Bush on Life

It's not particularly difficult to expose the incoherence of current Republican policy. But few do it with the wit and brio of Michael Kinsley:

It was, I believe, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) who first made the excellent, bitter and terribly unfair joke about conservatives who believe in a right to life that begins at conception and ends at birth.

This joke has been adapted for use against various Republican politicians ever since. In the case of President Bush, though, it appears to be literally true.

Read the whole thing.

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I have two problems with the otherwise good article.

1. He claims that he agrees with Bush in that "the inevitable loss of innocents cannot be taken as a reason not to go to war." Wrong. It's the first reason you do not go to war unless it is absolutely necessary. You really have to be a sick individual to wrap your mind around the idea of an "acceptable level of collateral damage". Somehow I don't think that idea really captures how we Americans would view a foreign power bombing the daylights out of us.

2. He waxes too poetic about Harry Truman. IMO Harry Truman was worse than Bush on foreign policy, being the only president in history to oversee the end of a major and them start another one which ended in quagmire (Korea). And then there is always his obviously unnecesary and outright murderous use of the A-Bomb on Japan, which was more of an act of genital-vaing in the face of the Soviets than a move that was necessary to end the war.