I found so many similarities between Marie Antoinette and George W. Bush that I could think of little else during the film. I was going to list many of these similarities but before I did I thought I would do a little internet search to see if anyone had done this before and done a good job of it. Lo and behold, I found this great article http://davidwiggins.net/let_them_eat.html by a man by the name of Dr. David Wiggins a former US Army Captain, Doctor and finally, Conscientious Objector. I recommend that people pause reading my article here and read his before continuing. I would add a few more things that several historians in the film pointed out. Like Bush, Marie Antoinette was not stupid. When Marie applied herself, decided to take something seriously and performed the requisite research and work, she was as bright and capable as anyone was. The problem is that like her 21st century counterpart, George W. Bush, she rarely did so. The two share(d) a common affliction, bibliophobia or the fear of books. Just as troublesome for heads of state, the two have/had similar problems with limited affect and empathy. Unless someone metaphorically took Bush or Marie by the shoulders, shook hard and forced them to put themselves in mindset of people in a different condition, country, etc., they had a difficult time understanding other people and acting appropriately. They seem to be governed by two or three emotions. Both seem to spend a lot of time being mirthful and Bush additionally seems to spend a lot of time being angry and spiteful. By the time her friends in the French Court were able to convince Marie that she had an image problem, it was almost too late. The perception of her would have been hard to break even by an expert at dealing with such things. When she finally understood that some action was necessary, her limited ability to understand other people and how they would take her statements and actions sealed her fate. Bush's ill-advised Iraq war and response to Katrina feel the same way to me.
Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda as well as Hezbollah and Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah are the primary beneficiaries of Bush's inability to understand how his actions would be perceived by the world in general and the Middle East and predominantly Islamic countries in particular. His War On Terror is a failure because his actions have caused more sympathy and respect for those who engage in the practice of terror and similarly has helped the terrorist organizations gain more recruits. This poll performed by WorldPublicOpinion.org http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/middle_eastn_africa_br/172.php?nid=&id=&pnt=172&lb=brglm shows that people in predominantly Muslim Countries who live where one may assume the majority of terror recruitment happens, overwhelmingly believe that the Iraq War has increased the threat of Global Terrorism. They see and hear this happening in their cafes and mosques and other meeting places.
Bin Laden had to be rescued by Bush after he failed to achieve what he hoped with the 9-11 attacks. From Bin Laden's statements since the attacks, we can see that he hoped that the 9-11 attacks would cause the US to be drawn into a quagmire in Afghanistan that would allow Bin Laden and the combination of Al Qaeda and Taliban Mujahideen to defeat us in a lengthy war of attrition. He hoped that war of attrition in Afghanistan would critically harm our economy, just as had happened with the former Soviet Union. See http://www.cnn.com/2004/world/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/ . He also thought that the Afghan war would cause a groundswell of support for Al Qaeda just as the Soviet's war did and would draw many new recruits to his cause. In fact, the Soviet war in Afghanistan made Bin Laden who he is and caused him to leave a successful business in Saudi Arabia to come to Afghanistan and become a freedom fighter. 9-11 failed on all counts for Bin Laden. The world, including the Middle East and other predominantly Islamic states were nearly universal with their support any sympathy for the United States. We fought the war in Afghanistan with surprisingly few troops on the ground and expenditures of resources. In fact, we could easily have put in another 15,000-30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, finished of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, declared victory in the War on Terror and put the issue behind us. In fact, up to this point, Bin Laden's strike in the US failed to gain Al Qaeda supporters much like Timothy McVeighs attack on the Murrow building in Oklahoma failed with galvanizing the militia movement against the US Government. Both had the opposite effect. The militia movement has never been the same since Oklahoma. Support for terror was at an all time low in the year following 9-11.
Despite this and the link after link I could include with facts and evidence to support my thesis, Republicans, particularly on the far right of the party continue to support war as a preferred choice to resolve our issues in the Middle East, http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=157605&srvc=news . What is particularly disturbing about this article and its support on the far right including the folks at Free Republic, http://www.freerepublic.com and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702509/posts , is that I agree with Krauthammer's assertion of the costs of such an undertaking in terms of our and the world's economy and other costs. But as El Baradei and other's pointed out, our assessment of Iranian nuclear capabilities is way off. We would likely be incurring all the costs pointed out by Krauthammer for no reason http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=360353 just like the non-existent Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction and the non-existent link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein caused us to incur the costs of an Iraq war that gained us nothing and cost us Trillions of dollars.
Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese and Iraqis have already suffered enough with our Marie Antoinette President. We need to make sure that both houses of congress turn Democratic in November and start checking the actions and decisions of this President.
