The Speech that Should Be
I’d not mind hearing this SotU speech tonight at all.
An excerpt:
I am, more or less, a lame duck. You’ve had your 100 hours of party time. I know. I won’t get any legislation passed without some major bottom-kissing. Maybe something on illegal aliens. That health insurance thing I’ll be talking about later tonight is pretty much for show. I know it isn’t going anywhere. A proposal to raise middle-class taxes for a healthcare plan you don’t even want? What was I thinking?
None of that really matters. Not now. Those are peacetime issues we’ve been bickering about for a long time, and I don’t expect we’ll resolve them anytime soon.
So what is the best thing I can do tonight? I can tell you the truth. What none of you want to hear. What you’ve been stopping your ears to. The ugly truth.
The State of the Union is a disaster. I did my best, but I made mistakes, and my best wasn’t good enough.
We went to war without building up our army, and now, I am trying to make up for that.
But that is not the disaster.
The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.
There is no way in the world that we’ll hear anything similar to that tonight, though. Barring a surprise announcement about North Korea, I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of happy talk about bipartisanship (a crap word if ever a crap word existed). The President will roll out some new health care system whose most certain point is that it will fire up a new government bureaucracy and drop it on us with all the eager approval-seeking of a cat dropping the carcass of a mouse at our feet: There! I hunted you something! Wasn’t that suitably catlike? Can we now ignore that I mostly lay on your couch, eat your food, and occasional hock up a hairball in the middle of the living room floor?. There’ll be more vague hand-waving about the need to find alternatives to fossil-fuels but you’ll never hear the words nuclear power joined up with the words build the plants right stinking now and you can kiss much of the need for Saudi oil buh-bye in a decade.
And the war on terror will receive yet another bland treatment. We’ll get no real urgency, because, quite honestly, the President has used up all his “Look, There’s a Bad Wolf!” cards without replenishing the deck with some “Look, Here are a few dozen Dead Bad Wolves!” speeches. Right now, the only dead wolves we’re seeing are the wolves we’re sending in to hunt down the bad wolves. Oh, we’re seeing our own dead wolves in spades. We can’t get away from them. But no one seems to know just how many of the bad wolves we’ve killed. No one seems to care. They’re too busy updating the “Faces of Our Fallen” web page or updating the ticker on the “How Many Civilians has George Bush Killed?” tote board to tell us how many of the enemy are dead or fleeing.
Not even our President can seem to get that information out to us, not even in a SotU speech.
No related posts.
Category: Fighting the Islamists, President George Bush
Sure! Blame the disaster in Iraq — and the impending one in Afghanistan — on the American people. It is indeed inconceivable that his Imperial Highness, George Bush, and his courtiers — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the Neo-cons — could have made any mistakes along the way to Iraq.
To this humble servant, it seems that none of the entities named above has been right about anything over the past four years. But who am I to criticize? I am just a serf like the majority of the American people who disapprove of His Imperial Highness's decisions. If I were His Imperial Highness, I would immediately put to death the 68% of unwashed, ignorant, peasants, who dare contradict him, convince the undecided with a little bit of torture, and reward the supporters with high posts in His Imperial Highness' government.
"Yes, the disaster is the Congress. And the American people. And the Iraq people who want us to leave. And the Iraqi government. And the rest of the world which wants us to leave. So you see if it wasn't for the American people, Congress, the rest of the world, and the Iraqis, I could've fixed this thing. But it's me vs. the world and you're wrong and it's so clear -despite my performance and past record- that I'm right. And that is the true tragedy. If I only I'd been given some time and a majority in Congress, a blank check for the military, if only there were a time when I was allowed to do whatever I wanted this could've been avoided. But the entrenched Democratic majority which has been in power since I took office has limited me in every way. If only the Republicans were in charge, things would be better. But I suppose we'll never see that day."
