George: the Mother of All Perps
Howard Fineman gets briefly and refreshingly blunt here in Newsweek in reviewing GWB's attempted seance last night. This is not the sort of thing we're accustomed to in our Mainstream Media, (and of course that is why thinking folks have found alternative means of accessing accounts of actual world events).
Mandatory qualifiers: the lines about not being able to leave or lose in Iraq and a "giant version of the Taliban" have me contemplating self-infliction.
What does "lose" mean at this point? Is it just me, or aren't we still awaiting a definition of "winning" and "losing" that are actually relevant to the awful circumstances of the George Bush War? I don't know about you, but I have never yet heard any explanation and definition of either that actually means anything in real-world human terms. Bring It On.
And we "can't afford to leave"? What the hell is that? Ever? And wouldn't any sentient nuanced creature agree that Dick, George, Don, and Condie (et al) have already more or less given up on the Taliban in Afghan territory?
George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
The president may well be right that we cannot afford to leave or lose in Iraq. He makes profound sense when he observes that a collapse of Iraq would mean the rise of a giant version of the Taliban's Afghanistan—with a million times the oil in the ground.
But if he was trying to assure the country that he had confidence in his own plan to prevent that collapse, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the words themselves weren't that assuring either. Does anyone in America or Iraq, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won't be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?
Mandatory qualifiers: the lines about not being able to leave or lose in Iraq and a "giant version of the Taliban" have me contemplating self-infliction.
What does "lose" mean at this point? Is it just me, or aren't we still awaiting a definition of "winning" and "losing" that are actually relevant to the awful circumstances of the George Bush War? I don't know about you, but I have never yet heard any explanation and definition of either that actually means anything in real-world human terms. Bring It On.
And we "can't afford to leave"? What the hell is that? Ever? And wouldn't any sentient nuanced creature agree that Dick, George, Don, and Condie (et al) have already more or less given up on the Taliban in Afghan territory?
George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
The president may well be right that we cannot afford to leave or lose in Iraq. He makes profound sense when he observes that a collapse of Iraq would mean the rise of a giant version of the Taliban's Afghanistan—with a million times the oil in the ground.
But if he was trying to assure the country that he had confidence in his own plan to prevent that collapse, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the words themselves weren't that assuring either. Does anyone in America or Iraq, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won't be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?
posted by Sir Gumbo at 11:17 PM
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