What’s a Nation To Do? We Can’t Stand Up Until Bush Stands Down
Recent developments have pretty much cinched that George Bush will occupy a special place in American history as a coward of staggering proportions who gave even his most steadfast supporters the finger when they tried to help salvage his presidency and he then dumped the Iraq war on his successor.
While the president technically has 18 months to prove me wrong, his continued obeisance to a strategy (if you’ll pardon the term) of shifting deadlines that cannot be met and changing promises that cannot be kept while dredging up the same tired canards provides a window into the mind of someone whom, as I noted the other day, is the last person in the room to get a very bad joke.
In keeping with this strategy, the White House has rejected a call by Republican Senators Richard Lugar and John Warner to begin charting a new course in Iraq by stating that the president will await a September progress report from General David Petraeus.
Unfortunately, the September deadline has been pre-empted with Petraeus being upstaged by none other than presidential press secretary Tony Snow, who had the balls to say that “We have a new course in Iraq, and it’s two weeks old.”
This certainly comes as quite a surprise to soldiers who have been battering down doors all over Baghdad for months, let alone the hundreds of families whose sons and daughters have come home in flag-draped coffins since the commander in chief flipped another bird — this one at the Iraq Study Group — last December.
Then there’s this:
* Despite isolated pockets of success (build a wall and they won’t come), the surge strategy is falling far short of its goals. In fairness to Petraeus’s tireless troopers, it had no chance of succeeding because the all-important sectarian power structures that control Baghdad’s neighborhoods were not going to be toppled short of saturation bombing.
* Despite major offensives against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, insurgents have stayed a step or two ahead. And while inroads have been made among the Sunni tribes of Anbar, those successes are more dependent on bribes than a lasting shift in loyalties.
* Despite Washington’s attempt to lowball its own benchmarks, the Iraqi government has been barely able to meet less than half of them as sectarian violence rages on, much of it abetted by Prime Minister Al-Maliki’s national police.
* Despite imprecations from the Oval Office, the Iraqi parliament will take August off. This elicited a sorrowful sigh from Snow, as well as an explanation that it gets awfully hot in Baghdad that time of year and besides, the (hint, hint Democratic-run) Congress also is going on vacation.
If any of this is progress, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn that I’d like to sell you.
Then there’s the steady drumbeat of lies and distortions, most glaringly the same old snake oil that those insurgents our men and women are chasing around Anbar and Diyala provinces were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (That fiction seems to be working to some extent, although it turns out that a majority of the bad guys are from our dear ally Saudi Arabia, and not Iran and Syria as the Bushies would have you believe.)
Things are so bad that even William Kristol, darling of the Twenty-Six Percenters, now tempers his rose-colored view by bow-wowing that the Bush presidency “will probably be a successful one” (italics mine) because there hasn’t been a terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 and the economy is going great guns.
The former, of course, is more a matter of luck, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff’s instantly notorious “gut feeling” remark aside, while the economy is indeed doing super if you measure it by the record numbers being posted on Wall Street and not the record number of home foreclosures on Main Street.
Kristol has long been accused of feeding Bush his own lines, so it probably was with malice of forethought that he wrote that “Following through to secure the victory in Iraq and to extend its benefits to neighboring countries will be the task of the next president.”
With even a leading Republican pollster saying that the party has almost no chance of keeping the White House in 2008, GOP honorables neutered by their own leader’s implacability are left to contemplate using that dread Democratic procedural cop out — the (gasp!) filibuster — as they eye the lifeboats and try to figure out how to save their political hides.
Perhaps in a less delusional moment, Kristol recognizes that the single greatest impediment to anything positive happening regarding Iraq — most notably a carefully planned phased withdrawal of American troops — is George Bush himself.
The president, having had the bad sense to listen to Kristol and other neocon crackpots back when his presidential bicycle still had training wheels, stood up and declared the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time and now has no intention of standing down until it’s time to pedal back to Crawford.
