Bush in Bizarro World
The President’s ever-sinking approval ratings have been a source of some o
ptimism. Perhaps Americans are not really as confused or brainwashed as I feared. Maybe the country will wake up and take note of the disastrous course we’ve been on for the last six years.
But my glass is still half empty. On the one hand, with a 35% approval rating, the latest poll numbers for Bush are incontrovertibly in the toilet. But the United States is a big country – do the math: with a population of 302 million, these polls translate into the troubling statistic that 105 million Americans think the President is doing a good job!
I find this more than a little disturbing in light of the performance of this administration, which has not had a single foreign policy or domestic success during its tenure. It has been nothing short of a string of unmitigated disasters from the start, and every day it gets even worse.
In the interest of brevity, I’ll simply summarize the most salient examples: the cancellation of the Clinton-era program targeting Osama bin-laden, the intelligence failure that led to 9-11, the escape of Osama along with the top leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban during the invasion of Afghanistan, the intelligence failure on WMD’s that was the pretext for the war with Iraq, the entire debacle that was and remains Iraq, the unchecked muscling and military buildup by China, the unpunished detonation of a nuclear weapon by North Korea, the dangerous destabilization of the Middle East, the championing of torture and secret prisons, the squandering of global support in the aftermath of 9-11, the failure to even attempt to broker an agreement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the central source of MidEast instability.
Want more? Here goes: the further alienation of an Iran that is about to go nuclear, the re-emergence of the Taliban as a force in Afghanistan along with a bumper crop of opium, the jeopardizing of the NATO alliance, the abandonment of the Nixon-era Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and most recently the attempt to introduce a missile shield on Russia’s doorstep that has provoked the Russian leadership to abrogate treaties that ended the Cold War. Yes, the Bush boys and girls have done what we thought was impossible: they have started the Cold War all over again!
We lack the space here to cover domestic disasters in anything but a cursory sweep so I’ll keep the following to a word or phrase that should perfectly illuminate the theme: Katrina, oil company windfalls, the shuttle disaster, denying the existence of global warming, Halliburton, huge trade deficits, Walter Reed, staggering budget deficits, the health care crisis, the Patriot Act, the growth of poverty in America … it just goes on and on ….
ptimism. Perhaps Americans are not really as confused or brainwashed as I feared. Maybe the country will wake up and take note of the disastrous course we’ve been on for the last six years.But my glass is still half empty. On the one hand, with a 35% approval rating, the latest poll numbers for Bush are incontrovertibly in the toilet. But the United States is a big country – do the math: with a population of 302 million, these polls translate into the troubling statistic that 105 million Americans think the President is doing a good job!
I find this more than a little disturbing in light of the performance of this administration, which has not had a single foreign policy or domestic success during its tenure. It has been nothing short of a string of unmitigated disasters from the start, and every day it gets even worse.
In the interest of brevity, I’ll simply summarize the most salient examples: the cancellation of the Clinton-era program targeting Osama bin-laden, the intelligence failure that led to 9-11, the escape of Osama along with the top leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban during the invasion of Afghanistan, the intelligence failure on WMD’s that was the pretext for the war with Iraq, the entire debacle that was and remains Iraq, the unchecked muscling and military buildup by China, the unpunished detonation of a nuclear weapon by North Korea, the dangerous destabilization of the Middle East, the championing of torture and secret prisons, the squandering of global support in the aftermath of 9-11, the failure to even attempt to broker an agreement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the central source of MidEast instability.
Want more? Here goes: the further alienation of an Iran that is about to go nuclear, the re-emergence of the Taliban as a force in Afghanistan along with a bumper crop of opium, the jeopardizing of the NATO alliance, the abandonment of the Nixon-era Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and most recently the attempt to introduce a missile shield on Russia’s doorstep that has provoked the Russian leadership to abrogate treaties that ended the Cold War. Yes, the Bush boys and girls have done what we thought was impossible: they have started the Cold War all over again!
We lack the space here to cover domestic disasters in anything but a cursory sweep so I’ll keep the following to a word or phrase that should perfectly illuminate the theme: Katrina, oil company windfalls, the shuttle disaster, denying the existence of global warming, Halliburton, huge trade deficits, Walter Reed, staggering budget deficits, the health care crisis, the Patriot Act, the growth of poverty in America … it just goes on and on ….
When I review the list of failures this administration has presided over, I can only conclude that their leadership (or lack thereof!) is the most dramatic illustration of bumbling incompetence since the movies of the Three Stooges were regularly screened. This should be obvious to everyone - even to their ideological kindred souls -- but apparently that is not the case.
When I was a boy, I remember being entertained by the Bizarro World of "Htrae" (Earth spelled backward) in the Superman comics, where reality was turned on its head and absolutely everything was the opposite of the way it was on Earth. Pundits have suggested that Bush really is from Bizarro World. I think we’ve got 105 million Americans living there with him. And I am not amused.
posted by Garp83 at 7:02 PM
1 Comments:
Hey Stan.
Introductory thoughts.
1.
I’m a bit sketchy on the history, but I think Iraq is a fabrication of allied powers after one of the world wars. But that region has a history going back many thousands of years prior to that particular scheme. I presume that although we in the USA don’t have much sensitivity to their history, they do. So it seems unlikely to me that an “imposed country” of any sort will survive. The main point here is that we don’t have much hope of really understanding the local cultural biases, so how can we decide who should be grouped with whom, let alone how best to govern their culture?
2.
You seem to have a carefully thought out plan, and I agree with rational thinking in each point in and of itself, however, It seems to me that what we can do very effectively is break stuff. But building stuff? I think countries need to kind of grow.
3.
Even if yours was the best plan imaginable, what makes you think we are capable of carrying it through?
If this administration has demonstrated anything it is incompetence. And even with a more competent U.S. administration, what makes you think that a healthy Iraq is the goal of our government?
My sense is that our own good ol’ U.S. of A is becoming a fascist kleptocracy right under our noses. If you think about it, the one inarguable fact of this whole mess in Iraq and Afghanistan is the transfer of vast sums of public money to private coffers. A stable Iraq or Afghanistan or world for that matter, doesn’t feed the cat I’m afraid.
Check out the radical expansion of private military contractors operating on the public teat right here in our country. Blackwater and Iraeli soldiers in unmarked vehicles manning checkpoints and carrying automatic weapons in Louisiana for God's sake!
Although I enjoy bashing the half-wit Prince George as much as anyone, I don’t lay the blame for what we are becoming solely at his feet (no pun intended).
Bill Clinton did much to promote this trend, and it has been enabled all along these many years past by the vast majority of members of both parties.
4.
Perhaps as distasteful and irresponsible as it may seem to our bleeding hearts, the kindest thing would be to precipitously pull out of Iraq. Perhaps we should simply leave them to their own devices. I think that common decency is a basic human trait and that if we would only stop messing with the lives of others they would develop their own functional societies. My understanding is that Iran was actually moving towards secular democracy until Kermit Roosevelt started mucking about over there (Operation Ajax)at the behest of the CIA and Anglo American Oil.
Certainly there will be a bloodbath when -not if- we leave. but it's a bloodbath today, and nothing is growing there but resentment.
Cheers,
Mark
Post a Comment
<< Home