Random thoughts about Bush and Iraq

I'm a fan of Camille Paglia, even when I disagree with her. Her thinking is quite impressive and her language is always interesting. Below is a sample of her writing about Iraq.

"Victory"-- a word constantly on President Bush's hopeful lips -- cannot be achieved in an amorphous insurgency or in a vast land with indefensible borders that is splintered among ancient sects and tribes. There is no distinct enemy, only a welter of saboteurs hiding among the population, whose loyalties cannot be assessed by a foreign force embarrassingly lacking elementary knowledge of local culture and languages."

A conservative writer is of the opinion that Bush could have been recruited by Democrats. His view is that Bush pursues policies that are not conservative and only occasionally issues bursts of conservative sounding rhetoric. He thinks that the moderate Democrats could have pulled Bush to the left but let the opportunity go by and left Bush with nowhere to go but to the right.
I think if Bush were left alone to just follow his nose, he'd lead himself to a form of smug Wall Street conservatism.

The British have stopped using the term, "war on terrorism" Here's their reasoning:

"In the U.K., we do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone, and because this isn't us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives," Benn told a meeting in New York organized by the Center on International Cooperation think tank. Many officials in Britain, the United States' closest ally, feel the phrase is vague and simplistic, encouraging people to think that only military means are needed to overcome extremism. A spokesman said Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett did not use the phrase "war on terror," preferring to emphasize that the fight against extremists is "not a clash or a war of civilizations."

Intellectually, Bush is isolated in the world. Now his last ally, Britain, has left him.