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34 Responses to “What’s a Nation To Do? We Can’t Stand Up Until Bush Stands Down”
You have a strange sense of cowardness. If there is anything Bush is not, it is a political coward. No matter how low the polls, no matter what other people think, Bush does what he thinks is best. That is quite the opposite of cowardice. It does not make him right, but it does certainly not make him a coward either.
You used the wrong word to describe him.
Michael,
I think it was pretty clear to most of us- moral coward and it is the correct description for someone willing to sacrifice other peoples’ sons and daughters for no other reason than to safe face and leave the looming disaster for the next administration.
For the rest of his life, Bush will tell the world someone else lost the Iraq war- the Democrats, the Generals, the troops, the American people- not me, no sir, I’d a just as soon have kept on keeping on, no matter how many US soldiers died. Its who I am, boy.
Coward is too kind a word.
Beyond BDS.
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Coward? Not politically no. Actually I’d say the contrary is true; not that he’s brave, but that he’s reckless to the extreme. He obviously doesn’t care what anyone thinks, even many members of his own party, though not exactly bravery, it certainly indicates he’s not afraid. Truflo, cowardice is not necessary to do the sorts of things Bush does, complete lack of empathy will suffice.
Weren’t you on vacation Michael? Hope all is going well
I think he’s exhibited both. Recklessness in following the neocons without seriously considering the consequences, and cowardice in surrounding himself with political hacks —who mostly exhibit total loyalty to the CIC, rather than giving an independent opinion. He has shielded himself and those in his inner circle from accountability for their actions. We see this in the CIA leak case where he pardoned Libby even though it clashes with his ideology of tougher sentencing, and in the Medals of Freedom given out to noted failures like Bremer, Tenet and Rumsfeld. Mostly his cowardice comes in the form of shielding himself from the reality of his failed policies.
I think kritter put it well:
I also agree with truflo:
All I’d add is that there will always be people willing to defend him, as if his stubborness and inflexiblity were somehow the mark of courage.
Maybe we can say he’s an intellectual coward because all evidence points to extreme denial that his Iraq policy is a failure. For all his life, W had denied his failures and changed tact to explain his failures. Look up his first run as the MBA eastern intellectual for the US House in Texas. Now Petraes wants more troops and more time, how will W and Snow spin this in September?
There are many ways to define coward – physical cowardness, emotional cowardness and intellectual cowardness.
On the physical front, his limited national guard duty as a way to avoid fighting in Vietnam is one indicator. On the emotional front, his inability to admit mistakes and confront them is an indicator. In his business career, he had his father’s buddies bail him out of bad situations in the oil business. With regard to drinking/drugs he quit cold turkey rather than taking the more sustainable route of standing before his peers and admitting his addiction, as in AA.
On the intellectual side, his presidency is an indicator. He seems to shy away from any detailed analysis of the consequences of his decisions. To this day, I cannot believe anyone with an IQ of more than 90 would go to war in Iraq without a plan for the aftermath. Yet that is what Bush did. He seems to rely on “gut instinct” to the exclusion of intellectual analysis.
So Shaun has called Bush a coward. He may be right but as of now all I see is indicators in that direction rather than conclusions.
It must be incredibly comforting to be able to attribute criticism to some mythical psychological malfunction.
However, with said psychological malfunction reaching pandemic proportions a wiser person might begin to question their own sanity.
Of course, actual mileage may vary.
Austin Roth:
No, it’s not BDS. It’s recognizing the obvious, as another one of your conservative soul mates.
Be sure to say hi to Bill Kristol for me.
Shaun – you would be surprised to know that I agree conceptually with way more of what you write than it seems.
My objection to you is your rhetoric. It is not enough for you to criticize Bush and his policies, which are certainly open to a lot of critisism.
But you routinely feel the need to express your opinions in the most absolutely derogatory and inflammatory way possible.
I said it in an early reply to one of your posts. If you want discussion and debate, use words that lend themselves to such.
If however you simply want to bomb-throw and show your contempt for Bush as a human, then you are not going to get much beyond visceral reactions.
But again, as I also stated before, you have been in the game a long time, know how to use words, and are obviously going for the effects you are achieving.
