The Anti-Leadership of a Wartime President With Blinders
President Bush wants to shore up national resolve to keep troops in Iraq by invoking the past struggles that yielded alliances.
“We fight for a free way of life against a new barbarism,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday. A friendly Japan and Vietnam that now sell us T-shirts show “that the heart’s desire for liberty will not be denied,” the president added.
In a nutshell, this is why America is in trouble in Iraq.
President Bush can’t reel himself in out of the clouds - where he imagines himself leading a great ideological struggle for the generations - to confront the ugly realities of Iraq.
The ideological blinders and the mushy notion of what the “war” is about make resolute leadership impossible. After failing to admit the initial mistake of Iraq, President Bush seems incapable of strategic corrections.
His is a wartime presidency without wartime direction.
It’s the president’s job to lead, by choosing among the least-bad options. Instead, President Bush accepts the dangers of drift in an environment where the risks for America grow daily.
By always saying he’ll act after he hears from field commanders, the president abdicates the responsibility a commander in chief must bear. He’d rather twiddle his thumbs and let ground commanders muddle through than listen to the advice of Republican security heavyweights such as Sen. John Warner.
Warner’s call Thursday for the token withdrawal of 5,000 troops by year’s end was less a fully wrought policy than a plea for the president to do something - anything - to display independent action and decision-making.
“This is an opportunity to show the president’s going to take the initiative,” the ex-chairman of the Armed Services Committee told reporters Thursday.
It was a waste of breath.
As Warner himself indirectly acknowledged, Congress holds pitifully few means to impose correction on a president who falls down on wartime leadership.
“In reality, we have one tool,” Warner said, “and that is to terminate funding. And having served in the Pentagon for five years during Vietnam and witnessed what the Congress did, I do not want to see a repeat of that.”
Yet this is why the American people feel so betrayed and let down on Iraq. The president is in denial, the vice president is in his bunker and Democrats and political critics all appear to be spinning their wheels. The toxic rumble of popular anger threatens to overtake any realistic assessment of options.
Seizing the floor instead are partisan extremists, with their highly inflammatory op-eds, TV and radio ads churned daily by well-oiled machinery. They’re interested less in crafting the best process for withdrawal or ground action in Iraq than in seizing the White House in 2008.
The president actually ties the hands of his military commanders by always insisting on slotting the war into the narrow concept where it’s all about al-Qaida. He has squeezed the options on the ground so much that the nation doesn’t have to wait to hear next month’s briefing on the “surge” to know that its bottom line will be more of the same.
The surge itself wasn’t even a plan.
It was an afterthought, concocted by the White House to avoid dealing with the package of 79 recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.
The surge concept the president implemented in January didn’t even have a fully elaborated military operational plan until July, according to a recent report by analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The simultaneous British withdrawal from most parts of southern Iraq opened up a new hornet’s nest of Iranian opportunism and Shiite murder.
The latest National Intelligence Estimate makes clear that the chief aims of the surge have failed. It was supposed to give Iraqis political space to make peace with one another and to allow people to stay in their homes in Baghdad’s threatened multiethnic neighborhoods.
Instead, the NIE released last week reveals that the Iraqi government is self-destructing and sectarian expulsion and flight are more pronounced. The NIE even suggests the emptying of Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods is one reason there’s less violence - a development the White House instead credits to the surge.
So what was the White House’s response to the NIE’s grim conclusions?
A spokesman said it offered “encouraging signs of security gains.”
Elizabeth Sullivan is a regular columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
© 2007 The Cleveland Plain Dealer
America is a fraud, with a hypocrite for a leader and a bunch of political whores for a government. George is putting on his “IRON HEELS” and going for a trek. Look out world.
Hoa binh
“Wartime President” my ass. He’s a criminal who has invaded and destroyed Iraq and what Afghanistan. The war is an invention of a criminal cabal and the “ideological struggle” is over control of natural resources.
