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TechnoratiGlued to Our Seats in the Theater of War
Tall Tales from the Annals of the Bush Administration
A week has passed since George W. Bush announced that U.S. troops will stay in Iraq in "a security engagement that extends beyond my Presidency." Last spring, those words would have evoked howls of protest from Democratic leaders. Now, scarcely a peep.
While the world was on August vacation, Republican and Democratic leaders moved toward a compromise. The outlines are clear enough: Some U.S. troops will start leaving Iraq soon, but tens of thousands will stay on indefinitely with a permanent mission of providing something called "overwatch." This open-ended "Korea model" seems to be a done deal. About the only issue left to debate is how fast the "transition" should happen, how quickly the troops that aren't staying should be "redeployed."
Peace activists who despair of the spineless Democrats should keep in mind that Bush and Cheney have compromised, too. In his most recent speech, just six years and two days after he became our tough-as-nails "war president," the Decider announced that he has decided to do what many Democrats and the peace movement have been demanding -- begin getting troops out of Iraq.
Yes, the numbers will be so pitifully small that many already claim they are meaningless. Nonetheless, it's a major shift in Bush's narrative. And that counts for something all too real, because the debate is hardly about policy any more. It's mainly about the stories we tell about policy -- and about "America." Perhaps it always was.
Every war is bound to turn into a story. Every war is experienced as dramatic spectacle -- the more mythic the better. It's no coincidence that the military refers to a battle zone as a "theater."
Political "battles" are high drama, too. On the campaign trail, the most gripping plot usually wins. In that context, a debate about the math of minimalist "drawdown" -- how many troops should leave and how soon -- is hardly the stuff of legend, the sort of thing to fuel public passions. And yet the two major parties have to conjure up the illusion of a profound, emotionally stirring difference between them. So they turn a debate like the present one about troop numbers and time frames into a contest between larger competing narratives.
Last spring, with the President's surge plan seemingly floundering, it looked like the Democrats were winning that contest. Then, over the summer, the administration began to catch up -- and not just by accident. According to the Washington Post:
"Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge. From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and [early September], the office put out 94 such documents."
Call it a surge of words on the home front. But mounting a publicity blitz, no matter how well funded, is no guarantee of success. You have to put on a show good enough to sell tickets and elicit applause. So, why did the pro-war show draw a big enough audience (at least among beleaguered Republicans) that many key Democrats, frustrated by Congressional voting math and frightened for the 2008 electoral future, began to wave the flag of compromise -- and so few Republican Senators were willing to support even the Democrats' half-way measures?
A War President Who Can't Win the War
Part of the answer is revealed in the most astounding polling figure of recent weeks. A New York Times poll asked, "Who do you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq?" In response, only 5% of those polled gave the nod to the Bush administration, just 21% to Congress, but fully 68% -- more than two out of three -- plunked for "the military."
Once again, the top-rated show of the season is evidently that all-time favorite, "The Military Saves the Day," a sequel to the smash hit of the past several seasons, "Support Our Troops." No wonder the White House brought its hero and surge commander, General David Petraeus, on stage for the final scene in this act of a seemingly unending drama. No wonder Bush used the general as cover, not only for continuing the war, but for making his own shadowy compromises in his September 13 address to the nation (which, by the way, drew a far smaller audience than his last major speech introducing his surge plan, or "new way forward," on Jan. 10). "General Petraeus recommends that in December, we begin transitioning to the next phase of our strategy," the President said. "Our troops will focus on a more limited set of tasks." It was as if, all of a sudden, the newly four-starred general, and not the President, were now the commander-in-chief.
For White House scriptwriters, there was certainly another reason to give the general the leading role in this scene from the administration's home-front Iraq drama. He has actually seen something of the reality of war. Everyone knows that the President (like the Vice President and others high in this administration) studiously -- even notoriously -- avoided the real theater of battle. With his wartime credibility always somewhat suspect, all Bush can offer is an illusion spun out of dramatic words.
