You know, I’m getting sick of being served the same flavor of Kool-Aid over and over again. So victory will be achieved by staying the course, continuing to train Iraqis to defend themselves, and ignoring politicians in Washington unless they’re Joe Lieberman.
One thing is clear, we’ve heard this before. If Bush is hoping that this speech to a seemingly reluctant Naval Academy will reverse his plummeting approval numbers and re-dupe America into supporting ongoing casualties in Iraq, I think he’ll be disappointed. America has already decided that, while terrorists may view Iraq as the central front in their war on the US, it was the US and its doctored intelligence that created the front.
Bush did nothing to address the central front in the fight over his justifications for war: that he and his administration doctored intelligence, ignored experts, utilized fear and propaganda, and have altered their causus bellum repeatedly. Bush didn’t address Murtha’s argument that our troops are the primary justification for insurgent violence. Bush ignored the evidence that Iraqi troops are using torture, that the commanders he claims to be listening to have testified in front of Congress that progress is stalled, that Al Qaeda didn’t operate in Iraq before we got there, etc.
Bush indicated that Democrats don’t understand the enemy. He made it seem like only a small force of “terrorists” are actually responsible for suicide attacks in Iraq. Who is laying IEDs? What nationality were the suicide bombers in Jordan last month? And if the terrorists are such a small number, then won’t they suicide-bomb themselves out of existence? The only way a suicide bomb strategy works is if there is a large and regenerating number of willing martyrs.
Bush’s free refill on the Kool-Aid demonstrates that he doesn’t understand why America is upset. Promising that we will stay the course as long as he is Commander in Chief is exactly why America is concerned. While an immediate withdrawal might not be the right course of action, claiming that we are succeeding now only condemns Bush to a lame duck second term and his party to a total defeat in 2006. Bush’s war is a failure. Those that support it are supporting failure. It’s time to change guards because an inept Commander in Chief and mute Congress are as threatening to our troops as the rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists. Ineptitude is a threat.
~The Stuffed Tiger
July 17th, 2006 at 9:21 am
[…] Last fall Bush gave a whirlwind tour of political speeches touting the fact that he did, in fact, have a plan for victory. Anyone who payed attention to it could tell that Bush was merely pasting a series of talking points into a handbook and calling it a strategy. It wasn’t governance, it was marketing. After seven plus months of what we thought was a failed strategy, marked by the transition from a violent insurgency to a civil war, we find out that lo and behold, Bush never even tried to implement his strategy for victory. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the subcommittee on national security, said the hearing was held to determine “whether we had and have a strategy and to what extent that strategy is meeting the needs of our engagement in Iraq.” […]