Sorry ass american people and sorry ass Iraqis. They
are disgusting cowards.
jimmie, i don;t really agree with your conclusion about what the real tragedy is, but i pretty much agree with everything else. the reason we will never hear that speech is that it is highly unlikely that the president actually thinks, or is even aware of, the sentiment you expressed. if he were, we would have a very different president, and at least some of the errors enumerated on your list probably wouldn;t be there. but here we are. at least we can agree that the SOTU is a disaster. doubtlessly we will disagree on what to do, but at least we can agree that something must be done. something substantive.
I'm sure this is what Bush is thinking, and I would love to hear him say it. We know he did his best, and his best was moronic, self-servicing, suicidal meglomania. He took the war on terror out of Afghanistan and into the wrong country on lies, cost our nation our defenses on a pitiful dictatorship that posed no threat and now leaves us open to real enemies — as well as a NEW threat of terrorism from the very country that was under control before he blew it. Of course he would blame us. He has never had to to pay for his mistakes. But his family name and his money won't shift the blame of history. Yes, America is not willing to fight for NO GOOD REASON. Our troops give their lives, we owe them a good fight — not a vainity expedition to secure oil.
Hey retard,
I see that you have not come around to post my comment yet. Either that, or you have decided to purge it.
You are impugning the integrity, the patriotism, and you are insulting the intelligence of a majority of Americans. take the criticism like a man. Or don't you have any balls like the rest of the right-wing crackpots?
Yeah, we'd never hear anything like this from W.
He just doesn't seem like the type of guy who would blame HIS failures on others. (sarcasm)
Okay, boys and girls, apparently you didn't see the rules of the road.
1) Be generally respectful. Especially to me. Devil's Advocate, that's your warning.
2) I do not entertain the fictions of "no blood for oil" or "Bush lied" here. They are nonsense disproven a thousand times over. Marc, that's your warning.
3) Read the original link before you comment, so you'll know what you're talking about. Aurin and Robert, that's your warning.
Which meaves mangy. Thank you for leaving a comment that's not only respectful but informed.
It's true we will disagree about what must be done, but we have to choose a way – either yours or mine. I happen to believe, based on a few centuries of history, that the only way to beat an enemy is to fight the enemy until they can't take being beaten anymore. That is what we did in 1991 with Saddam Hussein and had we not allowed him to continuously violate the cease-fire for a whole decade and cravenly leave a revolutionary uprising to be slaughtered, I highly doubt we'd be here today.
But we are and we have a war to fight. Iraq is one battlefield we need to win in decisively. The stakes are a lot bigger than whose political aprty gets to fill up on pork money for the next few years. It's time we got serious about what sort of world we want to live in, given the sort of world that actually exists.
ah, jimmie. i hate to go back to this one, but what do you mean by win? the reason i ask is because i often fear that most people who support the war effort define winning in terms that cannot be won by the military. if winning is a srtable iraqi country with a functioning, pro-western democracy, i think it is going to be nearly impossible to achieve that with an american military occupation. what is my solution? i am not sure yet- leaving iraq in a way that creates the least amount of bloodshed for the USA and for Iraq. but leaving is something i am afraid we must do. this does not mean i think we leave tomorrow, but it does mean that the sooner, the better. more americans with guns occupying iraq is not going to win the hearts and minds of iraqis- and, unfortunately, this is now a wart of hearts and minds, a war that the iraqis must wion for themselves. no amount of american soldiers can make iraqis want tsoemthing they don;t want or feel is being forced on them. i would also say that i distinguish the general war on terrro form the war in iraq, as i don;t think they are the same, because most of the people attacking americans are not necessarily terrorists in the 9/11 sense.
The president shouldhave a victory selebration tonight, as were wining in Iraq and were going towin in Iran! The congress should give him a standing ovation as hes brought back respect for america and were feered throughout the world. A couple bilion more is not to much to ask when it comes to cleening up the last pokets of resistense. I say kill all terorests wherever they hide! This president will go down in histurry as one ofthe gratest that we ever have. Lets get back to america wining! Suport are president and vise president, suport the war, and lets getrid of all cut and runers! Now!
I happen to believe, based on a few centuries of history, that the only way to beat an enemy is to fight the enemy until they can’t take being beaten anymore.
Who is the enemy, Armchair General, Sir?
