(Updated) Loneliest Man In the World
Like the last person in the room to get a really bad joke, President Bush becomes more isolated by the day as the scales fall from the eyes of the small and shrinking number of people who share his belief that his war in Iraq can be won.
There would seem to be an element of pathos to this: The lonely commander in chief walking the halls of the White House late at night, framed portraits of his predecessors looking down on him in mute abjection as he ponders what went wrong.
But we know this man who arrogantly declares that he channels the wisdom of Jesus so well in the seventh year of his reign of error to understand that it is unlikely that he is contemplating anything of the sort.
What went wrong has been obvious from the outset of a war in which the rationales were jury rigged to meet political goals, there never were remotely enough troops, body armor or armored vehicles despite appeals from his generals, and scandalously little consideration given to what would and should happen after the Saddam Hussein regime fell, let alone the implications of installing a Shiite-dominated government as the storm clouds of a sectarian civil war gathered.
In a drearily familiar modus operandi also obvious from the outset, paramount for George Bush is covering his ass with deadlines that cannot be met and promises that cannot be kept.
It is bitterly ironic that true leadership and not flag waving and empty rhetoric is needed more than ever now that the president’s Dunkirk is not far off.
That would be how to get nearly 160,000 troops and millions of tons of materiel out of Iraq. This would be an enormous logistical undertaking under the best of circumstances, but is fraught with extraordinary peril because this man has worked so hard to transform a faraway land that represented little threat to regional let alone world stability into a haven for insurgents and a death trap for anyone wearing an American flag on their sleeve.
I am not familiar with schizophrenia, so I don’t know if this mental illness asserts itself in regular patterns. As in, one month you’re Mister Mighty Surge, the next month you’re Mister Withdraw to Bases and then the next you’re Mister Mighty Surge. And so on and so forth.
But if the latest accounts from the bunker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are to be believed, Mister Mighty Surge may be getting ready to take another powder and new medication is kicking in the form of the familiar Mister Withdraw to Bases. This is a plan being discussed under which U.S. troops would be gradually withdrawn from the very areas on which the success of the surge was dependent.
Do you suppose that Napoleon ever jerked around his troops like George Bush does?
16 Responses to “(Updated) Loneliest Man In the World”
Dovetailing into your post was a story in today’s WaPo, detailing how Stephen Hadley was sent to the Hill to shore up support among Republican allies of the president. Hadley was confident that he could, as done previously, bring recalcitrant Senators back into the fold, but was shocked to see the extent of dissaffection among the GOP for the present strategy. Many in the president’s party are ready to abandon him, to the extent that they are no longer holding to the September deadline to evaluate progress made.
More and more, Republicans are moving back towards the ISG’s recommendations. They are probably afraid that in ’08 as in ’06, they will go down with the ship if they stick too closely to President Bush’s surge.
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The disaffection is NOT because of the war.
IT is BECAUSE of Bush’s fatalist view that he does not care about the GOP but only the war, the war and nothing but the war.
If he spent as much time trying to drum up support for the GOP agenda that had nothing to do with the war as he did with the WAR then the GOP would not be deserting him.
George Bush has become Consumed, obsessed and haunted by the war in Iraq and yet life goes on. We as Americans have other things we have to worry about. Taxes, immigration, health care…etc…etc.
Yet Bush has abandoned ALL of that for the WAR. He said once he was going to be the President of ALL Americans and yet he has done the opposite because of the war.
This is why the GOP is abandoning him……..Not because of the War but because he has abandoned every other thing Americans care about to focus exclusively ON THE WAR.
Somebody:
Astutely said. But I see the GOP as just one tree, albeit a damned big one (perhaps a weeping willow, which has notoriously shallow roots), in a forest of disillusionment.
I wonder if we are going to plan for the retrograde as poorly as we planned for the invasion.
I would hate to be a Kurd knowing that the U.S. is about the throw you under the bus so that the U.S. can stop thinking about Iraq.
