The protests in Egypt are proving that former President George Bush was right in his push for democracy in the Arab world, a leading Yale professor and best-selling author wrote Wednesday.

Stephen Carter, a left-leaning author, wrote in The Daily Beast that now it’s up to Obama to build on Bush’s legacy.

egypt,protests,mubarak,“Not long ago, President George W. Bush was considered naive for suggesting that the promotion of democracy in the Arab world should be a staple of American foreign policy,” Carter writes. “Two years ago, the same charge was whispered against President Barack Obama, when he suggested, in his Cairo address to the Muslim world, that self-government and freedom “are not just American ideas, they are human rights.”

Both presidents, he points out, were subjected to lectures by so-called “experts” and career diplomats who claimed that democratic instincts were alien to the region.

That thinking seems to be headed to the dustbin of history with the regime of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Bush was “subjected to lectures from experts who insisted that somehow even to speak about democracy and freedom in the Arab lands was to show oneself to be a hopeless romantic, insufficiently hardheaded, out of touch with reality.”

“The much-maligned Bush Doctrine included a military component—fighting our foes on their soil rather than ours—that President Obama has fully adopted. It also included a moral component—the use of American influence to spread democracy and freedom—that was only rarely emphasized, perhaps because the Bush administration followed its own moral strategy only rarely.”

Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. His latest book is "The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama."

So, Obama = Bushlite?

If you think that bush jr. is responsible in some way for the revolt in Egypt, I want what you're smoking.

Bush isn't a junior, Al Gore is......

You have to admit, comparing blowing the hell out of a few countries to a country's own citizens taking back their country is not much of a comparison...and anything that implies that GWB spread anything other than $hit and blood around the Middle East is inaccurate.

Fish on...

Todd

Jesus I have to stop drinking cause I think I just agreed with what Todd just said!!!!

Must be time to hit the hay.


Fishy

I know Bush, Sr. went to school at Yale, but I'm not sure about Jr. Could there be a little back-slapping going on here? Otherwise, it's hard to explain how someone who seems like a respectable authority would write BS like that. GWB as a "hopeless romantic" seems a bit of a stretch to me, although hopeless does come to mind.

I enjoyed the copying. But mostly, I enjoyed the pasting.

Dubya bought & drank his way through Yale. Kinda like if Ogre was a blue-blood on Revenge of the Nerds.



Apparently his attitude towards politics is just like his attitude towards sports.

This GW syndrome is some serious stuff.