DIGGING DEEPERBy Ivan G. Goldman
Iraq policy statements coming out of Bush’s manure farm are very much like what you might hear trying to collect money from a deadbeat. They always promise some future event that will allow them to make everything right if only we show patience – some check is coming from someplace. And of course anyone who disbelieves our deadbeat in the White House, we’re told, shows a terrible lack of patriotism or is just a fool who thinks we don’t have to fight terrorists.
Now we wait for General David Patraeus’ report in September. After that, policy will become clear, rational, purposeful, and on course. And if it doesn’t, there’s always another event to wait for.
Before the Patraeus report we had the Baker commission. Remember? The administration first wanted us to wait for it, then wanted us to forget it, but now Bush has revived its memory, probably because its recommendations will have something to do with the next blessed event promising to answer all our questions.
In the meantime, administration flunkies leaked what was supposed to be a bombshell of a story to The New York Times claiming troop strength may well come down to 100,000 or so next year. Gosh, isn’t that an election year?
Patraeus’ battle plan, which is already heaping more pointless casualties onto the altar of Bush’s ego (that’s a metaphor I borrowed from Bill Moyers) can’t possibly be combined with a troop reduction because it calls for establishing numerous smaller outposts and more aggressive patrols. Those troops who aren’t yanked would be even more outnumbered. It’s horrible to contemplate the result.
Meanwhile word has leaked out that years ago an exceptional mine-resistant battle vehicle was designed in Africa. But the manufacturer can make only a few of them a year, and there’s no push from Bush to rev up production even though more than half of our casualties come from mines that tear through our vehicles.
Now we wait for General David Patraeus’ report in September. After that, policy will become clear, rational, purposeful, and on course. And if it doesn’t, there’s always another event to wait for.
Before the Patraeus report we had the Baker commission. Remember? The administration first wanted us to wait for it, then wanted us to forget it, but now Bush has revived its memory, probably because its recommendations will have something to do with the next blessed event promising to answer all our questions.
In the meantime, administration flunkies leaked what was supposed to be a bombshell of a story to The New York Times claiming troop strength may well come down to 100,000 or so next year. Gosh, isn’t that an election year?
Patraeus’ battle plan, which is already heaping more pointless casualties onto the altar of Bush’s ego (that’s a metaphor I borrowed from Bill Moyers) can’t possibly be combined with a troop reduction because it calls for establishing numerous smaller outposts and more aggressive patrols. Those troops who aren’t yanked would be even more outnumbered. It’s horrible to contemplate the result.
Meanwhile word has leaked out that years ago an exceptional mine-resistant battle vehicle was designed in Africa. But the manufacturer can make only a few of them a year, and there’s no push from Bush to rev up production even though more than half of our casualties come from mines that tear through our vehicles.
WIN OR PERISH?
In World War II FDR ordered manufacturers to stop making civilian cars and other non-essentials because the nation had to win or perish. Manufacturers poured out liberty ships, planes, artillery pieces, ammo. Designs were stepped up. Inferior tanks and planes were replaced by new ones that could go up against the best. After less than four years of fighting, the enemy was vanquished.
Bush says victory is vital, that al Qaeda will follow us home if we leave Iraq and slaughter bunches and bunches of us, but he does nothing to put the nation on a war footing, and his war of choice in Iraq passed the four-year mark long ago. If he believed what he says, he’d need to revamp manufacturing and establish a draft. Or perhaps not. When informed we were under attack in September 2001, he spent the next seven minutes reading The Pet Goat. Then he ran away, emerging three days later with a bullhorn and a load of crap. That was after spending almost an entire year ignoring terrorist threats and actions.
Had he been at the wheel in December 1941, we’d have lost the war, plain and simple. Achtung, sayanora, that’s all she wrote.
America still has FDRs around, but they no longer rise to the top of the political process and for the most part don’t even get involved with it. That’s because the system has been stunk up by the need for incredible amounts of cash. Beggars, fools, incompetents, and liars rise to the top. Not FDRs or Lincolns.
So we can all look forward to these Bush-manufactured phony events until the big one in November 2008 and hope that somehow this time we'll move up in class to a second-rater.
In World War II FDR ordered manufacturers to stop making civilian cars and other non-essentials because the nation had to win or perish. Manufacturers poured out liberty ships, planes, artillery pieces, ammo. Designs were stepped up. Inferior tanks and planes were replaced by new ones that could go up against the best. After less than four years of fighting, the enemy was vanquished.
Bush says victory is vital, that al Qaeda will follow us home if we leave Iraq and slaughter bunches and bunches of us, but he does nothing to put the nation on a war footing, and his war of choice in Iraq passed the four-year mark long ago. If he believed what he says, he’d need to revamp manufacturing and establish a draft. Or perhaps not. When informed we were under attack in September 2001, he spent the next seven minutes reading The Pet Goat. Then he ran away, emerging three days later with a bullhorn and a load of crap. That was after spending almost an entire year ignoring terrorist threats and actions.
Had he been at the wheel in December 1941, we’d have lost the war, plain and simple. Achtung, sayanora, that’s all she wrote.
America still has FDRs around, but they no longer rise to the top of the political process and for the most part don’t even get involved with it. That’s because the system has been stunk up by the need for incredible amounts of cash. Beggars, fools, incompetents, and liars rise to the top. Not FDRs or Lincolns.
So we can all look forward to these Bush-manufactured phony events until the big one in November 2008 and hope that somehow this time we'll move up in class to a second-rater.