Bush and his writers also made compromises in their story line. The ringing language of past years about bringing "freedom" to Iraq and the Middle East, though not completely absent, was far more muted this time around. Instead of spreading good tidings about an American mission to liberate the world, the main theme of the President's Petraeus speech was a reprise of another close-to-home classic: "The success of a free Iraq is critical to the security of the United States." The post-9/11 narrative -- defending America against those who would destroy us -- had again taken center stage.
No facts are available to indicate that the war in Iraq is making Americans safer, as Petraeus himself admitted. So, the President's claim made no sense -- not, that is, if you were measuring his argument against facts or logic. But don't fool yourself, it made fine sense as a good old-fashioned American yarn: The band of brothers righteously defending themselves against evildoers who will annihilate us if we don't annihilate them first.
There is, however, one crucial piece of that old American yarn that Bush now has no choice but to downplay -- the piece that says the good guys always win, unconditionally. After years of announcing that victory was at hand, or at least claiming that he had a surefire strategy for victory, he can no longer tell that part of the story because no one will believe it any more. In his latest speech the word "victory" -- which he once used 15 times in a single speech -- was missing in action, replaced by the far less martial, so much less triumphant word "success." The "Korea model," that more than half-century of garrisoning the southern part of that country after a stalemated war, lets us know what "success" is supposed to mean: A government (or a set of regional governments) in Iraq that can provide safety for American troops on their permanent bases and wherever they go throughout the country.
But even that hard-to-imagine outcome would be far too pallid a dénouement to look like victory to an American audience. In fact, that's one big reason Bush's public support has eroded enough to force him to make compromises. He's a war President who can no longer promise to actually win the war.
A Test of Character
A good plot raises the right question, one that keeps people in the theater because they care deeply about the answer. In the battle of narratives, this administration, no matter how crippled, still knows what the right question is.
When it comes to Iraq, in recent months, Democratic scriptwriters have indeed spotlighted a question: Can inept Iraqi politicians succeed in getting their act together, when brave Americans give them the time to do so? It's just not the right question from a story-telling point of view. Few Americans really care about the performance of a faction-torn foreign government on the other side of the world.
The administration's story might seem to turn on a question with little more mobilizing power: Can American troops succeed in reducing violence in Iraq? But behind that question -- and General Petraeus' elaborate charts on the metrics of violence in that country -- Republicans build dramatic tension by raising a very different question, which really does matter to a sizeable part of the American audience: Does our nation have the "character" or the "stomach" -- Dick Cheney's favorite word -- to keep on fighting evil until something that can plausibly be called "success" is conjured out of the dusty air of Iraq?
Bush raised that question in the opening words of his recent address: "In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment." And he offered the answer many want to hear -- even if not, at the moment, from him -- in his closing words: "Support our troops in a fight they can win."
That has, of course, been the basic plot of Bush's Global War on Terror. Since September 11, 2001, he and his speechwriters have been telling a story whose hero is not, in fact, a president, or a general, or any individual, but "America" -- with all the world, by rights, its stage.
In Bush's story, as long as America is strutting across that stage, playing the lead with a commanding tone, fighting evil at every turn, Americans can feel like winners and heroes. All of this is supposed to be not an American ego trip, but a classic test of character.
Only by defeating evil enemies, in Bush's tale, can you prove you have character. It's the old story of victory culture, and millions of Americans still believe in it.
Millions more wish they could. If they are old enough, many remember a time when they did -- before Vietnam. Failure in Vietnam cast into doubt all the old American verities about heroism, character, and national direction. It left many wondering whether the old stories could ever be played out again on the stage of American life -- and feeling remarkably good, after September 11, 2001, when victory in war seemed once again to become the finale of our national drama. The growing feeling since that "Iraq" is Arabic for "Vietnam" has, of course, been devastating to any sense of fated American triumph. Yet millions of doubters must still yearn to believe in an American story that ends with good defeating evil on some planetary frontier.