Bush certainly appears to be a coward because he won’t face his failures, admit his mistakes and take action to correct them. Worse, he is ‘okay’ continuing on a path of failure that is quite frankly killing tens of thousands of people a year rather than admit that he *gasp* may be wrong… At exactly what level is this not cowardness and of a rather extreem flavor? There is a distinct difference between stubborness and courage that some seem to miss.
He even ran away from Vietnam in the guard and is rumored to have been AWOL. This is cetainly not a sign of physical bravery either.
Austin Roth:
I choose my words with extreme care, including “coward.”
If you claim to agree with much of the message, which I find astouding, but not the messenger, so be it.
… at a ridiculous frequency. The combination is pathological (diseased).
“Bush bad, Bush bad, Bush bad, Bush bad. [etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum]” We already have long understood the badly composed, too-frequently posted message.
Bang! Bang! Another shot at the messenger rather than the message.
But Shaun, your ‘message’ isn’t an analysis of the shortcomings and failures of the Bush administration, nor a commentary on alternative solutions.
Rather, it is:
‘I HATE ChimpyBushHitlerHalliburtonMcSmirky-
CheneyRoveSockpuppetDrydrunkFratboy-
EvilRetardedBloodForOilFascist-
lslamophobicBiblethumpingJesusfreak-
WMDWarmongeringYellowcakeLiar’
That kind of makes you the message, frankly.
AustinRoth and DLS – Even if Shaun feels Bush is bad – so what? It’s his opinion. If you feel Bush is good, then by all means give your opinion. Somehow you have conflated Shaun’s opinion that Bush is bad with Shaun is bad. I know that in my disagreements with Jason and MVDG that I started to do the same thing. I hope I am in the process of overcoming that bad habit. I suggest you do the same with Shaun.
How dan one describe a President who has simply been AWOL from his job?
From the beginning, he made it clear he was the president for his political party only He wa AWOL as a president for the nation as a whole.
He was AWOlL while Iraq descended into chaos – until the elections woke him up. That may have happened too late for remedial measures to be effective, however.
He is AWOL now, We could really use a courageous president giving us a no-spin assessment of the pros and cons of leaving vs committing long tem. There being large numbers of adults present, we could handle domplex issues and the straight talk necessary to present them.
He is AWOL on that score.
What we’ve had is a cardboard figure playing recorded messages about AQ-9/11 and purple fingers
I’m a forgiving person. Were he to show up for work to do his job, I’d be more than willing to let him. It looks to me, though, that this president will stay AWOL until someone else comes to do the job for him.
AustinRoth:
jdledell nails it. I am sure that many people would be receptive to a point-by-rebuttal of my analyse of the president’s shortcomings. I certainly would.
How is it the comment policy is only enforced when the poster is Jason or MvdG? Isn’t it supposed to be enforced with Shaun also?
I happen to agree with Shaun, but no one forces you to agree .
Bush has gone too far for redemption, and his failures have been spectacular (yet avoidable) ones that we will all be paying for in the foreseeable future. Most presidents screw up the first term, but learn to work with both sides in the second term, but not this one. If anything he has become more obstinant and intransigent.
The word coward seems too kind, but appropriate for a lot of what the President has done.
He has used claims of executive priviledge and national security to put a smoke screen around the activities of OUR government. We don’t know our energy policy, we don’t know if Bush has only been wiretapping terrorists, we don’t have key documents and testimony from the White House in the attorney saga… the list goes on
kritter – are you implying my post violated the policy? If so, how? I didn’t call him any names, although I suppose it might be called abusive, at worst.
jdledell – it is not that I am saying Shaun is bad, but that he is being disingenuous. He used inflammatory rhetoric, and then when it gets a rise from the audience, cries out that we are not willing to discuss, only snipe and argue.
Shaun – some of the points about whether he is indeed a ‘coward’ were addressed, but, as that is a subjective description, and given the ingrained opinions, I seriously doubt that anyone’s views will be changed.
But, what you see as an unwillingness to bend to negative current events, others see as sticking to a long-term goal in the face of adversity.
What you call his ‘cowardice’ others see as fortitude to not abandon Iraq to much worse chaos for short-term political gain.
Then, you criticize him in one paragraph for failing to be willing to follow a different path suggested by Senators Lugar and Warner, but in the next paragraph for making some adjustments.
You attack the current strategy for not achieving all the pre-set goals, but making 50% of the goals, and progress on 2 others, would normally be seen as a sign of progress, not failure. Rarely does any organization or large-scale effort achieve all goals immediately and in the first try.
Now, it is interesting you mentioned the stock market. If a Democratic President was presiding over such a long-term growth in the market, coupled with inflationary pressures under control, low unemployment, and 4 straight years of a lowering budget deficits (yes, that is correct), he would be hailed as an economic Messiah. But not Bush.
But again, it is your sniveling, condescending Kossite tone that sets me (and others) off. How can you possibly claim to be trying to do anything other than please the flame-throwing portion of Democratic base, and trying to enrage those on the Right (or even middle-Right) with phrases like:
a coward of staggering proportions
families whose sons and daughters have come home in flag-draped coffins since the commander in chief flipped another bird
steady drumbeat of lies and distortions
when his presidential bicycle still had training wheels
You have no interest in reasonable discourse, and your own words betray you.
domajot – I have been struggling with a metaphor to describe Bush’s actions as President. AWOL is a perfect description as is the replacement, a cardboard cutout of the real thing. Bush seems to be just going through the motions now. His efforts on the Immigration reform bill were weak to an astonishing degree. If he really believed in it, he would of been right in the mix of things trying to fashion a compromise that would work. Instead, he merely called up a few senators and asked that they vote with him.
On Iraq, if he really believed in the surge and the need for time, he not only would be discussing it constantly with Congress but also trying to get world leaders and/or the UN to back him up.
On Israel/Palestine he came out yesterday with the same tired nostrums he articulated 5 years ago. He no longer is fighting for a continuation of his tax cuts and he is not even trying to find a solution to the AMT. Medicare and Social Security solutions are no longer on his radar screen.
In short, he is a Paper President – only providing the illusion of leadership.
That ignores that real wages have frozen. Inflation, rising medical and education costs have eaten away at any gains. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening.
The economy is working, but only for the 1%ers. That’s why Bush is not being hailed as an economic messiah.
“But again, it is your sniveling, condescending Kossite tone that sets me (and others) off.”
AustinRoth – LOL – I made almost the same comment to both Jason and MVDG, except I used Powerline and LGF as a comparision. There is something in their writing that gets my teeth clenched by the end of their first sentence. However, I decided it all depended on whose ox was getting gored. Jason and MVDG irritated me no end – Shaun doesn’t. For you it’s the reverse. So what – big deal.
If you want to counter his opinions do so, if not relax and have a drink instead. Shaun is not going to change his approach or opinions and neither are Jason and MVDG. This mixture of opinions from right and left is what makes this site different from Kos or Powerline.
kritter,
Don’t worry, I’ve been watching the thread. Nothing has been or is about to be edited or deleted. I almost posted an advisory this morning to remind people to focus on the issue and not the person, but upon re-reading the thread I found that the comments have focused on the arguments and words that people have used and has not yet crossed the line of labeling or attacking persons. Since we resolve doubt in favor of leaving the comments in, it seemed best to do nothing more than just continue monitoring the thread. Thus far, it appears that comments have been critical of Shaun’s tone, choice of words, and pattern of posts — the same sort of negative comments that were allowed to remain on threads authored by myself, MvdG, and others. None have yet crossed the line to attacking Shaun personally. Additionally, no one has sent me any email asking me to look at any comments. If personal attacks on Shaun do get posted in comments, they will receive the exact same treatment as personal attacks made against any other TMV contributor or commenter.
As for those who might object to material in Shaun’s posts, the comment policy binds all comments, but the content of posts is a matter for the contributors and the site ownership. As moderator, I don’t have input into what contributors like Shaun say. I personally prefer a very different style than Shaun uses, but it is not within my purview as moderator to assess posts on the same criteria as comments. For those who don’t like Shaun’s style or my style or any other contributor’s style, the best solution is just to not read or respond to those contributors’ posts who you find offensive if you can’t do so without becoming angry.
jdledell – you are so correct, and sometimes I do forget that fact.
