bush gets a tongue lashing
As one of the Iraq war's staunchest supporters, this diatribe by Tacitus against George W. Bush and his handling of the occupation does come as a little surprise, though there had been a build up. Fool, fool, fool he repeats.

One wonders in stupefaction at the magnitude of this folly. Trite phrases spring to mind: in particular, "It is worse than a crime -- it is a mistake." In this case, the mistake is the crime, and it is terrible indeed. It is hardly too much to call it dereliction of duty: with the United States in a global war of extermination not of its choosing against a jihadist foe, the one man ultimately responsible for protecting our nation from that foe ordered our forces to stand down when the enemy was trapped and doomed. Now they live. Now they go free. Now they tell their tales, share their lessons, regroup and re-arm. And why? Because George W. Bush feared Arab public opinion? Because George W. Bush, incredibly, caved to pressure from the United Nations? Because George W. Bush didn't have the backbone to finish the job?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Fool. The region is ablaze with terrorist activity, and you just gave them new heroes, new mentors, and a new victory. You weak fool. Hundreds of our countrymen dead in a just fight against Ba'athist tyranny, and you allow that general in that uniform to stride into Fallujah as ruler with your imprimatur. You self-deluding fool. Iraqis see us as defeated, because you forgot the crux of the problem. You damned fool. You legitimized another Islamist party, set Islamist radicals free, gave the Sunni revanchists heart, and doomed Iraq as a unitary state. You hypocritical fool. Like a good liberal, your solution to a problem was -- the tragic irony! -- to create another government agency to paper it over. You ignorant fool. They have found the price we are unwilling to pay for victory, and now they will demand it every time. You callow fool. You spilled Marine blood for nothing. You feckless fool. It may take a decade or more, but I can guarantee you that your lack of spine will pay off in American blood spilled at jihadi hands. In Iraq, it has already begun. But it won't stay in Iraq. It's coming here, to these shores. It's coming back, because the only thing keeping it away was vigor and resolution greater than theirs. That's gone. That's gone, you fool.

There is a price to winning this war. Every time we have failed to exert control, the price went up. When we failed to stop the looting, the price went up. When we failed to quell Fallujah early, the price went up. When we failed to stand up to Sistani, the price went up. When we failed to stand up to Sadr, the price went up. When we lost control of the highways, the price went up. When we failed to enter Najaf, the price went up. Now we have failed to quell Fallujah a second time -- and I fear the price has thus gone up immensely, massively, tremendously. It is as if the lessons of history have taught us nothing. If we lose this war -- and we must now steel ourselves for this very real possibility -- do not forget, never forget, that we chose to lose. There was never anything inevitable about this: we were not forced, but by the President's own lack of judgment and backbone, to stand down before the fanatics, murderers, and tribesmen of Mesopotamia.

One thing I don't agree with in this analysis is the assertion that GWB is fearsome of Arab public opinion or that he caved to pressure from the United Nations, that is an incredibly silly thing to say considering this is the man who defied world opinion in his single minded purpose of taking Iraq. The real reason for the mess in Iraq is that GWB in not a true statesman, he's not a nation builder, he may stay the course but he lacks the foresight that is the mark of a great leader, he is a demagogue, an inarticulate man whose obvious incompetence still seems to be lost on a large proportion of the people of America. And he seems to be heading a group of ideologues who are more interested in enforcing an agenda, an idea, which is not only flawed in reasoning, but ultimately, destructive. Instead of being a safer place, instead of rooting out terrorism, we've seen Iraq being metamorphosed into the fountainhead of terrorist activity, the results of which are getting horrifyingly obvious in every part of the world with every passing day, with every bomb attack that strikes at the heart of everyday life with chilling destructiveness. This country of great thinkers, architects, engineers and economists, doctors and Nobel prize winners, Fortune 500 companies and their CEOs, the world's most technologically advanced country, the representative of all that's good in the West, the beacon of prosperity, now seems stranded, stupefyingly, in a hopeless leadership void. Democracy stands hijacked by ideology. Flawed ideology that is.
posted by ubaid - Sunday, May 02, 2004 at 2:58 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously