Bush not so conservative after all

Via the NYT - Carter Criticizes Bush and Blair on War in Iraq

Former President Jimmy Carter criticized George W. Bush’s presidency in interviews released Saturday as “the worst in history” in international relations and faulted Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain for his loyal relationship with Mr. Bush.

[. . .]

“The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me,” Mr. Carter told the newspaper.

[. . .]

In the newspaper interview, Mr. Carter said Mr. Bush has taken a “radical departure from all previous administration policies” with the Iraq war.

“We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered,” he said.

[. . .]

In the newspaper interview, Mr. Carter, who brokered the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, also criticized Mr. Bush’s Middle East policies. “For the first time since Israel was founded, we’ve had zero peace talks to try to bring a resolution of differences in the Middle East,” he said. “That’s a radical departure from the past.”

I have long wondered why conservatives have supported Geo. W. Bush in the way that they have. Conservative, in the since of conserving the way of life and the way of doing things that came before us, is just not the way that Dubya works. He is a wild card. He may espouse some of the same beliefs as those who label themselves as conservatives, but Carter is right that Bush is conserving very little in terms of traditional American values and procedures in international relations. At least that is my opinion.