Idiot

Victor Davis Hanson is an idiot.

After making that point in painful detail about fifty times, I shouldn't have to make it yet again. But my dead tree gazette insists on putting his nonsense on my breakfast table and spiking my systolic on a regular basis. So, briefly...

You don't really need to read past the headline:

Terrorists' ravings indicate Bush has made progress

But let's.

He starts off conceding that the Preznit is a tad unpopular here in the U.S. of A. Of course, his approach is to characterize that unpopularity as manifesting the classic winger construct: Bush Derangement Syndrome. He follows by conceding that Bush is almost universally reviled abroad as well. Is this the same Victor Davis Wingnut we know and loathe?

But redemption is at hand. The turnaround is so staggering in its blockheadedness, I cannot do it justice, and thus reproduce it in full:

Finally, there is at least one group whose hatred of Bush is more than welcome: Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida terrorists.

Now, if you were to believe the criticisms of the president by many of the groups outlined above, it would follow that bin Laden would actually be delighted by Bush's "war on terror."

After all, Bush supposedly waged an unnecessary and divisive war that only empowered his enemies. The administration supposedly drove "moderates" into bin Laden's camp, divided the American public over Iraq, and turned off allies with Guantánamo and wiretaps. We are surely less safe, it is argued, post-Sept. 11.

But why then does bin Laden hate George Bush so passionately? He serially rants about the president. In October 2004 he even released a pre-election video addressed to Americans, lambasting Bush in hopes that he would lose the election.

The truth is that, thanks to Bush, bin Laden's original bases in Afghanistan are lost. His Al-Qaida followers in Iraq are being systematically decimated - with the help of Sunni tribesmen repulsed by jihadist atrocities. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center revealed a precipitous drop in support among Middle Easterners for the tactics of suicide bombing, and a growing unpopularity for bin Laden himself.

Al-Qaida terrorists no doubt hate every American president. But bin Laden's venom for feisty George Bush is special, galvanized by the president's success in eroding Al-Qaida militarily while trying to foster enough reform to ruin the terrorist organization politically.

George Bush's war on radical Islamic terrorists and their sponsors apparently makes a lot of widely different people uncomfortable. But the irony here is that bin Laden's dislike for the president should show Bush-haters here and abroad that he deserves some praise. Their common enemy is as enraged as he is reeling.

Yes, indeed. We should all let our opinion be dictated by Osama bin Laden. We should like those he hates, and hates those he likes, period. Like the Iranians, who are his sworn enemies, ergo ... um...err...

But that is only the half of it.

In October 2004 he even released a pre-election video addressed to Americans, lambasting Bush in hopes that he would lose the election.

How stupid does a person have to be to look at how things played out in the 2004 election to believe that? How willfully simplistic do you have to be to ignore the widely discussed fact that, every time bin Laden released a statement or tape threatening the U.S. or bashing Bush, Bush's poll numbers went up? Apparently the kind of simplistic reverse psychology that undamaged humans see through by junior high school still works just fine on Victor Davis Wingnut.

I have no doubt that OBL's opinion of GWB is not very good. (On the other hand, I am also pretty confident that if bin Laden had the ability to install a sock puppet in the White House who did Osama's biding, I'm not sure we would see much difference.) But al Qaeda is doing pretty well, as our own government has concluded. And they aren't growing in numbers and strength in spite of Bush's Iraq nightmare -- they are growing because of it. Saying that Osama's rhetoric indicates Bush's success is evidence of ..., well, wingnuttiness. (Even Sully agrees.)

And yet, like Kristol and Krauthammer and Bobo Brooks, Vic does not seem to have worn out his welcome on the nation's OpEd pages. I guess idiots deserve a megaphone, too.