Because the Iraqis have proven so unwilling to play the role of defeated enemy in the theater of battle -- and the Iraqi situation has grown so complex -- the Bush administration has been left with little choice but to blame all evil on al-Qaeda, in Iraq and elsewhere. As a White House official told a Washington Post reporter, at least Americans "know what that means. The average person doesn't understand why the Sunnis and Shia don't like each other. They don't know where the Kurds live... And al-Qaeda is something they know. They're the enemy of the United States."
In such a script, our protectors are "the troops," the ultimate symbol and proof of America's character. The most powerful weapon of war supporters has long been the question, raised with appropriate self-righteousness: "Don't you support our troops?" The politically correct antiwar answer almost has to be: "Yes. That's why I want to bring them home." As it happens, though, such a response has had little effect because it misses the point.
"Supporting our troops" is not about helping individual soldiers to live better lives or, for that matter, making their lives safer. It's about supporting a morality play in which the lead actor, "our troops," represents all the virtues that so many believe -- or wish they could believe -- America possesses, giving us the privilege (and obligation) of directing all that happens on the world stage.
Bush put on yet another performance of that morality play on September 13th, ending with the almost obligatory tragic message from grieving parents: "We believe this is a war of good and evil and we must win.... even if it cost the life of our own son. Freedom is not free." That sums up the essence of the drama. Coming from people whose child is dead, it's seems like a show stopper. What else can you say?
The Democrats Read from a Thin Script
In response to the President's Petraeus address, the Democrats' answer man, Senator Jack Reed, did not actually have much to say. He did make it clear that, when it comes to war and the military, he's a lot more in touch with reality than the President. "I was privileged to serve in the United States Army for 12 years," Reed said modestly. He might have added that he was a West Point graduate and an officer in the famed 82nd Airborne Division.
But like so many Democrats, including legless former Senator Max Cleland and Vietnam veteran John Kerry, he found himself mysteriously unable to turn his real-life experience into an effective post-9/11 narrative. A powerful drama creates a world of its own, one that can easily feel more real than reality. Even after so many years of disaster and so much repetition, against Bush's rich drama, Reed could still offer only a thin script with feeble characters, little if any plot, and no sense of direction. Mostly he carped at the commander-in-chief of what the Democrats themselves acclaim to be the finest fighting force in the world. So he left his party open to the same criticism thrown at Sixties radicals: "You only know what you're against. You don't know what you're for."
The Democrats' story does embody positive values. It calls on us to act in an old American tradition of pragmatism, where the only question that matters is: "Is it working?" If it's not working, you try something else that might actually get the job done. But Reed never even suggested what that something else might be.
In a battle between stories, it's often not enough to attack the incumbent's ineptitude. As John F. Kennedy, another Democrat with a real-life war record, knew, you also have to tell a satisfying tale about moving onto a new frontier, where you can pass that test of character and become a profile in courage. Heroism makes for a more alluring story than timidity every time.
So, even if the practical side of Americanism screams out, "Leave the theater, now!", there is still a powerful impulse to stay glued to our seats until the bugles sound, the cavalry charges, and our side wins the day.
The Democrats sense that. They sense as well that opposition to the war is spread wide but not necessarily deep; that public opinion might, at least to some extent, still be turned by a well-produced show -- as the marginal poll gains of the President among Republican audiences in the last two months have indicated. The Democrats fear that, if they truly lead the way to the exits, they might turn around one day to find less than half the voters following. That's why so many of them -- and all too many Republicans as well -- are afraid to act on what they know is right.
The Show Must Go On
The great debate about Iraq is not, and never really was, about what we should do in Iraq. No matter how many Iraqis have died or become refugees thanks to the Bush intervention, they remain largely ignored bit players in our central drama, which is, and always was, about what we will make of America. Now, the outcome of that debate is coming more clearly into view and it's not a pretty picture. The compromise the two parties are hammering out on Iraq policy reflects a deeper compromise the public seems to be groping toward on national identity -- between who we are in reality (pragmatic, if sidelined, civilians who know a war is badly lost and want to end it) and who we are in our imaginations (heroic soldiers proving our character in the theater of war).