Not "Terrorists" because, as we all know, yes they are bad, bad, bad. But, say, you're on patrol and you see a guy — friend or foe? Is he a decoy? Is he a threat? Does he have a bomb? A gun? Guess right, and your patrol keeps moving. Guess wrong and another Iraqi civilian is martyred for a cause by an occupying force. Which, of course, makes more enemies. Makes you wonder if you've ever read any history (see, Revolutionary War, Vietnam, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan for counterexamples of heavy-handed military operations that have backfired against large, well-armed, occupying forces — among countless non WWII examples.)
So what's your solution big guy? Kill 'em all? I'm quite sure the average Iraqi has seen more war in his life than you would ever conceive of — so what then? Bomb them INTO the Bronze Age?
Your worldview is either shallow and dangerously ignorant or simple-mindedly deranged. Your cavalier analysis is devoid of cost, a sense of the 'enemy' or even the barest understanding of the fight.
Do you fight a counterinsurency? Or a long war against 'terrorists'? Is These aren't the same thing, Armchair General, sir. Your prescription, based on "history", is exactly as wrong as the British's against the colonies and ours against the Vietnamese.
Of course, you might support taking the blinkers off and taking the fight to every Arab. In which case, congratulations! You're every bit the genocidal lunatic so many rightwingers think radical muslisms are.
But you can't go wrong blaming the stupid American people! Christ, you guys are priceless.
Ooh! I am so scared! I have been "warned" by Mr. Sundries Shack! All of you, other people, who dare disagree with Mr. Sundries Shack and have been "warned", should be suitably shaking in your pants. If you don 't belong to the 28% who support His Imperial Highness, you'll be punished! If you dare contradict Mr. Sundries Shack's infinite wisdom, or challenge the fact that he is the sole provider of The Truth, you will be zapped off the Internet!
(The rules are simple. No name-calling. Be respectful, even though you may vehemently disagree. If you can do that, you can post. If not, you can't. Simple. – Ed)
It seems to be almost unknown, but during the planning stage for the invasion of Iraq, SecDef Rumsfeld threatened to fire anyone who even mentioned planning for phase 4 or the occupation phase of the invasion.
Don't believe me, take a look at the link below.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individ…
"The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose."
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War ~400 BCE
"Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all!"
Rumsfeld would not allow his Generals to make the necessary calculations, it is by attention to this point that we can see his army was likely to be defeated.
mangy – My metrics for winning militarily are pretty simple: kill as many terrorists and outside soldiers as possible and give them no reason to hope that they can operate inside Iraq at all.
Thus far, we have been doing the first part better than any army ever has in the history of warfare. When we engage the terrorists or Iranian-backed killers, we beat them handily. We kill dozens to our one.
The reason to hope part is where your "hearts and minds" come in. The first thing we have to do is give the entire nation some semblance of security. The only way we can do that is to be as brutal toward the enemy as possible. The second thing we have to do is to keep our word. When we say that we are going to crush the militias, that's exactly what we need to do. When there is a warrant on someone like Moqtada al-Sadr, he should be in prison and not cozying up to the Prime Minister. We can only be judged by our actions and, thus far, we have given Iraqis a horribly mixed message.
I, too, want our troops out of a shooting war in Iraq. I will note, though, that we have never had a problem leaving a sizeable number of troops in places we have fought wars before: Germany, Japan, and South Korea come immediately to mind. I also note that very few on the left seem to remember that we still have combat troops in Kosovo, though we were solemnly promised by our last President that they would be out in very short order.
What we need to have now is patience. It takes time to build a competent police force and military. It takes time for people who have never known democracy to get the hang of it. UNtil those two things are done, our leaving Iraq will create an immense vacuum and I guarantee you that there are some very evil people who are very eagerly waiting for that to happen.
