign policy. The ultimate solution is a major reform movement in Islam, but we can’t wait that long. In the meantime, we have a right to imprison terrorists and even torment them (within reason) -- once we’ve proven that they are in fact terrorists. All suspected terrorists have a right to legal representation.

Racial Profiling

Righty: The function of law enforcement isn’t simply to round up criminals but to prevent them from acting. If statistics tell us that 55% of violent crime is committed by black males, for example, why shouldn’t police monitor that segment of the population more carefully than it does Asian females? If the black males who are stopped by police have nothing to hide, they won’t be arrested. They’re free to go. No harm done, no blots on their record. Simple as that. Profiling is even more urgent when it comes to stopping future terrorist attacks on the U.S. If young Muslim males are responsible for 95% of violent terrorist acts, why should the authorities waste their time (and ours) routinely strip-searching 70-year-old Irish-American nuns? It defies common sense. When we’re at war with Muslim terrorists, we can’t afford to let namby-pamby political correctness undermine our defenses. Which is more important: the lives of our people or the ruffled egos of a few indignant detainees?

Lefty: "Namby-pamby" political correctness? It’s so easy (isn’t it, Righty?) to dismiss the rights and feelings of an entire race or religion in a single flippant phrase. The freedom that so many right-wingers would die to defend evidently doesn’t include freedom from harassment on the basis of one’s creed or color. Here’s an example to sober you up. To date, all presidential assassins (and even failed assassins) have been white. Should the authorities make a point of screening all white people before allowing them to attend a personal appearance by the president? Our society must never cave in to the kind of quasi-fascist hysteria that places security above human rights. Our society must never condone the isolation of an entire group as the common enemy. We failed brutally in our relations with the original inhabitants of North America (and we dared call them savages!). We turned a blind eye as the Southern states trampled the rights of African Americans for an entire century after the Civil War. Even as recently as World War II, we allowed our hysteria to get the better of us as we interned loyal Japanese Americans in concentration camps. We simply can’t allow such malignant bigotry to prevail again if we are to consider ourselves a free and virtuous nation.

The New Moderate:

Both Righty and Lefty make valid and heartfelt points, but of course the solution lies in the middle. We can’t ignore the demographics of crime for the sake of political correctness: if poor urban blacks commit more street crime than whites, it makes sense for police to be more alert in poor urban black communities. Not middle class white communities. Not middle class black communities, either. In other words, police shouldn’t focus entirely on race as the identifying factor, and they should never stop drivers or pedestrians simply because they happen to be black.

The same holds true for the screening of potential terrorists. The vast majority of suicide bombers and other murderous fanatics are young Muslim men. That means you screen young Muslim men, not elderly Muslim grandmothers. It means you don’t screen Christian Arabs, either. Ethnic background shouldn’t be a primary focus at all, because fanatical Muslims can be black, white or Asian.

In short, you could say The New Moderate favors profiling, but not racial profiling. In treacherous times, we can’t afford to blind ourselves to the demographics of the people most likely to cause harm. But it should be clear that those demographics involve more than race or ethnicity, and that the individuals selected for profiling should never be treated as criminals or even as suspects until the police find incriminating evidence.

Frankly, I don’t mind when I’m pulled aside at airport security checkpoints. I look resolutely Middle Eastern, though I’m not Muslim or (alas) young. I’ve never been detained for more than half a minute; after a quick scan, I’m good to go. As long as I’m not taken into custody, I feel assured that the profiling system is working to keep us as safe as possible.

Summary: Racial profiling may be unjust, but demographic profiling is justified where certain identifiable groups commit a preponderance of the crime.

Iraq

Righty: The U.S. was completely justified in its invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a monstrous dictator who massacred his own people and threatened the stability of the Middle East. We had solid evidence that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, and the only reason we didn't find them was because he hid or destroyed them. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, we had to do whatever we could to stop Islamic aggression against the West. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the most powerful force in the Middle East, capable of knocking out Israel and destabilizing the entire region. We know that Saddam funded terrorist activities and communicated with al-Qaeda. We simply couldn't risk letting him furnish the terrorists with weapons. On top of that, Iraq continually violated the terms of the peace agreement following its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. We would have been justified in invading Iraq for that reason alone. But when you add Saddam's transgressions and the need to stabilize the Middle East following 9/11, the justification for the war becomes indisputable. And after all, we won the actual war inside of a few months; you can't blame Bush if those fanatical insurgents refuse to surrender. You have to agree that we're safer today than before the war. Those jihadists haven't been able to pull off an attack on American soil since 9/11, thanks to our vigilant president and his administration.