All theater, all storytelling, rests on the power of illusion and the willing suspension of disbelief. Bush and the Republicans have repeatedly given millions of doubters a chance to suspend their post-Vietnam disbelief in traditional tales of American character; the Democrats have given millions of doubters a chance to suspend their disbelief that the will of the people can make any difference whatsoever. The two parties join together to give the whole nation a chance to believe that a fierce debate still rages about whether or not to end the war. That political show we can expect to go on at least until Election Day 2008.
And we can expect both parties, and the media who keep the show going, to abide by an unspoken agreement that one kind of question will never be asked, because the tension it raises might be unbearable: Is it moral for our troops to occupy another country for years, bomb its cities and villages, and kill untold numbers of people halfway across the planet? If the script ever makes room for that question, we'll be able to watch -- and participate in -- a far more profound debate about the war.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Email: chernus@colorado.edu
© 2007 Ira Chernus
29 Comments so far
Show Allold goat September 23rd, 2007 8:21 am
The literal Hebrew translation of the Commandment "Not to kill" from the Old Testament was for centuries was an abbreviated MIS-translation of the original language.
The Commandment written circa 1000 BC said and meant
"DO NOT COMMIT MURDER".
In the Old Testament era, you could kill animals to eat or protect oneself from the wild. You could kill a man in self defense or as retribution as in "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" EG if someone killed your wife or brother you could seek the murderer out and kill them.
But one thing the Commandment literally proscribed and in the LAW of that time, you could not willfully murder someone with 'mens rea' and 'actus reus'.
I would take issue with the writer that all theater depends on "illusion". Theater is derived from the ancient oral tradition of transmitting information. I think of itinerant bards traveling from village to village or of the transmission of millenial wisdom of the indigenous peoples passed from generation to generation. I would agree that the "right question" is essential.
When current events outstrip our capacity to orient as a people there is a reversion to "myth(s)" in the quotidian. Process and content, cause and effect slip back and forth. A variety of threads in the article suggest new avenues for script writers of TV sitcoms/weeklies. Think of a weekly TV drama/sitcom and imagine the characters not dominated by the individualistic myth paradigm.
"Rugged individualism" rather than constituting an "electorate" represents a prime source pool of the differential essential to the profit margin. The profit margin dynamic is being challenged world wide for its distortions and unsustainablility. The individualist is dominated from the outside, dominant from within.
For example: One's 'god' is not what is claimed or espoused, but what informs every choice. A Christian who rationalizes killing has already departed from Christ's teaching and might be said rather to be a Constantinian (as the emperor Constantine institutionalized the abrogation of the 'commandment' not to kill). Etymological breadth from Hebrew root of the word 'commandment' includes: message, blowing into corners, etc. suggesting a permeation of concept rather than being externally forced.
What comes out of the mouths of TV characters can be changed. Anybody have any ins with TV script writers?
Dr. Zimmerman Robert September 22nd, 2007 10:01 pm
CORRECT....
Part of the answer is revealed in the most astounding polling figure of recent weeks. A New York Times poll asked, "Who do you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq?" In response, only 5% of those polled gave the nod to the Bush administration, just 21% to Congress, but fully 68% — more than two out of three — plunked for "the military."
We can acknowledge from this poll, that we are now a fascist state. It is called in the other Americas: "Junta."
and they all lived happily ever after.
The End.
How long before Toxic George outdoes the British? They have 80,000 troops in Iraq - still there after a hundred years.
kivals September 21st, 2007 2:56 pm
Hey Kivals, I look at it this way. I understand there have been greater genocidal maniacal VILLAINS in an historical sense. Some examples include:
Upwards of 15 million people were systematically "exterminated" (a Nazi term) by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, of which over 9 millions were Slavs and approx 6 Million Jews.
"The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland."
Confiscations of grain and other food by the Stalin's Soviet authorities caused a famine which affected more than 40 million people, especially in the south on the Don and Ku ban areas and in Ukraine, where up to ten million starved to death.