What I say is this: be patient and don't lose heart. I know that's a tough thing when every time you turn on a television, you have to hear about soldiers being killed by a car bomb. Remember, though, that those soldiers who face death every day want us to keep our resolve also. That is their overwhelming message. Let's not forget that the war we are in won't be won in a year or two, or perhaps even ten. It could go on a while as the battlefields shift from small to large and back again. We will have to be clever and resolute and tenacious. But we've been those things before. Surely, we can manage it one more time, can't we?
my problem with your analysis is that I am not at all confident we know who is who in Iraq, and if we follow your course, it would seem we will end up simply taking sides in someone else's civil war pretty soon. who are the terorrists? anyone who fires on american soldiers in Iraq? I don;t believe that, and I think there is very little reason to beleive this is true. what i mean by that is terrorists of the sort who are involved in the global jihad agaonst the west, for lack of a more accurate description.
it is simply not ture that everyone we are against in Iraq is a terrorsit. is it that everyone against maliki is a terorrist? i don;t think so. so again, we are fighting either (a) someone else's civil war (or we will have to soon); or (b) we are essentially involved in a colonial engagement, yet we naively and solipsistically view this as "spreading democracy."
i am not at all convinced that by staying for years and years we will be giving the iraqis somewthing they think they want. democracy does not come from the barrel of a gun; it must come from the will of the people who want to have a democracy. i agree with you about the security aspect, but i am afraid it is far, far too late for that. if we had established security form the get-go, it might be a different story. full disclosure: i was agains this whole bad idea from the get go, and think that most of the problems we gace are because this was an extremely ill advised move in the fiorst place, but it is too late to argue this point now.
bottom line- we have the problems we have, and we have to figure out some soultion. the problem with staying the course idefienitley is that it seems unimaginable that after a certain amount of time with a lack of results and security, assuming this has already not happened, the iraqis will simply resewnt us and see us as the problem- a foreign occupying force int the middle of muslim lands and the global oil center. you may not agree with this assessment, but what you or i may think the USA is doing in iraq is irrelevant if the iraqis do not also think it, or think something completely different.
I agree – be pateint! The stratejy that the president has devized is working, just give it a chance. No time to get scaredy cat now. We all ready kill all the enemy, just cleening up a bit on a few stupid terorests. Lets back are president 110%.
But we are and we have a war to fight. Iraq is one battlefield we need to win in decisively. The stakes are a lot bigger than whose political aprty gets to fill up on pork money for the next few years. It’s time we got serious about what sort of world we want to live in, given the sort of world that actually exists.
Comment by Jimmie
I would agree with this statement if it was prefaced with: Mr Bush started an ill-advised and unplanned invasion of a sovereign nation. The vanity war did not go well and because of this…(now you begin your comment). That structure would have been best. We have a debacle created by the Bush administration and any discussion of the debacle should give 'credit' to the person who unleashed it. That would be fair, no?
Don't you people understand?! We're fighting the WAR ON TERROR! What does it matter that Iraq was the wrong country to be messing with at the wrong time and we did it in so many wrong ways that it's an unfixable mess? What does it matter that when bin Laden and Zawahiri were planing 9/11, they wrote e-mails to each other fantasizing that the US might be stupid enough to invade Iraq if Al Qaeda could pull off a big enough terrorist plot. Stop grumbling sissy Americans! Onward into our glory, under our Great Leader!
tom – Remembering of course that said nation spent a decade violating every aspect of a cease-fire agreement, of course, right?
mangy – Now don't bring the colonialism thing into it because we have not acted like a colonial power at all.
You're right. We need results. Much of the problem we have right now is because we were not quite brutal enough. We, in fact, did not act at all like a colonial power. We allowed people like al-Sadr to move in and out of Iran and build himself a private army. We did not make it crystal clear that we will not tolerate anyone shooting at our soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or police officers, for any reason. We tried to be the nice guys and tread lightly everywhere we went.
That doesn't mean we can't change our strategy. We need to be more brutal with anyone who points a gun at us or the Iraqi security forces. We need to send the message that being on our side is the only place to be. Any other side means quick and violent death at the hands of the finest military in history.
And we need to breed that sort of pride in the Iraqis as well. As I said, that will take time. You just can't grow experienced military or police NCOs. The only thing that gets that is time and experience. For that, we will simply have to be patient.