All he wants to be remembered as is “Wartime President”. He is a fool masquerading as president. Bush and the guy in the bunker along with all the PNAC nuts who started this whole fiasco in Afghanistan and Iraq need to be hauled before the World Court and tried for the war crimes they all have committed.
If they are not tried, the entire body of US citizens will be held responsible.
Oil & Christian Theology.
Nothing else matters.
We are already all responsible by our lack of action.
A majority of US citizens supported the actions of this president even tho’ he was not elected.
Look in your mirrors about who to blame.
This ain’t no president. It’s a pampered fratboy who’s used to having people bend over backwards to give him his way. So he says, I want to win in Iraq and I don’t care how many of us have to die and be maimed to get it.
Adequate campaign spending limits, NOW!
He’s just a figurehead/puppet for the PNAC Agenda.
Little George, the “Wartime President”, the entire notion is obscene. This is,and was,no war. A nation of more than 300 million people, with a military budget triple that of the total expenditure of all the rest of the world does not spend more than four years in a losing battle with a country of 24 million, especially one beaten down by UN sanctions and a broken economy. This is an occupation, a land grab or more accurately an oil grab.
There is no honor, no grace, no dignity in what this foul little man has done. He has sullied the honor of this great and noble country with the foul weakness of his own character. His actions were those of a bully, and like all bullies he is at heart a coward. By his own history regarding Vietnam he must be adjudged a physical coward and his unwillingness to correct, or even acknowledge, his failings in Iraq demonstrate his moral cowardness.
i doubt bush himself has an agenda about anything. somebody told him invading iraq would be fun, and that was enough for him.
BillyB, Dr. Justin Frank wrote a brilliant article for the Ray McGovern organization ( VIPS ) not to long ago saying the same thing you have stated in the second paragraph of your post. Thanks for your comments, Billy.
namvet67, I finally took you up on the offer to read “IRON HEEL’. London is one of my favorite writers and for some reason, I never read that novel. I started it last night and see what you have been saying all along. Thanks.
“His is a wartime presidency without wartime direction.”
Actually, his is an illegal invasion presidency without illegal occupation direction.
Rove’s greatest, er, achievement was to convince the world the Loonitary Executive is a moron driving with “blinders” on who “can’t see reality.” It’s the “Art of War” 101 - make ‘em think you’re stupid, unprepared and incompetent. The truth, however, is this: while everyone’s busy trying to figure out just how mentally unstable Cheneybush is, they are busy continuing to implement their PLAN, the one none of us know about, the one that calls for perpetual creative destruction in the Middle East until either the oil runs out or Jesus shows up and closes Israel.
Sure, to us, it appears they’re all just a buncha greedy screwups who love blowin’ up stuff, but no group of people can make so many “mistakes” for so many years by accident. Beware the real plan…
couldn!t have said it better BillyB
The new barbarism was begun and is perpetuated by the Bush Company.
Put Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove and Pelosi on Air Force one. Fly ‘em over to Iraq. Give ‘em uniforms and equipment and let them patrol the streets of Baghdad for a couple of weeks. I bet they wouldn’t last a day. Unless they deserted, ran and disappeared. Wouldn’t that be great. They finally took some initiative on their own. Good riddance.
“In reality, we have one tool,” Warner said, “and that is to terminate funding.”
Dennis Kucinich has been screaming this to deaf ears in Congress, a blind-to-him media, and a closed-minded, thankless, fearful public for MONTHS!
Dennis Kucinich is miles ahead in his insights and ideas. When are “We The People” going to unite in courage (instead of hide in fear) and support this INCREDIBLE LEADER!
PLEASE read the following, THINK, and SHARE IT!
http://www.towncalleddobson.com/?p=820
For Namvet67:
You sign off with the notation Hoa Binh. That is a place of very sad memories for me although I always called it Binh Hoa. The truth is, I don’t think that this country is a fraud, not as long as people such as those with their preceding comments continue to speak their mind. The fraud are those lickspital weaklings in Washington who claim to speak for us. Good Luck to you sir.