The list is endless, but what differentiates these atrocities and the BUS$HCO REGIME is the GLOBAL nature of the consequences of the quite deliberate and destructively Militaristic Policies against the OIL RICH MIDDLE EAST stirring the enmity of a population of 1.3 Billion Muslims.
Conjunctively, BU$HCO since inception have been systematically undermining the work of global scientific work to reverse global warming and climate change. A GLOBAL WAR AGAINST THE ENVIRONMENT....This will directly affect about a THIRD of the worlds population...Mostly Undeveloped Countries being poverty stricken and hence without the GDP to fund rescue planning to minimize harm on their populations...
PUT SIMPLY we are at a CRITICAL point in Human History where Bu$Hco's wanton disregard for Scientific Evidence and CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE will threaten the survival and maintenance of BIO-DIVERSITY on the Planet. At a CRITICAL point where preventative action could be implemented BU$HCO is busy killing 1 Million innocent civilians in a OIL WAR of his own design and like a Neanderthal planning to repeat the same mistake in IRAN ....
This in my opinion will make Bu$hCo go down in History [or whats left of it] where the "surname Hitler will likely rejoice, as that name will no longer refer to the most DESPICABLE HUMAN BEING who ever lived."
Clearly until we have campaign finance reform & true regulation over media monopoly we will never have a real democracy. Even Dan Rather says something to this effect.
The Democrats have no reason to listen to us. We pay their paychecks, but the big bucks come from the corporations, many of whom benefit greatly from this war by direct involvement or investment.
We have no opposition party. What can we rename the democrats?
Sparring partners for the Republicans?
It's control over resources folks, that's why the republicans want EVERYTHING privatized. So NO PUBLIC CONTROL. No control for us.
"Secretary of State Rice reiterated that the United States does everything it can to avoid such loss of life in contrast to the enemies of the Iraqi people who deliberately target civilians."
Yes we do, by golly. The only problem, we suck at the "avoiding such loss of life" thing...
"Here is the grisly bottom line: more than one million people have been murdered in Iraq since the US invasion, according to the ORB." And another two-three million severely injured.
The good General probably just forgot to mention any of that to the American people. Maybe, if "we" called his bosses to testify we'd get closer to the truth.
"Peace activists who despair of the spineless Democrats should keep in mind that Bush and Cheney have compromised, too. In his most recent speech, just six years and two days after he became our tough-as-nails "war president," the Decider announced that he has decided to do what many Democrats and the peace movement have been demanding — begin getting troops out of Iraq."
Bush isn't getting any troops out of Iraq. The ones he is bringing home before Christmas were due to rotate out in Oct anyway. Bringing more of the surge troops home by next summer is no big deal either. The 21,500 won't even bring the troop levels down to presurge levels. Plus, they either have to be brought back home by next spring/early summer or once again tours will have to be extended, this time beyond 15 months, and/or more reserve units will have to activated. So exactly where is the compromise by Bush?
"Once again, the top-rated show of the season is evidently that all-time favorite, "The Military Saves the Day," a sequel to the smash hit of the past several seasons, "Support Our Troops."No wonder the White House brought its hero and surge commander, General David Petraeus, on stage for the final scene in this act of a seemingly unending drama."
And the poll numbers never moved after General Petraeus testified. There was no bounce.
Sounds a lot like this author is trying to blow smoke up our #ss to me.
Lobo Gris
"The thief cometh not but for to steal,kill and destroy:"
John 10:10 Ooops!, looks like Bush is taking his game plan from the opposing team rather than "The Prince of Peace" the team he claims to be playing on. Gee, I wonder what the "Captain of Salvation" might think about that gross violation of the "Team Play Book"!!
For me, milesofmusic, the Chernus quote which stands out is: "Supporting our troops" is (...) about supporting a morality play in which the lead actor, "our troops," represents all the virtues that so many believe — or wish they could believe — America possesses, giving us the privilege (and obligation) of directing all that happens on the world stage." This thought allows me to feel compassion for the otherwise unreal fellow-drivers on the roads of America with those funny yellow-ribbon bumper stickers.
