Politics

I think George Bush must be heartily sick of the bill of goods Dick Cheney and the neo-con gang sold him. Why else would he slink off to a military arena — the Naval Academy — mid-morning to address a captive symapthetic audience about his ‘vision’ for vistory in Iraq? Because he’s afraid that the rest of us may notice that his ‘new’ plan aka ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq’ is neither new nor a strategy. He’s either a coward or he’s liar — possibly both because his speech was just more of the same.

The problem remains defining what the victory conditions are. At one point in his speech Bush said that victory is when America has trained enough Iraqis so that they can defend themselves [From the insurrection we stirred up!]. At another he said that victory is no less than the defeat of the Islamists and Saddamists [As if they are one and the same]. These aren’t the same thing. So which is it? If he is so muddled on the basic definition of our knowing when we’ve won, of course he’s muddled on everything else. Which is why there is still no clarity over when the end might arrive.

As an effort in rallying people to his cause the speeech failed. He keeps repeating the same old ‘we will never back down’ stuff as if we believe him. Of course we will back down if enough Republicans feel that they will lose their seats next year. That’s Democracy for you. Bush has still completely missed the notion that he cannot sell the war as a global engagemnet of World War proportions without doing World War kinds of things like instituting a draft, raising taxes to pay for the titanic effort, asking for sacrifices from the general population and generally mobilizing the country and focusing on a single objective: winning the war. He hasn’t done that. Yet he struts around as if he’s Churchill and makes Churchillian statements. It is roughly three years now since this all started: during an equivalent period in the early 1940’s America had destroyed, or helped destroy, two world powers and conquered vast swathes of the several continents. It had put vast armies in the field, equipped not just them but a goodly part of the Allies as well, and turned its industrial base into an unstoppable juggernaut. Bush has only just delivered a plan. He’s a pathetic minnow by comparison to his 1940’s predecessors. A minnow, moreover, who knows damned well why he won’t ask for sacrifice: he sold the country the same bill of goods that Cheney sold him. There was no need for this war. He should have focused on Bin Laden not Saddam.

Still we have no leadership. Still we have no strategy. Still we have no idea. Ah … but we have George Bush. I feel safer already.

Read all about it here: Republicans Denounce Ex-Lawmaker . Yes those Republicans are up in arms over the nasty corruption bubbling to the surface in the Cunningham case. Naturally, as we all know, they are quick to point out that the Democrats are just as bad.

Uh? I didn’t quite get that. Where do I read about the Democrats involved in the DeLay, Abramoff, Frist etc., etc., scandals? The real reason that the Democrats are not involved is prosaic: they aren’t in power, so they aren’t worth anything to anyone who has corruption in mind. Whereas … well let’s just say that the Republicans are living testimony to Lord Acton’s dictum that power tends to corrupt and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

With most of his second term intiatives in shreds already President Bush is still trying to get immigration laws overhauled. His latest effort is reported in the New York Times here: Bush to Press Immigration Plan in Arizona.

The problem we face is that we cannot live without immigration and the laws we have are completely ineffective in face of the swollen number of illegal immigrants now either resident here, or trying to get here. Immigration is now an explosive election issue especially in the states that border Mexico. Bush is trying to press for work visas, which makes sense from an economic perspective: the food industry in California would collapse without illegals. The wider problem is that illegals use local resources, but because they are illegal they do not contribute to the tax base that supports the locality. Work visas would bring the illegals into the system so that this drain is diminshed. Whether Bush can get his extreme right wing to go along is a different question.

Immigration will remain an issue for the rightists to exploit as long as the current law is perceived to ‘allow’ illegals to ‘live off the locals’. Unprincipled politicians in the border states are jumping on the bandwagon to eliminate illegals by sending them home. This is a bit like trying to plug a bursting dam. It won’t work as long as the payoff for taking the risk of getting into America is less than the impact of poverty [or lack of opportunity] back in Mexico [or wherever]. So we need not just immigration reform here, but we need solid development elsewhere. Maybe Bush can be sensible for a change and get a bi-partisan effort to head off his own extremists. If he can’t then this will be an issue to watch closely in the elections next year and in 2008. But we can always hope!

Joe Biden tells it the way it is: Time for An Iraq Timetable. The most significant point here is that the Iraq war has shown the world the limits of American military power. We simply cannot continue for much longer without a radical deterioration in the quality of our all volunteer army. Bush’s war has had many unintended consequences, this may be one of the most important.

Am I just being churlish or is it ridiculous that FEMA considers its Katrina response on of its top achievements in 2005? Their website lists them:FEMA Public Affairs. Sorry guys: if Katrina makes the list you must have had an awful year. Better luck in 2006!