Osama: "Thank You, George"

The New York Observer seems to have it exactly right. This editorial is a must-read. Excerpt:

"With its Reagan-era bluster and frat-house machismo, the Bush administration has played into the hands of terrorists, breaking apart NATO and fracturing half-century-old relations with Europe that have persevered through all the roilings of post–World War II history. And the administration did it at just the very moment when the West has been targeted—not by that wretched despot Saddam, but by the murderous followers of Osama bin Laden. Thanks to the President and his hubristic crew of ideologues, America and Europe are not united, as they should be, in the face of global Islamic militancy. Instead, many people talk about the end of America’s strategic alliance with Western Europe. Instead of France and Germany, some say, we will simply align ourselves with the post-Communist states of Eastern Europe—like, say, Bulgaria.

Osama bin Laden did not create this sad state of affairs. George W. Bush did.

Rarely in the face of war has the leadership in this country—both the executive and the opposition—served it so badly. The opposition has cynically acquiesced; they have not challenged this intellectually challenged President. There are, as Thomas Friedman has pointed out so eloquently in The New York Times, many merits to the argument for the war; the President has not made them. Mr. Bush, having painted himself into a diplomatic corner unlike any in American history, has created rationales for attack that are less in the tradition of American war Presidents like Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, even Bush Sr., and more in the tradition of William McKinley as he bumbled his way into the Spanish-American war."

Yes, Bush has done more to screw things up worldwide that Osama or any terrorist organization could have dreamed.