In fact, as this site has become somewhat polarized (a natural reaction to current events, really), perhaps the name should be changed to The Angry Voice!
Your paper President post makes some valid arguments. I do believe that Bush has, in the end, turned out to be an incompetent leader, but I do not think he is evil, or malicious, nor devoid of some successes and positive values.
But as you said (in opposite), by the end of the first sentence of one of Shaun’s screeds, I am ready defend Bush to the death!
Perhaps I should follow Jason’s lead on not read Shaun’s posts, but, well, truth be know, I guess it fills some deep-seated, mental masochistic need of mine.
Also, great idea on the drink. I think a Pisco Sour and a dip in the pool is called for.
I was under the impression we were supposed to discuss the ideas and not whether Shaun’s style has a “sniveling, condescending Kossite tone”. That seems like its a bit of an attack to me.
kritter,
Comments critical of a poster’s style, tone, choice of words, etc has always been allowed. In fact, it is a routine response to many posts other than Shaun’s and there has never been any complaint about those from the people suddenly trying to make it an issue on this thread. I promise that if anyone makes an actual personal attack on Shaun, it will receive the same response as personal attacks on anyone else. The fact that I disagree with Shaun’s ideology and his style will not alter that.
GREETINGS. I’ve been gone all day. Yes, we really don’t want posts comments to degenerate into people debating which comments should have and should not be deleted. Our comments policy has been up since the beginning of the year. Look at it this way;
Bill Cosby talked about a performer doing a show for a huge audience and most like him but there is “the face” that doesn’t.
All people who post here on TMV have a group of people that think that writer is brilliant, and another group that thinks the writer is clueless. One group thinks the writer is moderate an objective, the other inflammatory. It really is best to focus on the issue a writer raises — not the writer being too far right, too car left, too far center on a big issue.
I was on Ed Morrissey’s internet radio talk show last week, and he had very nice things to say about TMV because it offers people who have such DIFFERENT opinions. If I only had people who agree with me writing on TMV, I couldn’t have anyone write on TMV. I have my own world view.
We don’t want to run critiques of a comments policy that has been up here now for some 6 months. The posts aren’t written about comments policy or comment moderation but issues. We now have a comment moderator due to many complaints from TMV writers and readers.
If people stick to the issues raised in posts, there never is a problem. But when it moves towards people “screaming” at each other because they disagree, the issues really get lost. In an event, if we’ve deleted comments its comments that will not take what is MORE than a hint that we don’t want comments on comment moderation and comments. The blog is not about that at all but the issues we write about — all of us whether we do a post that is center, center right or center, whether we like George Bush or don’t. And we can’t just keep deleting posts that don’t take our warnings.
If a president or other public official makes some mistakes it is to be expected. But frankly, Bush’s failures are so massive and so numerous that I simply fail to see how it cannot reflect back on him as a person. Such a consistent pattern of partisanship (No, Kling did not “debunk” that charge.), cronyism, excessive secrecy and a complete disregard for treaty commitments and human rights does not lend itself to easy dismissal as not having anything to do with deep flaws in Bush’s personality.
With regard to drinking/drugs he quit cold turkey rather than taking the more sustainable route of standing before his peers and admitting his addiction, as in AA.
agreed, and drinking a non-alcholic beer is like a heroin addict shooting sugar water into his veins. The addiction is still there- it’s just sublimated,never addressed.He is not “recovering- and his addiction to failure is manifest in his reckless abandonment of the guiding principles of this country.
William Kristol is our Quisling.
‘his reckless abandonment of the guiding principles of this country.
William Kristol is our Quisling.’
That’s how I see it also. Do conservatives that still support him believe that those principles have not been abandoned? Or do they feel obliged to defend him because they once supported him and his policies? Or because of purely partisan reasons? Surely they are capable of putting country ahead of party!