That was my point. Not too many of us would want a 1984, Orwellian one-world-government. But unfortunately, I really don't believe that we humans are evolved enough to not war over resources and fight for control. Put that together with a world where resources are dwindling due to global warming and over human population..and we got trouble.
As much as I hate war and the suffering that goes with it, the alternative is worse.. 1984
It sucks. But there it is.
my hat is off to this writer.
this is a superb article, rich in narrative, bitterly humorous, well conceived and constructed and, moreover, very insightful as to the pique of this moment we all find ourselves hanging in vis-a-vis iraq and the grand american self illusion/delusion.
this article has helped me to put together a bunch of feelings i have about the us of a and it has enlightened my working through the many darknesses i have found in trying to understand the republic's mindset.
throughout, one after the other like 3 stooges face slaps, comes phrase jewel after phrase jewel; such clever writing. the piece is a wonderful mix of prosaic elegance and hard fact information:
"the debate is hardly about policy any more. It's mainly about the stories we tell about policy — and about "America." Perhaps it always was."
"Who do you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq?" In response, only 5% of those polled gave the nod to the Bush administration, just 21% to Congress, but fully 68% — more than two out of three — plunked for "the military."
"Instead of spreading good tidings about an American mission to liberate the world, the main theme of the President's Petraeus speech was a reprise of another close-to-home classic: "The success of a free Iraq is critical to the security of the United States."
"There is, however, one crucial piece of that old American yarn that Bush now has no choice but to downplay — the piece that says the good guys always win, unconditionally."
"He's a war President who can no longer promise to actually win the war."
Since September 11, 2001, he and his speechwriters have been telling a story whose hero is not, in fact, a president, or a general, or any individual, but "America" — with all the world, by rights, its stage."
"The growing feeling since that "Iraq" is Arabic for "Vietnam" has, of course, been devastating to any sense of fated American triumph."
i could go on but i won't.
great article that really provides an explanation of the conundrum, spun within the enigma, of the problem facing you and me, the dems and reps, and the always moving shoreline of the american fantasy juxtaposed against an icreasingly ugly reality.
well done!
I'm sorry, but isn't today (September 21st) International Peace Day?
http://www.internationaldayofpeace.org/un.htm
We Americans are too caught and complicit in this whole mess to begin to have an objective perspective on how to end it. This is the saddest, and most tragic, part of the story: the tragic flaw in the American character that yearns to be the "good guy" even as our way of life proves to be a holocaust for most of the 97% of people on the earth. Actually, our "national character" is now so stunningly schizophrenic that the "good" 45% is unaware of the evil of the other 55%. I want to agree with many on this board that the situation is hopeless and then Wild Rose chimes in with:
"The only way to get world peace would be a single government that ruled the entire world."
Yes, that may indeed be the future we need and deserve. "Imagine a human face being stomped upon by a muddy jackboot, forever..." Apologies to Orwell.
Wild Rose
A single government that ruled the entire world sounds more like total tyranny - and a recipe for more endless war and repression.
I was kinda hoping more that sanity and some sense of human decency would one day restrain the most powerful military in the world - seems that would contribute to world peace somewhat (and set an example for the rest of the world to follow) - but hey that is just as stupid. It seems it could never happen.
Anybody who embraces the Korean model for the Iraq war is as stupid as a dog that don't know sic em from come ere.
The Korean war is on a ceasefire - it has never ended.
Zsolt, There's no hope for the world to live in peace, anyway. The only way to get world peace would be a single government that ruled the entire world.
How did Saddam survive flying the jet into the WTC? did he parachute out just before impact?
duuuuuuuh!
What is misleading in the conventional wisdom's reading of the NY Times/CBS poll results discussed in Ira Chernus's article is that the question assumes "successfully resolving the war in Iraq" is something that is within the ability of the US government to achieve.
It is not. The same poll even verifies that 62% of Americans believe the invasion and occupation was a mistake, and 53% believe Iraq will never be a stable democracy. So why should so much attention be paid by the media and by beltway political advisors to the breakdown of answers to the Panglossian question "If you had to chose, whom would you say you trust the most [the Bush administration, Congress or the military] with successfully resolving the war in Iraq"?
