Here's a letter that appeared in the Wichita Eagle today, writted by someone named L.D. Alford and published under the title "A better world under Bush":

For some reason, our media politicos would like us to believe the foreign world is more dangerous, less controlled, less democratized, less civilized and more anti-American. Let's just take a quick look at the world before President Bush and again now.

In the pre-Bush world, Afghanistan was the enemy of the free world, the home of the Taliban, a self-proclaimed terrorist country that killed women who wanted an education and that was run by dictators in accordance with Muslim Sharia laws. Today, Afghanistan is our ally, a nation of self-rule that is among the world's community. There are terrorists in it, as there are in many nations -- ours included -- but they don't run the nation and they are hunted like animals.

Iraq was a nation under the thumb of a Muslim dictator, where Amnesty International told us 30,000 people were killed by the government monthly and more than 2 million while Saddam Hussein was in power. Today, Iraq is our ally, a nation of self-rule that is moving toward freedom.

Libya was the enemy of the world and an exporter of terror. Today, Libya is not exactly our ally, and it is still a dictatorship, but it is moving into the realm of nations.

Before Bush, Pakistan was not our direct ally and was not on friendly terms with us. Today, Pakistan is our ally and actively working to eradicate terrorists.

Before Bush, Lebanon was under the thumb of the Syrian dictatorship, our enemy. Today, Lebanon is an ally and moving out of Syrian control.

Pre-Bush, the Palestinians were an enemy under the rule of a dictator. Today, the Palestinians are a split camp: One half is our ally and allied in fighting terrorists; the other half is a dictatorship under the terrorist group Hamas.

We have not lost any allies or reduced our influence in the world. Who doubts that as long as we continue along this path, many other nations in the Middle East and the rest of the world will fall to freedom and democratization?

I quote this to give you some measure of how much ignorance and stupidity Bush's recalcitrant followers will carry forward from the end of his administration. Afghanistan and Iraq are neither self-ruled democracies nor allies -- their nominal governments are little more than local faces on a dysfunctional US occupation.

Libya had been begging to get off Washington's terrorism list for over a decade before Bush, hard up for a PR coup, cut a deal. Pakistan had been a steadfast ally as far back as the Baghdad Pact in the mid-1950s, when it joined the British-installed Hashemite king of Iraq and the CIA-installed Shah of Iran in a US-UK pact against the Soviet Union. Syria has never wanted to be an enemy of the US, and wasn't in the 1970s when the US invited it into Lebanon nor in 1990 when Syria joined the US coalition against Iraq. Syria's only problem with the US is that the US supports Israel's occupation of a chunk of Syrian territory. The whole thing on the Palestinian is confused to a ridiculous extent, as is inevitable when you try to analyze what's going on there without considering what Israel might have to do with it, or what the US has to do with Israel. These simple-minded notions of enemies and allies are immune from comprehending anything that's going on over there.

It's clear that as the Bush administration loses its grip on power, such mythmaking is going to be a major industry. We'll wind up hearing about how Bush's successors stabbed the military in the back, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and so forth. It should be obvious that the Bush administration has utterly discredited itself. It takes a shitload of ignorance and stupidity not to see that, but many Americans are up to the challenge.