I wonder were the refugee camps will be built and whichU.S. city will end up with a little Baghdad.
superdestroyer,
Looking at current US policy towards Iraqi immigration, I don’t see any chance of a little Baghdad in any city.
Kurds also have more to worry about from Turkey than from their fellow Iraqi’s.
Iraq did represent a regional threat and you are the one arrogant enough to believe that you know better. The fact of the matter is that a poll shows Iraqis believe they are better off now than under hussein.
If it represented a regional threat, than we should have waited until we had regional support to go in and remove Saddam. Our decision to go in unilaterally cost us much in support in the Muslim world and with our European allies.
Do you have a link for your poll, Laura? Most polls I have seen have shown just the opposite.
SD, I had the impression from reading the article that the disaffection for the policy was largely due to the fact that we lack the troops to sustain it, and that those in the GOP felt Bush was out of touch with the reality of our military’s limitations more than anything else.
kimrit:
Correcto mundo. As further validated by my update.
The part that is just amazing (though nothing should surprise us much anymore about Bush) is that he is so absolutely clueless about troop strength and how long it can be maintained before the military is totally out of reinforcements. I know that many are now on their fourth tours, and their families are livid about this ignorant and cavalier attitude by the civilian leadership.
The shameless attitude of a lot of those who haven’t signed up? That the enlistees shouldn’t have volunteered in the first place if they weren’t up to the task. (I have no source because I heard both of these types of callers on c-span this morning)
Hey, kritter, would it be ok if I stereotyped “a lot” of the people I disagree with about Iraq policy according to a couple of examples I heard on C-SPAN too?
If so, my critiques about the anti-war movement are going to get really, really easy to write.
Then again, I suspect that some of the people who disagree with me but who do not endorse the ridiculous statements of a couple of C-SPAN callers might object to being lumped in with them, right?
Jason, Well you have previously written a lot of posts previously stereotyping the reactions and statements of the “left”- usually linked with some harmful effect on America, lol.
I might add that I usually listen to C-span a couple of times a week, and calls like I heard today are not unusual when the war is being discussed. Neither are the ones who call in supporting the president’s policies out of party loyalty either, though.
kritter, since I have for weeks now consciously avoided characterizing “the left” as a homogeneous group at all, this interpretation is very frustrating to me. It indicates that my efforts are wasted and that readers will interpret any criticism directed towards Democrats as partisan no matter what. My frustration on this point is elevated by the fact that a major theme in my posts has been immigration, where the primary focus of my criticism is actually Republicans. In those posts (which are ignored by those who on this and other threads accuse me of being a partisan Republican) I get accused of being a partisan the other way. Apparently, keeping the stereotypes consistent across different issues is too much work.
Anyway, I am coming to believe that accusations of the type of “you only criticize the left, so shut up” (like that posted at the beginning of this thread which you appear to be endorsing at this point) are not only completely inaccurate, but may also be merely knee-jerk reactions designed to avoid the issue by making a cheap ad hom attack. In short, they are devices to change the subject away from something that might challenge partisan presumptions and towards more familiar and EASY partisan tropes where the only people who would EVER DARE to criticize the Party of White Hats must, by definition, be an evildoer from the Party of Black Hats. Yawn.
And I really, really, really have no interest in such pointless discussions. I had honestly thought in recent days that you were not among those who pursued such tactics and I am disappointed in this response from you.
“Do you suppose that Napoleon ever jerked around his troops like George Bush does?â€
The horrible winter retreat from Moscow where the Grande Armée that started out with 690,000 troops returned with 22,000, a defeat not matched in misery and death until Hitler tried the same thing. Napoleon was a callused and calculating, and became so convinced of his own greatness that he over reached. He was far from a saint.
grognard:
Thank you for taking the bait. Different time and different circumstances, but Napoleon indeed had the same abjectly lacking military leadership clouded by a profound arrogance.