[...] As it happens, the Europeans caught on to Bush before the American public.

Stupid Americans, so simplisme. And does anyone besides me take just a little offense at this idea Richard is floating that President George W. Bush is trying to get away with something?

In various polls, the voters here give Bush high marks for foreign policy, particularly his handling of international terrorism. But even the war on terrorism has not been handled well.

What is Mr. Cohen talking about?

As Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) …

Oh, that’s an independent source of information on President George W. Bush.

… points out, the United States botched the operation at Tora Bora by using Afghans to flush out al Qaeda and Taliban forces. The Afghans apparently did business with them instead.

So, the whole War on Terrorism is a failure because a few dozen, or maybe even a few hundred, enemy forces escaped in Tora Bora. Maybe. I guess Senator Kerry would have dispensed with all their local knowledge, disrespected their customs and intricate relationships, and charged ahead completely on our own. Like in … wait for it … Vietnam?

Bush's problem, and our own, is that he keeps trying to apply a dated ideology -- the wisdom of Henry Cabot Lodge -- to a world where it still does not fit.

As I tried to demonstrate, that is also the wisdom of President George Washington, and I don’t regard it as at all dated. But utopianism wasn’t even taken seriously by Sir Thomas More, much less by the illiberal utopian statists who have taken up the reactionary battle flag against freedom and limited government. [...]