This remark by the courtly ignoramus John Warner of Virginia says it all about the pathetetic state of American leadership:
“In reality, we have one tool,” Warner said, “and that is to terminate funding. And having served in the Pentagon for five years during Vietnam and witnessed what the Congress did, I do not want to see a repeat of that.”
Warner wants Bush to do something…anything…even a meaningless withwrawl of 5 thousand troops, yet he doesn’t want to see…horrors!…the Congress do the only thing it is able to do that will halt this fiasco of death and destruction.
The notion that Bush and Cheney are somehow stupid or demented is really off the mark. There’s enormous amounts of money being made off this war and many multi-millionaires as well. Each day the war goes on more millions of dollars are made and that’s why they’re dragging their feet over ending it.
It is encouraging to see that so many readers here recognize that this is not about blinders or mistakes or poor intelligence or not having a good war plan or underestimating the “enemy” or giving responsibility to the Iraqis or promoting democracy or the failures of the Iraqis to run their own country or cutting and running or whatever. This is about horrific war crimes. Until Americans face the truth, nothing can be done or will be done. Each and every day someone promotes the fraud and travesty. The media, conservatives and progressives, the Congress, the military, the CIA, presidential candidates; the list goes on and on. We hear about whether the “surge” is working, we hear about gradual pullouts, we hear about the need for military reports, about the need for recognizing the positives in the war effort, etc. All of that ignores the simple truth. All of that detracts from reality.
This is about monstrous crimes. America is committing monstrous crimes. America must stop. The so-called president must be seen for who and what he is. Face the truth and real, humane and honest answers will be very clear and obvious.
Americans must confront others, such as the writer, who continue to misrepresent reality. We cannot cope with reality if we refuse to recognize it.
It’s more than blinders on Bush; it was (still is) planned appropriation of the wealth of our tax dollars from our Treasury for the benefit of contractor profiteers. I offer you the below link as definitive proof. After reading this, I don’t know where to go with the anger…….
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_
iraq_swindle
To assume that Bush is merely suffering from tunnel vision or a Christian fervor imo just lets him off of the hook.
Anyone who thinks that this administration “failed” is naive. They have made a killing both figuratively and literally. As Ciao says, it’s all about profits. They are far from incompetent.
Billy B - I sign out with Hoa binh which is Vietnamese for peace. Bien Hoa is the name of the big American air base outside of Saigon.
Hoa binh
How many Americans recognized our own death knell with those immortal words: “You’re either with Me or you’re with the terrorists?” A few of us wnderstand how Cassandra felt.
Some animals, like rats, cannot regurgitate, cannot undo what they have eaten. That’s why DECON works. I wonder if they die with the words “you can’t fool me twice” on their lips…
The gods must be laughing at the fools lining up to be the next president. This country will be un-governable for the rest of the New American Century. Thanks, George!
Of the comments so far I have to agree with “curmudgeon”—-we are citizens all responsible!As far as the Vietnam vets are concerned it is good to see that there is a difference between peace and an American base.
Billy B your comments regarding Little George the Bully were quite observant and well-stated.
You cannot be trusted
Do you even know you’re lying
It’s dangerous to kid yourself
You go deaf and dumb and blind.
You take with such entitlement.
You give bad attitude.
You have no grace
No empathy
No gratitude
You have no sense of consequence
Oh my head is in my hands…
Bad dreams are good
In the great plan.
Joni Mitchell Bad Dreams Copyright Crazy Crow Music 2007
We failed to have war crime trials after the Viet Nam war and that’s why the wars just keep coming. Let’s not fail again. If we want to stop the American war machine, we have to place these people on trial, together with many network executives, newspaper editors and of course the CEOs of the companies that have made obscene profits from this latest criminal enterprise. The criminals among us are many, and voting has no effect on anything; we have a war criminal president and our elected representatives are happy with that. We must put these murderers on trial and if we don’t, then we are as guilty as they are.
