Matthew Dowd writes an apology for Barack Obama that Obama would never use.

I know that this Matthew Dowd piece (“Imagining Obama’s Apology to Bush“) is entertaining to many in its angry despair that Barack Obama ended doing all of those natsec things that the Left thought that George W Bush was doing, only on steroids. And it is very, very tasty despair; but there is still one important thing to remember. Barack Obama did, in fact, continue a goodly number of Bush-era policies.

The difference, of course, is that under Bush those policies worked.  Or, more accurately: those policies were implemented by a man who instinctively understood when to talk, and when to punch.  GWB’s facility with the latter after 9/11 was so successful* that foreign terrorist groups pretty much shelved whatever plans they had to make more organized terrorist attacks on American soil… which is a reticence that they no longer have, during this administration.  That’s because George W Bush terrified the groups that we’re still with war with, and use of that verb was intentional.  Obama simply doesn’t scare them as much.

This is, by the way, a problem.

Via:

“Imagining Obama’s Apology to Bush,” by @matthewjdowd – http://t.co/IGY0EGDUTD

— Adam Baldwin (@adamsbaldwin) June 8, 2013

Moe Lane

*Turns out that curb-stomping the regime that sponsors terrorist groups attacking your country, then turning around and curb-stomping another regime that richly deserved it on both general principles and ten years of past history, does a hell of a lot to convince still other trouble-making regimes that your country is transcendentally pissed off, and ready to provide more curb-stomps as necessary until people get the hint.  I’d say “Who knew?” – except that, well, I did.  And so did GWB.