3% of the respondents to the NY Times/CBS poll actually were savvy enough to hang in there and give this confusing question its right answer: "No one."
Only 5% said "the Bush administration", which says all that needs to be said about Little George's upcoming legacy.
21% said "Congress", down from a much higher public confidence just months earlier before voters learned that the Dems were hopelessly divided on how to force an exit strategy.
68% said "military commanders" because that response group lumps together the red state Neanderthals who define "success" as bombing all them ragheads back to the Stone Age, right along side the blue state voters, the independents and the antiwar base of the Democratic Party who define "success" as getting US troops back home as quickly as possible, with as little loss of life as possible.
I, too, trust commanders in the field to do a better, "more successful" job of withdrawing real troops from a real lost cause than I trust civilians like Steven Hadley or Nancy Pelosi. But that certainly doesn't mean that I'm enthralled (or that 68% of the voting public is mesmerized) by the medals, morals or the unctious mettle of General Petraeus, General Miller, or General William Boykin.
And the most depressing thing about this latest poll went unmentioned in Ira's latest fine offering: one third of those polled still believe Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.
Those hard core folks are the true GOP base for the 2008 elections, and any Democratic strategist who thinks they can somehow finesse away even a sliver of that hopelessly misguided voting bloc by playing tougher-than-thou belongs forever on the outside looking in.
Bill from Saginaw
After almost 5 years of slaughter:
"the most astounding polling figure of recent weeks. A New York Times poll asked, "Who do you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq?" In response, only 5% of those polled gave the nod to the Bush administration, just 21% to Congress, but fully 68% -- more than two out of three -- plunked for "the military."
There is no hope for the USA.
And there is no hope for the world to live in peace.
simonhhh,
If Bush and Cheney continue as they have, and especially if they nuke Iran, people with the surname Hitler will likely rejoice, as that name will no longer refer to the most despicable human being who ever lived.
If Cheney is serious about attacking Iran, about maintaining good relations with the Saudis, and about staying in Iraq for the long term, he must be contemplating backstabbing the Shia and making the Sunnis the main US allies, especially after what has been developing in Anbar province. And that means the situation in Iraq is going to get more and more ugly as the months and years go by.
"Caligula" was a kind compassionate peace loving humanitarian compared to the BU$HCO regime....make no mistake about it, historically they are in a league on their own, setting new benchmarks for degenerate behavior and economic incompetence!
Canada will save you..With our mighty Canadian Loonie, we will buy your little fascist country and convert it to 100% barly production in order to flood with world with our beloved MOLSENS!!
BWAHAHAHAHA!
The permanent government has no intention of leaving Iraq. Ever. Well, at least until the oil runs out. Their only miscalculation was that it would be a cakewalk and we'd already be in Tehran. The Chinese, who have the most to lose, can't retaliate because they're sitting on too much funny money - dollars. The Russians are laughing their heads off. Afghanistan? Been there done that. The Manchurian Candidate in the White House has managed to do more harm to the United States than Herbert Hoover and will be remembered as a depraved, degenerate on the level of Caligula if there still is a history down the line.
Talk about terror !!!
The value of the dollar has gone South.
Now equal to Canadian $. When Bush took over Canadian $ was worth .65
Euro now $1.40 last year 1.26 2002 1.16
Saudi Arabia ready to unpeg US$ -
We are only dithering only long enough to allow rich to get their bucks out of our economy
Recession anyone? Followed by bombing Iran and expanding the Armageddon in the Middle East so the rich can get richer.
For game plan preview and acknowledgement of past successes,
check out Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".
For the free market capitalists controlling the US Government, death, suffering, pestilence, and starvation are guaranteed profit makers. Even if the events causing these need to be helped along - here and abroad.
By the time we realize (enough to make difference) how much life, treasure and moral authority this war is costing us, it will be too late.
Self-stripped of prosperity and posterity, our only global influence will be state-of-the-art push-button massive devastation.