Now THIS Is What I Call "Subtle" Analysis!

"The Worse, The Better"

Turns out, from the point of view of folks opposing USer hegemony in the world, the last four years of Bushevism, at least, may have been worth the pain, since the arrogance, heavy-handedness, insensitivity, and hubris of the Busheviks makes CERTAIN that the USofA emerges from Bushevik era substantially weakened in the very arenas--international alliances--which had cemented its power since 1945.

Bush--that is, the Bush/Cheney/PNAC neo-con ideological idyll--will have had exactly the net deleterious effect on the prominence and prowess of the country and the nation, the prevention of which might have rationalized their excesses--had they not, a priori, determined to raze the village to save it.
Like I said, subtle:

Jeet Heer on the Bush legacy: The most damaging president since Herbert Hoover
Posted: November 28, 2008, 10:00 AM by Kelly McParland
Jeet Heer, Full Comment. U.S. politics

In 2004, the left-wing historian Gabriel Kolko, shocked many of his long-time readers by arguing that it would be better for the world if George W. Bush were reelected. Kolko’s arguments were unexpected because the historian, a professor emeritus at York University, was known as one of the leading academic critics of American foreign policy, a writer whose work was often cited by fellow dissidents like Noam Chomsky. In books like The Politics of War (1972), Kolko pioneered the revisionist school of scholarship which argued that the United States and the Soviet Union were equally culpable in starting the Cold War.

Kolko’s reasons for supporting Bush are worth examining for anyone interested in judging the president’s achievements. Kolko began by observing that “the United States’ strength, to a crucial extent, has rested on its ability to convince other nations that it is to their vital interests to see America prevail in its global role.”

Through its ham-fisted and bullying foreign policy, the Bush administration alienated all of America’s major allies and undermined the system of consent and consensus that made the United States the globe’s dominant power. Desiring to see the United States weakened, Kolko worried that if the Democratic contender John Kerry was elected, these frayed alliances would be repaired.

“As dangerous as it is, Bush’s reelection may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power,” Kolko argued in 2004 in the radical newsletter Counterpunch. “One does not have to believe that the worse the better but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush’s mandate.” (In using the phrase “the worse the better” Kolko was alluding to the venerable Leninist doctrine that badly-administered regimes are easier to overthrow than well-functioning states).

With the economic crisis, the energy crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis, the security crisis, the terrorist crisis, the ocean crisis, the ozone crisis, the urban crisis, the homeless crisis, the drug addiction crisis, the starvation crisis, the HIV crisis, the border crisis, it's beginning to look as though Lenin and that old crowd were right: We've finally bought enough rope to hang ourselves.

There is MUCH more to savor and enjoy at the original link, the excellent National Post.