Ciao I am only to the third part of the “The Great Iraq Swindle” that you linked to in Rolling Stone. Talk about enraged. If the nation could only be told this story which exposes the fraudulent War Profiteering that is going on with no accountability on any level and see how they are being defrauded by the very government which greedily consumes their citizen’s tax dollars and then doles it out to cronies, it is truly incomprehensible and beyond outrageous what has been allowed to happen.
And then we have the matter of 1 million dead Iraqis (collateral damage), dead American soldiers who have given their life for a racket, DU radiating the earth, so wealth can be amassed in the hands of a few?
It is horrendous. We have been duplicitously manipulated to enrich a bunch of thugs, but what of the nightmare that is the lives of the Iraqi people?
Could we get Monica or one of her friends to get a job as intern or something in the White House? Maybe then we would have a real reason for impeachment.
To Ciao - Thanks for posting that Rolling Stone site about the contractors - the situation is worse than I ever could have imagined. And all this about seemingly “normal” projects - no mention of the oil contractors. Just imagine how that’s going!
But the BushCheney genius shines through -waste money as fast as possible and reduce the country to absolute poverty and despair and the “sheeple” will BEG for a strong leader (ie, dictator) to save us all. Fascism, here we come. (My prediction - forget the 2008 election, there won’t be one.)
As long as Pelosi, Conyers, and other Democrats with the power to stop Bush refuse to do their constitutional duty, it will be more of the same, and Bush will gently slide out of office invoking Churchillian nonsense about a war that never should have taken place.
Thanks, Nancy Pelosi. You could have stopped our troops being slaughtered, and crippled Bush-Cheney politically, but instead you are a whining, financially bloated petty crook who will stand by and let it all happen.
Hope you enjoyed your summer vacation in the Hamptons with the filthy rich.
It’s nearly time to “roll up your sleeves and get back to work”–i.e., approve more surges in Iraq and Draconian Bush spy laws.
The two greatest “achievements” of the Bush administration:
1) They brought about the end of the United States as a democracy and it’s standing in the world as a benevolent country. The rightwing turned our country into the “evil empire” it once railed against. A country that incarcerates, tortures, and murders people without any charges or hint of justification, while also overthrowing any country and killing it’s citizens without the slightest pretense of it having anything to do with national security.
2) It proved that Christianity, as it’s practiced in the west, is a purely political, morally ambivalent institution. The fact that Bush could proclaim his acts of malevolence were in Jesus’ name, by Jesus’ wish, and have NO outcry from the Christian community, is something that I, as a former Christian, will never forget. The Christian church in the USA is completely and utterly bankrupt morally, and the Bush administration proved that.
Bush is kissing the butts of the ruling elite. JF & RF Kennedy started to go against the wishes of the same bastards and got their brains blown out.
With another surge of 30,000 additional troops just around the corner………..
“They hate ’cause were free”
JKP1000: Right on insights!
RE: READ CIAO’S VILLAGE VOICE LINK…AS GALLING & INFURIATING AS IT IS…
Ciao August 26th, 2007 8:17 pm
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle
“It proved that Christianity, as it’s practiced in the west, is a purely political, morally ambivalent institution.”
I don’t believe that to be true. Christianity is used as a tool to swindle a certain segment of the population.
“The fact that Bush could proclaim his acts of malevolence were in Jesus’ name, by Jesus’ wish, and have NO outcry from the Christian community, is something that I, as a former Christian, will never forget. The Christian church in the USA is completely and utterly bankrupt morally, and the Bush administration proved that.”
There has been an outcry. But as our MSM are wont to do, those voices have been muffled.
To suggest that the Christian Right represents all American Christians is just like suggesting that Al Qaeda is THE voice of Islam.
Organized religion is more mumbo jumbo than truth. If the charlatans aka spiritual leaders had one ounce of holy blood in their veins, they would have told the flock that the ‘SUN of MAN’ ( not Son of Man, which is part of the big lie in Christianity ) said not to kill people, pure and simple. But this is not the case. Billions of dollars have been made in the religious industry. I remember Billy Graham supporting our death wish against the people of Vietnam. Most people need somebody to think for them and the clergy of whatever religion is there to assist.
