Hi Carl. I have to comment on your comment that [you have] been saying that Bush learned his lesson in Iraq since about a year ago.
In view of his denials, his actions and his refusal to substantially change course in Iraq, I think that you're transferring you own strongly held views onto leadership that you want to believe in. I think this is because, as a staunch Republican, you have a hard time accepting that in an "us and them" political world, the "them" might be less wrong than the "us."
The reality is that the past actions of Bush clearly reveal that Bush will have to be hit on the head until he's bleeding from the ears before he'll accept the truth; the truth that the great American power that swells his ego has some very definite limits. (Of course HE won't be the one literally bleeding, but you get the point.) In the meantime, like a gambler in so deeply he feels he can't afford to quit he'll simply try to find ways to keep going while he waits for something "good" to change the landscape.
He'll hold on for the outside chance of a viable election or a transfusion of courage into the numerous but resolve-deficient Iraqis who silently share his views of what Iraq should be, or for some other way that we can "win." In the interim he'll show no signs of weakness and alienate the world and half of our population while our troops pay a heavy price, our deficit grows and his dream of a foothold in the oil rich region of the Mideast flickers and ultimately dies.
When he does finally leave, (and he will leave because you are totally right in your analysis of why Iraq was, and is, a costly misadventure for America), he and his supporters will suggest that he was undermined by weak-kneed partisan opponents. He'll become a John Wayne kind of "image hero" to the right wingers and the flag-waving brand of patriots, but the ugly truth is that he'll have driven a wedge into our country that will take years or decades to undo, he'll have set the cause of terrorism forward tremendously and he'll have created a more dangerous, less trusting and more divided civilized world.
That's will be a horrible legacy but one that is almost certainly probable. And yet you can still use that good mind of yours to find a reason for voting for him again.
It seems that when logic and emotions conflict emotions will set our course, even for the brightest of us. Ed |
