George Soros - not a policy expert

George Soros was a pretty good currency trader. He is not, however, someone who should be sticking his nose into the realm of foreign policy decisions. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette recently had a somewhat poorly edited article out there about Mr. Soros that I’d like to take a deeper look at.

It starts out by laying the background information about the speech. Almost immediately the quote comes up:

“Soros said the Bush administration had a ‘visceral aversion to
international cooperation’ which is why it is willing to ignore world
opinion in its rush to wage war with Iraq.”

I guess twelve years, 17 (soon to be 18) UN resolutions and numerous warnings- not to mention a pretty broad coalition is a sign of “visceral aversion to international cooperation.”

“Those who are not with us, are against us……..”

I think it was that if you are not with us you are with the terrorists, a small but significant change in meaning for the statement.

“This is an imperialist vision in which the US leads and the rest of
the world follows.”

If only those French and Germans would stick to their scripts, we’d be so much better off.

Rumsfeld and Ashcroft have “an exaggerated view of their own
righteousness”

Rumsfeld is just happy that chicks dig him and Ashcroft is still ticked about that losing to a dead guy thing.

“His solution, Soros said, is for the Bush administration to live by
the same rules it seeks to impose on the rest of the world.”

And what would those be? Honesty? Respect? Standing for principal? What are these mysterious rules that we obviously know nothing about? Can someone clue me in?

From there the article starts into disjointed rambling about all kinds of useless information, including a two paragraph blurb about Paul O’Neill that makes you wonder if the writer was trying to slam Mr. O’Neill, or if he was trying to paint him as a friendly buffoon.

The article then continues to talk about the massive losses Mr. Soros suffered in the Russian debt default and with other poor investment choices. But in a nice twist of irony, Soros compared what he feels are the Bush policy failures with his own investing success. If success is getting crushed in a massive debt default, let Bush make every mistake he can! Until then, Mr. Soros needs to stick to talking about investing.