Bush’s End Game in Iraq

Bush is hitting new lows in his venal, spineless and blatant attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the destruction he has wrought. The weak reports this week by Crocker and Petraeus were the best the Bush regime can offer as it slinks sulkily into history. Sidney Blumenthal hits the nail on the head with this Salon piece: How Bush is trying to save face in Iraq

Pathetic. Bush continues to astound me with his weakness and lack of candor. He simply cannot face reality. His history of lies and misdirections has begun to unravel in the public’s mind – his popularity is so low, and his relevance has never been less – but apparently he still clings, childlike, to them. As he famously told the Australians on his visit there just last week: “We’re kicking ass in Iraq”. Yea. Right.

Somewhere in his juvenile mind Bush seems to think that his role is to be a cheerleader: someone who keeps the smile on and talks up the situation so as to boost the flagging spirits of those around him. He likes to think of himself as a Churchillain war leader. Instead he’s a parody of a spoilt child who brattily can’t understand why people don’t like him after he’s beaten them up on the school playground. He’s used to being bailed out, not having his buddies like Rove and Gonzales, bail out.

And he couldn’t be less Churchillian if he tried: Churchill relished a fight, he went off to war in his youth to experience it. He didn’t duck national service like Bush and Cheney did, he sought it out. When he rose to power he told the story straight: this is tough and will demand sacrifice on the part of everyone not just the army. He walked the bombed out streets and refused to leave London even as it was being bombed daily. Bush has done the exact opposite: he is furtive, weak, afraid to ask for sacrifice, afraid to stand in the danger zone, afraid to deliver a rallying cry, afraid to muster the necessary resources, and now afraid to tell the truth.

Liars like Bush are generally afraid to face up to reality themselves. Usually that’s a personal problem not a national disaster. Maybe it was inevitable that the Bush family’s pandering to its spoiled brat son should have become a national curse: so much of their fortune is tied up in the Middle East and Bush senior’s only great achievement was the Gulf War victory. Whatever the curious dynamics of the aristocratic Bush family were they produced a weak liar in this president. And he’s now bent on ruining us all further so as to “save face”.

If he weren’t trashing the country Bush would be merely a pathetic rich boy, a family embarrassment, and a footnote in a a series of failed projects. As it is he’s president: still a pathetic rich boy, but a national embarrassment, and a blot on national history.