Jeb Bush - A Reprise of His Brother's Failed Policies

Despite his claims that "he's his own man," the prospect of a third Bush presidency suggests that we'd see a return of the disastrous policies of the Chimperator, George W. Bush, both domestic and in foreign policy.  Sadly, Jebbie has surrounded himself with his brothers past advisers who crafted the debacles most Americans would like to forget.  Worse yet, these advisers still refuse to admit that they were nearly 100% wrong about just about everything.  Do we really want a return to policies that caused so much economic havoc, bankrupted the country, and caused so many deaths?  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what Bush III might bring.  Here are excerpts:

If Jeb Bush is elected president, the United States won’t be on speaking terms with Cuba and will partner more closely with Israel. He’ll tighten sanctions on Iran and urge NATO to deploy more troops in Eastern Europe to counter Vladimir Putin. And he’ll order the U.S. military to root out “barbarians” and “evildoers” around the globe.

Far from running from or playing down the views once expressed by his brother George W. Bush, Jeb Bush is embracing them — and emphasizing them.

It is clear when he calls for closer engagement with Arab leaders to combat the growing threat of the Islamic State. Or when he criticizes President Obama for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. It is most apparent when he refers to “evildoers” — a formulation used widely by his brother — and argues that the United States needs to engage but doesn’t have to be “the world’s policeman,” a view voiced by his brother that was also embraced by their father, George H.W. Bush.

Bush’s views put him squarely in the middle of GOP consensus on foreign affairs — a consensus that formed as his brother reshaped U.S. engagement with the world. But by endorsing some of his brother’s views, he puts himself at odds with most Americans, who remain wary of the two wars launched during the last Bush presidency.

In recent years, nearly 6 in 10 Americans have believed that the Iraq war was not worth fighting, though Republicans have been slightly more supportive, according to polling by The Washington Post and other organizations. In more recent years, public opinion has similarly turned against the war in Afghanistan.

Early in the exploratory phase of his likely campaign, Jeb Bush unveiled a foreign policy advisory team that reflects the disparate views of GOP thinking on the world. The group includes two former secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III; two former CIA directors, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden; former attorney general Michael Mukasey; and Paul Wolf­owitz, a former deputy defense secretary and a lead architect of the Iraq war.  

When it comes to Iraq, Bush is mostly supportive of his brother’s legacy there.  “There were mistakes in Iraq for sure,” he said during a speech in Chicago in February. “Using the intelligence capability that everybody embraced about weapons of mass destruction, it turns out to not be accurate.”

Undeterred by public opinion polls that suggest his views are not shared by a majority of voters, Bush believes that global events might prompt Americans to eventually embrace his thinking. During an appearance in San Francisco in January, he accused Obama of exploiting America’s war fatigue to justify withdrawing U.S. military forces abroad.

Claiming that "intelligence was not accurate" is Jebbie's euphemism for dodging the fact that his idiot brother deliberately lied to the American people.