The Bush Administration and the French Revolution

Paul Craig Roberts is an old time conservative who has refused to join the hive mentality of the Neocons and Theocons. In his commentary Jacobin to the Core he compares the Bush administration to the Jacobins who were responsible for the "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution, an excellent analogy.

After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist. The hubris-filled megalomaniac in the Oval Office has promised the world war without end.

Bush's crazy talk has even upset rah-rah Republicans. One Republican called Bush's speech "God-drenched." It has begun to dawn on the formerly Grand Old Party that a bloodless coup has occurred and Republicans have lost their party to Jacobins, who cloak themselves under the term "neoconservatives."

What is a Jacobin? Jacobins ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins saw themselves as virtuous champions of universalist principles that required them to impose "liberty, equality, fraternity" not merely on France by a reign of terror, but also on the rest of Europe by force of arms.

Unlike America's Founding Fathers, who exhorted their countrymen to cultivate their own garden, Jacobins were not content with revolutionizing France. They were driven to revolutionize the world

President Bush's second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth. As one of Bush's neocon puppetmasters, Robert Kagan, approvingly wrote in the Washington Post on Jan. 23, "The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism."

Michael Gerson, the Jacobin White House speechwriter who wrote Bush's infamous "God-drenched speech," defensively insists that Bush's wars will only last "a generation." We can take comfort in that. According to the dictionary, a generation is "about 30 years," so it is only our children and grandchildren who will have to be sacrificed for "Bush's historic mission." Along about 2035 things should be calming down. Whoever remains can begin to attack the $50 trillion national war debt.

Unsettling words because they ring so true. And he continues with some thoughts on realism:

Kagan calls America's moral crusade against the world "the higher realism that Bush now proclaims." Gerson declares that Bush's "methods are deeply realistic."

What is realistic about declaring weapons of mass destruction to exist where they do not exist?

What is realistic about assigning blame for Sept. 11 where it does not belong?

What is realistic about destroying a secular state and creating a vast breeding ground for terrorists?

What is realistic about making Osama bin Laden an Islamic hero and shaking the foundations of America's reigning puppets in the Middle East?

What is realistic about declaring a world crusade in the face of evidence that the U.S. cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, a city of only 6 million people, much less Iraq, a country of only 25 million people?

And what about the Bush Republican Party?

Led by Bush, the Republican Party now stands for detainment without trial and war without end. It is a party destructive of all virtue and a great threat to life and liberty on earth.

In a sense Neocons and the Theocons leading Bush are more dangerous than the Jacobins as they were not driven by delusions of doing "God's Work".
Mr Roberts has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration and their philosophy. We had a post on one of his commentaries here a couple of months ago and he had a piece, The End of Conservatives, where he discusses what it's like to be a conservative today.

The new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision...

Welcome to the reality based community Paul.