The Berrigan Brothers, Catholic priests who opposed our war crimes in Vietnam were exceptional, as is Andrew Greeley. Look what happened to Archbishop Romero and the Nuns in Central America. The U.S. government was responsible for their deaths as we supported ‘death squads’. Remember Iran-Contra?
Ron: I think this was your best post yet. Thanks!
MaxheMust: The late Col. Fletcher Prouty, said the assasination of JFK was the beginning of the “coup d’ etat in America. Yahoo or Google the name. He was quite a man.
You want to match wits on CD and passively sit by the computer as the Republicrats’ ( it’s one and the same party, so for brevity I’ll try not to say my usual “republicans and the democratic collaborators” ) arrogance and hubris ’surges’… is escalation still a word?…or are we common citizens gonna start with a one day no workee no shopee on 9/11 as a start. Imagine millions of people making ourselves heard by not participating in this unequal system.
All right brothers and sisters. A little joke for ya’ from the peacman.
John and Mary were married for fifty years. Their kids were grown and on their own. John was a good provider and every week he would put the remainder of his paycheck in a box to save for a rainy day. The family never went on a vacation because John didn’t want to spend any money and Mary put up with his miserly ways. John had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital, with Mary by his side. As he layed in bed he knew the end was near. “Mary”, John said, I’ve been good to you and you never had to work. Right?” “Yes dear, you paid the bills on time, we ate good, and you never forgot my birthday. What are you trying to say?” John said, “As a good Christian woman, I want you to honor me after I die, Okay?” “Whatever you want, honey,” said Mary. Before they close the casket at the funeral parlor, have them place the box with my money along side me.” “What!”, she says. ” In case there is a hereafter, I don’t want to be broke when I get to heaven. You’re a good Christian so promise me,” says John. “I promise,” says Mary. At the funeral parlor, Mary’s best ladyfriend sits with her in mourning as the funeral is ending and the undertaker starts to close the casket. “Wait,sir! Don’t close it yet. Put this box in the coffin.” The undertaker nods to Mary and complies. Her girlfriend says, “Are you nuts? That cheap bastard never spent a dollar on you!” Mary smiled. “Relax, Karen. I took all the money out of the box and counted it twice and wrote a check for the exact amount. If he can cash it, more power to him!”
FLASH…Driving home from work tonight, I was listened to the Thom Hartmann show and he mentioned that our beloved Attorney General, ‘Torquemada’ might be replaced with the Hurricane Katrina specialist, Mikey Chertoff. Who said, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”?
Hope ‘angryman’ ( not peaceman ) did make you serious intellectuals laugh a teeny bit.
The Strike, people. I’m serious! We cannot expect any positive change until we unite to shut things down by withholding our labor. Me…I’m blue collar, and I think most of you are white collar, but we are all in the same boat. Remember what Ben Franklin said.
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One thing I never read nor hear and just is so blatantly obvious and damning to this Administration. George M Bush le pere invaded Iraq to protect oil flow from the gulf. the bushes being big oil barons was once commoon knowledge and surely George W Bush le fils invaded Iraq for the very same reason with his eye on Iranian reserves. Isn’t it likely that this Aimless Man is acting out the personal behest of his father whose sharpness is a deep contrast to le fils clownish wht who me facade. a facade that is only coily affected as his doltishness goes right to the core of his lazy soul. Oh god- I’ve made buddhism enemy -of -state.
really though as a mentally disabled humanitarian advocate i didn’t have much of a chance in this fascist criminal regime a-nigh. still I’m curious. Even in this very knowledge-worthy and astute collection of journalists and commentators I find no mention thatGeorge M le fils is a puppet to le Pere’s voracious petroleum and circus of apocolypse appetite.
ANYONE?