But this can work, if we are determined that it will. We managed to destroy two military behemoths in Germany and Japan, then rebuild them into peaceful, democratic, and thriving countries. We can sure as heck do the same with Iraq.
Or, we can bug out like we did in Vietnam, convinced that, even though our military didn't know a single defeat and we had broken the backs of the Viet Cong, we would never "win". That mistake cost the lives of 3 million Vietnamese and Cambodians.
That, really, is the choice.
"Bush lied". Never been disproven.
He said Saddam wouldn't let the WMD inspectors in. Wrong (a.k.a a lie).
Unless you're saying Bush isn't smart enough to know the difference between right and wrong, therefore its not a lie. Is that the arguement?
jimmie-
I think your brutality solution would backfire. how many mistakes on the part of u.s. service members would it take for Iraqis to really resent us and not trust us? probably only one well publicized incident.
the germany and japan analogies are not good at all for a lot of reasons, the main one being that we were fighting against actual armies which we could crush with raw power, and we had very little concern for human, civilian casualties, as underscored by the fact that we used two atomic bombs in Japan. we then actually occupied japan. presumably, we are not trying to do either of those things in Iraq. also, the differences between the nations of germany and japan at the time of world war II, and modern Iraq are so disparate as to make meaningless any real comparison in terms of the efficacy of our rebuilding efforts (sectarianism being the primary one, and that germany and japan thought of themselves as nations at the time of WWII, whereas Iraq was mainly a couintry held together by a strong man- very different cultures). One size does not fit all.
I do not want to get into a discussion of viet nam, as that will get very off topic. however, my main point will be that you continue to propose a military solution for a non-military problem. you seem to be saying that we need to more brutal against myriad enemies, many of which we don;t know whose side they are on (which is made more difficult due to the fact there do not seem to be clearly defined sides, and there appear to be more than two), and that while we are brutalizing the iraqis, other iraqis who are working with us, will then be trusted as the authorities. I just don;t see this working in reality.
i don;t think your view is stupid, or anything like that, and i believe that people with your view point actually do want what's best for the iraqis. however, a strategy of exorcising our personal demons over viet nam by "staying the course" is not the solution which i find viable or realisitic. it is a military solution, to a non-military problem. there needs to be a military aspect, but the longer we stay, the more we will be resented. again, that doesn't mean pull out tomorrow, but it also doesn;t mean stay indefintiely or "as long as it takes." if we are still there, iraqis will not be in charge. i realize this is kind of a catch-22, but one day we are going to leaVE, AND THEN THE CHIPS ARE GOING TO FALL WHERE THEY MAY. THE ONLY REAL QUESTION IS WHEN DO WE DO THIS, AND I AM PRETTY CERTAIN IT IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A GAMBLE, AS I DON;T SEE THE us BEING SEEN AS A FORCE FOR GOOD IN THE me FOR A long, long TIME. (sorry caps lock on by mistake).
p.s. i was not calling us colonizers, but meaning we run the risk of being perceived as coloniozers by people in iraq. whether or not that is the case, if that becomes the perception by iraqis, it may as well be true as far as our goals are concerned, and the willingness of iraqis to work with us.
"There! I hunted you something! Wasn’t that suitably catlike? Can we now ignore that I mostly lay on your couch, eat your food, and occasional hock up a hairball in the middle of the living room floor?."
I think you're being way to hard on your cat. I place a high value on my mouser. He keeps the vermin out of my house and the moles out of my garden. Maybe the whitehouse needs a good mouser.
Sir, please. Any attempt at blaming the invasion on saddam in disingenous and wrong. I thought we were there for Osama, or WMD, or oil, or oh nevermind, too many changing reasons given by the administration. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, reveals so many falsehoods with regard to Iraq by this administration, it is nearly impossible to wade through the muck of lies. I know it sounds as though I am being snarky, but really I am not. I don't disagree with your idea that we are in Iraq now and lets win and get it done. I agree with you about that. It simply creates more historical perspective to 'frame' the real reasons we are in Iraq. It is important that everybody (left, center, right) discuss in an open and realistic way the true nature of our challenge.
