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| President Oakland Addresses the Air Force Academy |
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| No "there, there." |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, May 28, 2008. Under normal circumstances, it would be possible to feel sorry for President George Bush. Even when at the worst level of their Presidencies, people felt compassion for Truman, Carter and even for Nixon. Truman actually cashed in on his unpopularity and made it work for him. Nobody denied that Carter tried to do good, and tried to be a decent President. Even disgraced Richard Nixon, despite his scowling lies and resignation, could be honorably accounted for having opened relations with China, for dealing with the Soviet Union well, for certain surprisingly liberal and good domestic and environmental agendas despite his selfish and paranoid flailings, crimes, and prolonging a pointless war. There was a level of competence, and there was accomplishment amid the carnage. Today, George Bush is even being trashed by the forthcoming book of his pudgy former media front man, Scott McClellan, who couldn't even wait for him to leave office in seven months. This would be worse than it appears except that virtually all of Bush's people have turned on him and pointed out the lies, the deceptions, the goofy incompetence of their dry drunk leader, whose suggested jealousy of his all-competent father seems to have been dead on. Only the most connish of the neocons, like Douglas Feith, still stand by their lies and errors, but quite possibly only because they fear criminal prosecution, which may yet be in the works. But when a world-class nobody like Scott McClellan turns on you after serving you since back in Texas and twenty years your junior, it reflects on both your judgment of employees and your own competence. And when you scan the record, domestic and foreign, of President Bush you cannot find a single program, agenda, or idea of his own that didn't fail, dissolve, been publicly disproved. Not a single one. Bush is like Gertrude Stein's view of Oakland. There's no 'there', there. Here today in Colorado, President Bush tried yet again to compare himself favorably to great Presidents of our past by trying to inflict the idea the wars of his tenure are comparable to World War Two, of which his father was a modest hero. In his address this morning to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush equated the War in Afghanistan, demanded by 9-11, to the War in Iraq, started solely by his own lies or, at best, stupidity. Then he skipped ahead to the time when these wars are won and tried to obligate his audience to rebuild those nations. "America has assumed this obligation before," Bush said. "After World War II we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies. These efforts took time and patience, and as a result Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity and are now allies of the United States." And then, this: "Today we must do the same in Afghanistan and Iraq. And by helping these young democracies grow in freedom and prosperity we will once again reap the benefits in generations of security and peace." Somebody freshen his drink. It's the word "today" that holds attention. Today. Today we must rebuilt two entire nations because we beat Japan and helped beat Germany sixty years ago and we can expect the same results in nations with whom we share little. This would merely be amusing if people were not, as we speak, dying in Mr. Bush's war. We haven't won either conflict, are not really sure where or who our actual enemies are, and have spent nearly as much money on these wars, and fought them longer, than World War Two. Just like the German leader in WW II kept referencing events in WWI and tried to replay them to different result, Bush keeps trying to to follow a dramatic script that isn't written. His delusions are no longer merely annoying or amusing. He really does seem to think we're in position to chat up rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq. To do so, they must be conquered, just as we did to Japan and to Germany. We're not fighting nation states, fascists and feudal monarchies. We're fighting diverse street gangs united only because we are fighting them. The President went on to say we must not lose our nerve in fighting these enemies. Well, if we're still fighting them, why are we rebuilding with enemy to burn it down? All that does is make Halliburton's job sheet fatter and unending. White House press secretary Dana Perino indicates Bush, our President Oakland, finds solace in his vague theory "that freedom has the power to overcome tyranny and transform societies." True, but freedom to willingly choose fascist and religious thuggeries in open election - which is how we got Hitler and various fundamentalist Muslims - doesn't seem to enter Bush's mind. Maybe there ARE necessary transition stages, maybe not those of Marx, maybe not those of the enlightenment, but needed steps keeping order and allowing a certain prosperity that leads to an educated public making good and responsible decisions. It's not entirely the same, but maybe Spain's transition from clueless religious monarchy to mild fascism to constitutional monarchy, despite their awful Civil War, is an illustrative example that can improve upon Bush's idiotic belief that a nation torn by religious strife and terrorism can - push-pull, click-click - become a vibrant chronic democracy and profitable trade partner if just given the opportunity. |
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