Clanton's Rant
Compared to the thrill of going to war, getting out of one is a tiresome and humiliating business.
George W. Bush is determined to ensure that the 3000 Americans killed in Iraq did not “die in vain.” He is equally determined to ensure that the 22,000 Americans wounded in Iraq did not “make their sacrifice in vain.”
So he will send more troops.
Deaths demand more deaths; bloodshed cries out for further bloodshed. That’s the latest rationale for the continuation of a failed policy. We must make those buried bodies victorious, those shattered limbs triumphant.
Twenty-five thousand American casualties were required to bring Saddam Hussein to the end of his rope and Iraq to civil war. Perhaps another 1000 American dead and another 5000 American wounded will transform the feuding Iraqi factions into a cohesive democracy, a beacon of freedom, an ally in the war on terror. That is the latest deadly dream of George Bush.
Watch his speech this week. It will include the standard Bush content: outright lies, false optimism, fake fear, and appeals to the Almighty. The president will surely assert that so long as the terrorists are kept busy shooting American troops and Iraqi civilians, we U.S. homebodies are safer, though not yet safe. He will remind his listeners that the world is better without Saddam. He may even find occasion to offer his analysis of the midterm elections: not that Americans were disgruntled with his leadership, but that Americans merely wanted Democrats and Republicans to play nicely together.
But most certainly, he will inveigh against war critics who would prefer the efforts of our troops be in vain. This particular argument is far from a Bush creation. He is but the latest political scoundrel to plant his battle flag in soldiers’ corpses.
For me, what will be most interesting will be not the words, but the delivery. Since the November elections, this president has seemed far less than presidential. Even the press corps, which shed years of docility as polls turned against Bush, seems stricken at the strangely glum, yet familiarly inept chief executive.
Can Bush deliver a powerful presentation at a time when he must at last recognize that he has misled this nation into a truly disastrous war? Viewers are now all too familiar with the devious, darting eyes and the weirdly fixed grin. They know what kind of man he is, and what kind of president he has been.
Bush consoles himself with the long view, the sad belief that history will vindicate him. But citizens who are even half-awake understand that the overall cost of Bush’s Iraq adventure, in lives lost, in dollars wasted, in international respect eroded, has not yet been tallied.
It’s odd to think that George Bush has two years remaining in the White House, since his effective date has already expired. He talks now of cooperation and compromise, but compared with playing the bully, just getting along is no fun. And compared to the thrill of going to war, getting out of one is a tiresome and humiliating business.
So the years ahead look like downers for George Bush, filled with more depressing moments like the Ford funeral, where he had to walk in slow motion just to get Widow Betty down the aisle, even as the news was breaking about dead Jerry’s disloyal mumblings to that slimeball reporter Woodward, and like the State of the Union address, which is coming up way too soon, and at which the Democrats will be acting like they’re in charge, and he, the president, is there on sufferance, and Christ, another hurricane season is coming along, with the constant jokes about “heckuva job, Bushie,” and speaking of Bushie, just how long is the old man going to hang on, and what might Baker and the rest of his bastard buddies say about 43 when 41 is gone, and really, it’s all too much, even for a tough brush-clearing Texan.