GwB has plainly made a damned mess of world affairs. People arguing otherwise remind me of every extremist twit in history who, surrounded by the crumbling walls of his or her dogma, insisted that everything was really just sunny and great ... like Hitler in his bunker on the last day, prattling on about secret weapons he was ready to unleash; or those Marxists in 1989 who assured the world that the Soviet Union's economy was still rolling forward, as solid as steel.

The fact is that had the man who was REALLY elected in 2000 been allowed to take office, we wouldn't have this mess. We wouldn't have invaded Iraq, nor should have. We'd probably instead be focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and any other bin Laden hiding places, and focused on finding REAL ways to increase world security without trashing western values of liberty and freedom.

But that's not what happened, and now we ARE hip-deep in this awful quagmire. And in truth, it's perfectly reasonable for Democrats -- Kevin included -- to be just a little doubtful about what to do. The ShrubReich drove us into this quicksand. They ARE discredited. But that doesn't mean that anyone else should, necessarily, have some magical formula for undoing the mess.

But then again, I think we do know (based on liberal principles) at least some of the best steps we can take. These may not solve the problems, they may not get us out of the quagmire ... but they are far more likely to help us out than any other course of action that I know of.

To start, a new Democratic administration could assiduously begin rebuilding international bridges ... a task that would be made far easier by being able to convincingly distance itself from the ShrubReich's perverse policies of nationalist self-aggrandizement and unilateralism.

Such a spreading of the risks and the costs would be the first necessary step. So would any steps to diffuse the image of "infidels" unilaterally inflicting themselves on an Islamic nation. More important that than any neo-con wet dream of "democratizing" such nations as Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Would any of this be easy or quick ... or certain? Not on your life. But an energetic Democrat could and surely would give it his best shot (and, might I add, any new Democratic administration would be well advised to consider appointing a special envoy to pull much of this off: former President Clinton. Just the guy for the job!).

Another step would be -- as quickly as possible -- to pull together the best academic and NGO experts on Iraq as the world can furnish, and get them to working designing and implementing meaningful reconstruction plans for Iraq. Something, ANYTHING, to get it out of the hands of the GOP "Good Old Boy" contractors now handling it.

I can think of other steps that would be advisable. But the key thing to know is this: the abysmal incompetence of the ShrubReich has truly inflicted our nation with a horrible situation. We ARE in a quagmire now ... and by definition, quagmires are hard to get out of. There are precious few examples (I can't think of any, actually) in which a nation so caught has managed to get out without a lamentable loss of reputation, influence, treasure and lives.

Which brings me, by the way, to another line of comments above: how bad, exactly, IS the ShrubReich? To me, it is plainly evident that GwB is the worst president in the last 107 years (that is, since McKinley), at very least, and quite possibly the worst president in the history of the Republic. For I know of no president (or administration, if we count in all the people around him) in our history that was at once so inflexibly dogmatic, viciously partisan, cravenly indifferent to the consequences of their acts, and insufferably arrogant as the present one.

[Thanks, once more, to Roger.]

Update: Introductory comments edited and somewhat re-written in the interest of coherence.