Kris Kristofferson is the actor, singer, songwriter ("Me and Bobbie McGee" for Janis Joplin) who was once a Rhodes scholar.  His masters thesis, whist he was at Oxford, was on the British poet William Blake (1757-1827) - "The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom" and all that).  He has just endorsed Wesley Clark as the best man to be the next president.

Clark, from Arkansas, was also a Rhodes scholar.  I guess those who are Rhodes scholars stick together.

Here's the endorsement:

Just when the world is being dragged into the death spiral of an unending cycle of violence by a vision-less, coldblooded collection of think-tank warriors goose-stepping their way into the new millennium with a stunning lack of respect for human rights, the environment, or international law, along comes a man with the proven credentials of intelligence, integrity, and courage singularly equipped by his spirit and experience to lead us out of this mess. Don't listen to what the lying liars say about him; listen to what he says.  Wesley Clark is a prayer answered.

Things are getting really odd when you find a column by Pat Buchanan republished on a site called antiwar of all things.  But there it sat.

These folks gave him a short bio: Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books.

They did not note Pat is pretty ticked at the current "neoconservative" crowd running things now, nor note his history of xenophobic, isolationist views.

Anyway, Buchanan rips into Bush and his recent speeches on democracy - a November addresses at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington and at the Whitehall Palace in London on that recent trip to the UK.

Buchanan considers them and suggests Bush didn't even know what he was saying.

See Here We Go Again
Pat Buchanan, December 10, 2003, AntiWar.com

Buchanan can be blunt:

George Bush did not write this democratist drivel. This is the kind of messianic rhetoric he probably never heard before he became president. Who is putting these words in his mouth? For if George Bush truly intends to lead a "global democratic revolution," and convert not only Iraq but the whole Middle East to democracy, he has ceased to be a conservative and we are headed for endless conflicts, disappointments, disillusionment and tragedy.

And then he starts with the rhetorical questions regarding Bush:

Where in the Constitution is he empowered to go around the world destabilizing governments? Can he truly believe that by hectoring such autocracies as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, America is more secure? Who comes to power if Mubarak goes in Cairo, the Saudi monarchy falls, or Musharaff is ousted in Pakistan? If memory serves, the last wave of popular revolutions in the region gave us Nasser, Khadafi, Saddam and the Ayatollah.

Ah yes, good questions all.

And then this:

Where did he get the idea we are insecure because the Islamic world is not democratic? The Islamic world has never been democratic. Yet, before we intervened massively there, our last threat came from Barbary pirates. Lest we forget, Muhammad Atta and his comrades did not plot their atrocities in the Sunni Triangle, but in Hamburg and Delray Beach.

Surveys shows that Islamic people bear a deep resentment of U.S. dominance of their region and our one-sided support for Israel. Interventionism is not America's solution, it is America's problem.

Now that is interesting.  I seem to recall Buchanan is an ex-Marine, so the strains of the Marine Corp Hymn "...to the shores of Tripoli" do mean something here - the Marines really did take care of the Barbary pirates.  Was that the last justifiable use of US forces over in that part of the world - the 1805 storming of Barbary pirates' harbor fortress stronghold of Derna (Tripoli)?  Really?  I'm not so sure.

But he does have a point. Hamburg and Delray Beach are dangerous places in the sense he means - bad folks plan bad things there.  Iraq is just another place.  Or was.

But his point is not that this particular recent intervention was bone-headed.  What is really bone-headed is the idea that we know best.  And the reasoning?

Freedom, the president said, "must be chosen and defended by those who choose it." Exactly. Why not then let these Islamic peoples choose it on their own timetable and defend it themselves?

It is "cultural condescension," says Bush, "to assume the Middle East cannot be converted to democracy. ... Perhaps the most helpful change we can make is to change in our own thinking."

But if 22 of 22 Arab states are non-democratic, this would seem to suggest that this soil is not particularly conducive to growing the kind of democracies we raise in upper New England.

... What support is there in history for the view that as we meddle in the affairs of foreign nations, we advance our security? How would we have responded in the 19th century if Britain had declared a policy of destabilizing the American Union until Andrew Jackson abolished slavery?

Well, there he goes, arguing from history again.

Well, "History never repeats itself. It only seems like it does to those who don't know the details." - see History: What you don't know can't hurt you. Maybe. Maybe not... for some thoughts on that.

But I get the point.  This whole enterprise, this new way of explaining why we went to war - since there seem to be no weapons of mass destruction after all - has no good precedent.

In fact, examining history suggests it might be more than a little bit dumb.

I suspect Bush, who prides himself on not reading much, reads even less history.