Lefty: Don't get me started. The invasion of Iraq has been the single greatest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history: more insanely wrongheaded than Vietnam, and ultimately more costly in terms of what we've lost. And what have we lost? Not just billions of dollars and thousands of lives. We've squandered the good will of the allies who flocked to our side in the aftermath of 9/11; we've lost our reputation as a force for justice in the world. Iraq wasn't responsible for 9/11; can you understand that much? Bush pulled a classic bait-and-switch: "We misunderestimated that slippery rascal Osama bin Laden and couldn't ketch him, so how 'bout goin' after ol' Saddam Hussein, who had it in for my Daddy?" He and his neocon ventriloquists lied to drum up support for a totally unprovoked war in which the U.S. played the disgraceful role of wanton aggressor. And the astounding thing is that the nation fell for it -- including Democratic senators and representatives who must forever be held accountable. The war in Iraq has not only failed to bring stability to the region... it has actually fueled the Islamic jihad movement with new recruits and intensified animosity toward the West (and especially us). Within Iraq, our invasion has propelled dueling religious factions toward bloody civil war. What profound evil we've unleashed on the world! What a nightmare of a conflict, with no end in sight! We must withdraw from Iraq immediately. I'd move to Canada except for the fact that my dissenting voice is sorely needed to rouse this nation of sheep.

The New Moderate:

There's nothing immoderate about denouncing this sorry excuse for a war. Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks. In fact, it was one of the more secular and stable Islamic states in the region. We had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was planning to equip terrorists with his elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Did the Bush administration think we'd quash worldwide terrorism simply by toppling an ornery dictator in Iraq? Or that our invasion would make the Islamic world safe for democracy, which would then spread virally from Morocco to Indonesia? Whatever the real motive for the invading Iraq (oil? Israeli security? Bush family vendetta?), wiping out Islamic terrorism doesn't seem to have ranked especially high on the list. The sad irony is that terrorists never gravitated to Iraq until we invaded it. Now, of course, the country is Terrorist Central.

You can't defeat terrorists by conventional military tactics. (When will our leaders awaken to this obvious fact?) Terrorists have no territory, no capital to occupy, no infrastructure to destroy. We're at war with scattered fanatics who live in places like Germany and England as well as Syria and Afghanistan, and we'd have to kill them all to win. Even if we did accomplish that impossible feat, two new terrorists would rise up for every one we've snuffed out.

The only way to beat terrorists, aside from foiling their attempts to attack us, is to make them hate us less. You don't soften their hatred by bombing the bejeesus out of their kinsmen. In the Iraq War we essentially took a baseball bat to a hornet's nest and expected the hornets to like it. We'll be feeling those stings for a long time to come.

So what happens now? Do we pull out overnight and let Iraq disintegrate into full-scale civil war? Do we stay and force our military personnel to fend off suicide bombers for the next fifty years, while our overextended empire slowly bleeds to death amid the ruins of Ur and Babylon? The one glimmer of hope that emerged during this war -- the one moment that caused me to reconsider the ghastliness of Bush's Folly -- was the sight of Iraqis risking their lives to vote in their first free election. We could let those voters decide if they want us to stay. (If the Iraqis give us the thumbs down, we'd be able to vamoose without guilt.)

One widely suggested (but less-than-ideal) solution would be to partition the country and let each faction have its own territory. The world has been reverting to tribalism since the end of the Cold War, and all tribes need a patch of land to call their own. But the balkanization of Iraq would simply open another bloody floodgate. (Remember Yugoslavia?)

The ultimate solution -- the one we New Moderates dare to dream of -- is for a reformist Islamic faction to emerge and put an end to the insanity within their religious ranks. But we can't wait that long, and neither can Iraq. If Iraq is truly to belong to the Iraqis, I say we let the people decide who fights the remaining fight.

Summary: The war in Iraq was (and will remain) a colossal blunder, but now that the damage is done we should let the Iraqis decide if we stay or go.