As with so many things about this byzantine, Shakespearean relationship between father and son, reunited here at last for a wedding, a christening and a funeral this weekend, it’s an ironic turn of events.
The son was furious when the father was painted as a wimp in the 1988 campaign, and now he and his spinners are painting 41 as a weak leader. W.’s pain at what happened to his aristocratic dad with “the wimp factor” led him to overreact in the other direction when he became president, embracing a West Texas-tough, muscle-bound foreign policy that shunned diplomacy, nuance, compromise, multilateral treaties and allied coalitions as measures that reflected impotence.
And now it has led him to scapegoat his own father, and Bill Clinton, for sending signals of weakness that encouraged the terrorists — even as many Middle East experts say it is W.’s culturally obtuse, diplomatically averse and morally simplistic style that has spurred terrorism and made the world more dangerous.
definition -
Byzantine /bizantin, bi-, bizzn-, -teen/ • adjective
1. relating to Byzantium (later called Constantinople, now Istanbul), the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
2. excessively complicated and detailed.
3. very devious or underhanded.
AskOxford.com
Well now, the US and the world have been dealt from an underhanded deck of cards for the last five years: WMD's, insufficient intelligence data, b(p)lame-gate, & Gitmo are all examples. Culpability has been de rigeuer from this administration as a means of putting opponents in their place, along with the rhetoric of cowardly and unpatriotic. Intimidation is a calculating defense used by bullies in making their dominance felt by those they consider weak. It also is a way of displacing responsibility for one's own actions.
George W. operates from a base of power and might and "I am right..."
“They misread history,” said one Bush I foreign policy official. “43’s born-again background and lack of experience and simple view of the world made him think it was easy to define who the enemy is. But hope is not a policy — hoping to win, hoping to make a democracy. They came in with the philosophy that the U.S. was the most powerful country in the world and they could remake the world any way they wanted. Condi and others assumed that the Middle East would fall apart peacefully, the way the Soviet Union did, if given a chance. But the Middle East is a totally different place.”
What they failed to see was all of the nuanced goings-on behind the scenes for years by the Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations. It was a relentless effort by many people, Republican and Democrat alike, to weaken the Soviet threat. The "bull in the china shop" approach has never really worked by an aggressor when an aggressee is a fanatic. They don't mind losing the china.
At this hazardous moment in world history, somebody has got to grab the stubborn, shuttered scion wearing the “43” windbreaker and talk some sense into him, the way Dwight Eisenhower did when he privately dressed down the young J.F.K. after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And who better than his dad, that 82-year-old still demonically driving his cigarette boat around the Bay of Bushes?
I imagine that there is a story behind the relationship of #41 and #43 that will never be known. Regardless, the bond and the intricacies of the relationship between father and son has been argued, discussed, psychoanalyzed, dramatized, and studied for centuries. The link is strong even if it is one of love/hate as so often is the case. To repeat a phrase, it is very byzantine.
When I had done something egregious, I knew I was in for it because may father's line was, "The only thing you can do right now is breathe." It's probably the approach Eisenhower took to Kennedy. It is what is needed between George H and George W. Of course, #43 would possibly have to get away from his make-believe father - Dick Cheney - for anything to make a difference.
think about it...
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