When History Comes Calling

When History finally catches up with George W. Bush it is likely to be in a foul and unforgiving mood. Demagogic scoundrels, to be sure, have run their countries into the ditch before. But the sheer scale of the Bush Administration’s blunders, coupled with its transparent sophistry, takes the breath away. Future generations are likely to gape in awe at Bush’s gall and how he and his minions could continue to get away with it all.

A stolen election, ignoring urgent pre-9/11 warnings, the intelligence fiasco surrounding Iraq’s non-existent WMD, an illegal war, a bollixed reconstruction, a corrupt occupation, the torture and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib, the P.R. disaster of Guantánamo, unlawful domestic wiretaps, a loony Defense Secretary, a scatterbrained Attorney General, the botched federal response to Katrina, and the failure to address global warming all represent a mind-numbing litany of crimes and errors.

The one thing the Bush Administration has excelled at, however, is in avoiding the consequences of its mendacity and incompetence. It’s approval ratings may be in the low thirties – an indication its credibility has cratered – but democrats are still fearful that Bush will somehow manage to pin the failure in Iraq on their posterior, making them look likes the asses that lost the war.

The Bush strategy in this regard is simple: paint the opponents of the war as insincere defeatists who want America to lose. This amounts to demonizing the opposition as fifth columnists that represent as grave a threat to America’s national security as al-Qaeda.

Bush strategy here is craven. Bush rejected the recommendations of the bi-partisan Baker-Hamilton commission – which offered him a face-saving way of extricating America from the misadventure in Iraq – opting instead for a risky troop surge that few military experts believe has any chance of succeeding. The move may serve little military purpose, beyond postponing the inevitable, but it does manage to turns U.S. troops into political pawns. If the democratic Congress tries to shut down the war, then Bush can always accuse democrats of not supporting the troops. No doubt, Bush’s spiel about “politicians in Washington” overruling the generals on the ground is getting thinner than Karl Rove’s hair, but the president has already proven he’s willing to stay on a given course of attack with all the mindless tenacity of a dead-ender.

It’s mission impossible to imagine a happy outcome in Iraq. Put simply, Alberto Gonzales has a better chance of holding on to his job than Nuri al-Maliki has of holding on to his. The democrats who gave Bush a blank check may have a lot to answer for, but Bush is the one that will be called to account by History. He was the cheer-leader-in-chief who led the charge against phantom stockpiles of WMD. He donned the flight suit and unilaterally declared the end of major combat operations. He made “stay the course” his mantra until it was apparent his stale cliché was leading nowhere. History will catch up with George W. Bush. Bring it on.

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Fire vs. Ice

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. But is it possible America might expire in a fit of stupidity? Watching the media circus freak show -- populated lately with the likes of the late Anna Nicole Smith, Don Imus, Rosie O’Donnell, Larry Birkhead, Al Sharpton, Ashley Simpson, et al – it’s hard not to imagine that American popular culture is in the last throes of a terminal senescence.

Much do about nothing might be the phrase that best describes the cable TV shout fests dedicated to dissecting every shred of information on the most insipid of subject matters: like what substances Anna Nicole injected into her infected buttocks before she succumbed to a virtual pharmacopoeia of prescription drugs strong enough tranquilize an army of elephants.

Iraq is exploding. The Bush Administration is imploding. But the American masses will not be denied their bread and circuses. The media clowns know the beast must be fed, but the whole “cultural” spectacle has taken on a self-referential air. Hence the self-important pundits are busy cannibalizing one another (so that they are the last ones fed to the lions). That is, all the so-called “news anchors,” like Bill O’Reilly at Fox, spend an inordinate amount of time and attention tearing apart personalities at competing networks instead of covering actual news.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is plotting its next attack against the “corrupt infidels.” It’s not a matter of if, but when. The only question remaining is this: will we make their job unnecessary?

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Bush vs. the Truth

If George Bush told me it was sunny and 70 degrees outside, I’d bring an umbrella and wear galoshes before going out. To put it charitably, Bush’s credibility has sunk further than a Russian submarine; it’s just not coming back. This is tragic for the United States. As Winston Churchill observed, “a democratic people can face any adversity, provided they believe their leaders are leveling with them and not living in a fool’s paradise.”

Bush has failed Churchill’s test on both counts. The administration still claims, of course, that it was duped by the same bad intelligence everyone else believed. This is disingenuous; Bush and his underlings confidently asserted there was no doubt whatsoever that Saddam possessed WMD, but the intelligence community was split on the issue.

Put simply, the Bush Administration had no basis for insisting that the case for Saddam’s alleged WMD was an open and shut case. At the very least, Bush did not exercise due diligence in vouching for cherry picked intelligence; at worst he was flat out deceitful.

Bush is so careless with the truth, however, that one has to wonder if he’s opted out of the “reality-based” community for his own Alice in Wonderland alternative universe (where up is down). For instance, at a town meeting forum, Bush claimed as one of the reasons for going to war the “fact” that Saddam kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq. This is false; it a matter of historical record that Bush recalled the inspectors, claiming they weren’t working. Subsequently, the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has gone on record saying that had the inspections process played out for just another two weeks the world community would have known with certainty that Saddam’s alleged WMD were non-existent.

The failure to allow the weapons inspectors to finish their job has cost countless lives. This is because U.S. forces refrained from destroying Saddam’s conventional ammo dumps for fear of setting off hidden WMD stashes, but this left stockpiles of munitions for insurgents to loot, weapons that have since been turned on American forces and Iraqi civilians. This is just one example of where the intersection of ineptness and untruth has led the Bush Administration to disaster.

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