January 9, 2007, The Definition of Insanity
Some time ago, I received an e-mail (or was it so long ago that it was a fax?) suggesting that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
Such, of course, is precisely what one gleans from the saga of the President's "big new speech" slated for tomorrow where we will hear his "new and improved Iraq policy". While specifics are undermined by deliberate disinformation from some of the Republican senators that emerged from the White House ("we're not talking about a surge of just 20,000 troops")... that's more or less the discussion, and such a group would be deployed in and around Baghdad, presumably to do battle with the Mahdi Army, whose leader, Moqtada "Baby" Sadr, is a key player in the Iraqi governing coalition in the ersatz government we have set-up in our Green Zone protectorate.
How did Bush react to the ersatz "scepticism" of Republican senators? By demonstrating how much he believes in "the new plan" because Iraqi PM Maliki "is firmly committed" to backing up a "surge" in American troops with Iraqi troops. In short, Noori al-Maliki, one of the few men on Earth whose "trust me" is even more untrustworthy than that George W. Bush himself is telling us... to "trust me". And for this, we are, as a nation, supposed to merrily go along with our President throwing hundreds or thousands of more good lives after bad for his suicidal strategy, for the guy who, just days ago, showed us how well he manages things, by subcontracting the execution of Saddam Hussein to the Mahdi Army!.
The only thing more insane than the Bush "new policy" (i.e., the existing policy, plus thousands more American lives needlessly at risk, along with extending the duration of carnage we are imposing on the Iraqis, of course) would be to believe George W. Bush were constitutionally (small c) capable of anything other than complete and total fuck-ups.
Let's follow his life, at least as we know it: a miserable C-student legacy at Andover and then Yale; couldn't even make the varsity baseball team like his (better endowed... in every way) Dad; after being unable to gain admittance to the University of Texas Law School, getting Dad to get him into Harvard Businss School as "a courtesy"; managing to secure a coveted non-Vietnam place in the Texas Air National Guard, only to mysteriously fail to report for duty right around a time when drug tests were being initiated, only to have Daddy's friends fix the paperwork to avoid what should have been a court-martial and possible imprisonment; a failed "oil bid'ness" venture called Arbusto, which Dad's friends bought out for him at a huge profit; a failed Congressional run, followed by a lengthy period of alcohol and cocaine-fueled vacation; head greeter of a baseball team Dad's friends bought him a piece of, and then bought from him at a humongous profit; Dad's friends managed to get him elected, and reelected, Governor of Texas (in which to be fair, the governor is not even in the top 5 most powerful officials), during which time, education stats were fudged, environmental conditions... suffered, but executions... were solid... indeed, an all-time American record for number-- a veritable death factory, with nary a single pardon or commutation, for any reason; and finally, Daddy's friends and money machine managed to get him elected (the actual voters be damned) President of the United States, where, after inheriting a surplus, he quickly presided over the largest deficits in the history of this or any nation, he has thwarted not just the nation's efforts, but other nation's (and American states' and cities') efforts to combat global warming, presided over miserably inadequate intelligence and security conditions that led to the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history, responded to not by capturing the actual perpetrators, but by attacking an unrelated nation, killing hundreds of thousands of its people, thousands of our own, maiming tens of thousands more, and costing hundreds of billions of dollars, undermining the nation's moral standing and threatening the continued viability of our Bill of Rights with arbitrary detentions, kidnappings and torture, and warrantless eavesdropping...
This is the guy who is asking for one more chance in Iraq, even after the voters said, as if as one, ENOUGH... one more chance to squander thousandds more American lives "based on what he has learned."
What he has learned is how to be an unmitigated fuck up at everything he ever touches. One wonders just what will it take before the rest of us learn that?
Comments
Hiya!
just saw your comment #89 at Michael's....
are you reading Against the Day?
Posted by Seattle Tammy at January 9, 2007 12:27 AM
Not sure if everyone has seen these videos of the US military in Iraq or not, but they are pretty amazing: Hopefully our 'surge' will not include too many of these types...
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2006/12/winning-hearts-and-minds-part-three.html
Posted by MinorRipper at January 9, 2007 11:47 AM
What's up with that Ted Kennedy calling Iraq the next Viet Nam? Do his handlers sober him up for a few days to make these pronouncements? Why the need for this deadweight to pop his head out of the bottle? And don't you think on his death bed that his last words (after "open another fifth") will be: "I just wanted to be loved"?
Posted by Just Wondering at January 9, 2007 9:04 PM
Ah. The old "Ted Kennedy is a drunk" routine. It never gets old...
Mixter
Posted by Mixter at January 10, 2007 9:40 PM