Journal impengo's Journal: Glowing review of Bush 41 (opinion piece) 1
Bush 41's resume starts with a patriotic choice, in Air Force service. From there, I lose track, noting that he was shot down but retrieved. I pick up again when he served as Diplomat to China - a posting that probably tried his diplomacy in a formative crucible. With details unavailable on the agenda of his POTUS, we can't tell if he was successful or not, but he was later moved to DCIA. I believe he was still serving when Actor Ronald Reagan tapped him for VP. I correlate Reagan's successful Right-sizing of Government with a small book (practically a pamphlet,) called "Parkinson's Law," by C. Northcote. I suspect that Mr. Reagan must at some point have read it. For his part, he stared down the Cold War USSR, before the appointment of Gorbachev. The Polish activist Walesa, who organized "solidarity," probably had an influence in the appointment of Polish John Paul II to papacy after the demise of Pope [whoever was before him.] If Mandela was influential in liberating S. Africa from Apartheid, Pope John Paul II collaborated with diminutive Gorbachev, map on his pate and all, to make Reagan's Berlin Wall comments political. I think this falls too far in time after the Gary Powers fiasco for Mr. Powers to have been consulted by Russians, but he was traded for and returned to US soil before his 1970s death. John McCain gave N. Vietnam political problems when they found him too hot to handle, and Mr. Powers failure to commit suicide may have had a less successful, but similar effect in USSR... they were contemporaries.
In Russia, two words encapsulated the defeat of Cold War dissension and strife; Glasnost and Perestroika. I understand Glasnost to mean "openness,") a curse word for all Russians who hope for a return to National Security for them,) and Perestroika to mean "Family." If openness for a Nation meant a loss of Military capabilities, openness for a family was a terrible loss of privacy, and dignity with it in many cases (I infer.)
While Reagan's Presidency presided over these developments, his own administration was touched by scandal. Ollie North's patriotic refusal to implicate his office was appropriate to the character of the individual, not the office. Reagan's VP Bush could not have competently ceased to know some things, but CIA has a remarkable ability to compartmentalize. Bush's information may have been limited to specifics for which he was in a position to demand verification... in 1991, I successfully argued his Machiavellian competence from postulated complicity in the Contra financing of Iranian rebels; I was dismayed when the implied ability appeared to be penalized, rather than employed - I unavoidably conclude I misjudged something. In final analysis, Reagan's Whitehouse was overcharged for fewer Nukes than the Russians had, but MAD was accomplished anyway, the debt was not for naught.
Bush's subsequent administration was remarkable by successful election - VPs are statistically unsuccessful candidates, and his candidacy carried the stigma of a Machiavel. [I put his unknown campaign manager in a class with FDR's and (Racially Black) Obama's Plouffe, for getting unlikely candidates elected.] His Presidency saw fruition of the fall of Berlin's Wall, and Yeltzin blocked Russia from competent leadership, leading to the disband of Marx's greatest success. 70's Middle East peace advocate, sometime USSR diplomat Shevardnadze went home to native Georgia, where his much anticipated election was sadly unsuccessful - lingering Russian attacks on his patriotism on the basis of Religious defect brought him down (if my guess is correct.) Today, he is Georgia's answer to Russia's Putin; Russia is half-in half-out of Georgia as we "speak."
The storming of (drug money advocate and drug induced profligacy,) Noriega's Panama set the stage for a Desert Shield that used 6 months, and almost no pied-a-terre to liberate Kuwait. Bush 41's Secretary of State James Baker was required to excel, and also did so, by building the International coalition that gave permission for the 100hr Desert Storm. From my point of view, Kuwait was invaded from the North, its infrastructure bombed by its liberators, its oil wells pillaged by its rapers in retreat; they paid Red Adair and (all apologies for forgetting the name) 'the other guy,' to put out the oil fires, and independently financed their own reconstruction while Iraq defaulted on the bill. Despite these credentials and this immoderate success (or maybe because of the immoderate nature of the same,) Bush 41 went down in a political heartbeat, over a politically expedient comment about Taxes.
Among his legislative efforts, I observed a Chinese Immigrant Amnesty that staunched a concern that had historically plagued CIA evaluations of Russian intentions - a Paminyatchik group, such as Robert Ludlum theorized in 1982's The Parsifal Mosaic. He also passed dual citizenship as an option, (using Centralized Globalist's fear that Patriotism and Nationalism will eventuate War,) [there may be National Sovereignty Globalists out there, but they are as rare and influential as US Federalists,] to at least free his CIA to do their job without looking over their shoulder fearing their own national organs. A good pilot of how well this is likely to turn out might be the longer standing decision of Canada - they make up in Discord what they lack in Patriotism and Apathy. Canada cannot even anticipate Islamic Theocracy by codifying 'Separation of Church and State,' after a 1982 revision of their constitution, acknowledging a higher power.
To observe lingering backlash against bad policy decisions, I excerpt the following from a Washington Post condensation of vote 147,1st session of Senate, 110th congress.
[The conference report also provides $3 billion for special vehicles designed to withstand roadside bombs, and it increases from 20 to 270 the number of heavy and light armored vehicles authorized to be purchased for force protection purposes in Iraq and Afghanistan. It prohibits government funds from being used to establish any military installation or base for a permanent stationing of U.S. armed forces in Iraq and does not allow funds to be used to exercise U.S. control over any Iraqi oil resource.]
We are making sure we don't overpay for a pied-a-terre, by voluntarily emasculating ourselves in a refusal to bless naked aggression with compensation for so much as a BASE! Barter is not excluded, but this is likely from the failure of the intellect that designed this one to contemplate the possibility. I have to make a bad review on that particular move :-(
It is not surprising that Politicos who knew the hidden talents of Bush 41 wanted to let his sons have every opportunity to serve, even against his own protestations of reservations. In a wear out v rust out retirement, I still suspect the old man of plotting to use media to begin a cultural exchange with the people of China.
Footnote: There was some date when "we" realized that a U2 could photograph things by parallax that made overflights un-necessary. Did Powers' U2 even NEED to be where he was that day? IF not, can we make SURE that parallax from where he was THAT DAY, was NOT the real reason he was out there... a pilot that can manage the U2's small envelope is a resource to be wasted thriftily.
A suggestion... (Score:2)