Jimmie, i've been reading yor responces, and I've got to say it looks like your picking your position and then going after evidence. I was in the first gulf was. As a staff sargent of marines I opined at an open staff call that we would have to occupy Iraq for 30 years justb like Germany and finance it with oil money. I was roundly excoriated for the idea. One Lt. Colonel said" Staff Sargent, we are not bandits! We are Marines. We do not steal from those we conquor." Imagine my suprise when Cheney suggested in January 03 that Iraqi oil money would pay for both the invasion and the reconstruction.
I was equally confused by why, with nothing between US tanks and Baghdad, Bush 41 decided to pull the plug. I was still thrilled to have won. You could have seen me on CNN that night leading a standing ovation when the President declared victory.
I understand now that Bush 41 was right not to invade or occupy Iraq. Nobody ever wins an insurgency. Ever. That's why we could win every standup fight in Vietnam and still eventually lose. And you're wrong about that, too. We never broke the back of the Viet Cong. They were in Siagon before we were out of it. Really they were in Siagon the whole time.
And Everybody was wrong about the domino theory, too. Vietnam fell to the communists. 20 years later the Soviet Union, not the United States fell and Viet Nam became a major manufacturing center for textiles and Running shoes. Becasue Viet Nam didn't fall to "the communists", it fell to it's own people. It's likely that the same will happen after we leave Iraq. The current histerical nonsense about the war coming over here if we leave is just as wrong as the domino theory. There will or will not be another major terrorist attack on US soil irrespective of what we do in Iraq. All that war is doing is keeping us from expending resources to prepare for or prevent it.
Your comparison to WWII isn't very accurate, either. Both the Japanese and the Germans had been draged into one military adventure after another by their leaders for a whole generation. It had, in both cases lead to natonal ruin and wide spread starvation by the end of the war. Iraq, even under the sanctions imposed for all of the 1990s, was more prosperous and it's people were more secure than today. In Germany and Japan in the 40s we made things better for the common people. In Iraq we've only made things worse. That's how you build an insurgency.
Maybe, if Bush 43 had asked for and congress had given him a draft and a large enough Army and Marine Corps to field the half million men for the 2-3 years that it was going to take back in 2003 then we could have "won". It's too late to even talk about that kind of force now. It takes over a year to recriut, train and field a new division. We need about 12. And from the moment the first Soldier crossed the line we had about 6 months to restore order before we were fighting the Iraqi people for their own country. After that, we were, and are now, in a no win situation.
(You were warned. Your comment is gone. Another infraction and you go into the spam box – Ed.)
cut 'n' run webb is gonna respond to dear leader's speech. what does he know about war? where was that pansy when bush was protecting the homeland from oklahoma?
By this point in the timeline, the US and the Allies had already won WWII, a war that was forced on us and for which we were unprepared militarily. Much of the Pacific Fleet was destroyed at Pearl Harbor on the first day of US involvement in WWII. On December 8, 1941, the day after Japanese forces attacked the American military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress and asked for a Declaration of War with Japan. The Senate and House of Representatives approved the war declaration unanimously with the exception of one vote – Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin became the first member of Congress to vote “no” on both the declaration of war on Germany during World War I and the declaration of war on Japan in 1941 – and FDR signed the resolution that day. The American people and American industry were mobilized and a truly shared sacrifice was demanded of all. Taxes were raised and war bonds were sold to adequately finance the war effort. More than sixteen million US troops were inducted, trained, deployed and fought during WWII.
In contrast, the war in Iraq was a war of choice for which we had plenty of time to prepare. Rather than being called to a common sacrifice, the American public was told to “go shopping”. Taxes were not raised and money was borrowed from Japan, China and other foreign powers to finance the war. The American people had and have no emotional investment in this war and the only ones doing any sacrificing are our brave servicemen and women and their families and friends.
A nation or a people are drawn together by common sacrifices. When everyone is seen to be sacrificing it makes the individual more likely to accept those sacrifices. GW Bush has never called on the American people to sacrifice in any way, that is why most of us are apathetic and disconnected from the sacrifices our military is suffering in our name.