They’re going to rename the Iraq War. Defense Secretary Gates insists this sends a “strong message” about what the war is all about. (I wish we’d known what it was all about back in 2003, don’t you?) Instead of calling it “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (did you remember it was ever called that? I did not.), we’re going to call it “Operation New Dawn”.
This will make everything all better again? Is this like renaming the “Garbage Man” and calling him a “Sanitary Engineer”? Or is it like what the legislature did in Michigan? They felt it was unfair for kids to graduate from four year state colleges in Michigan and have to compete with “university” graduates from places like the University of Michigan or Harvard.
They renamed every government supported educational institution in the state a “university” by legislative fiat. Who cares if it gives a graduate degree or not? Who cares if it has various schools representing different disciplines? By law it’s a university.
See the awesome power in something so simple as a name change? By merely rearranging the name, you can make Podunk College the full equivalent of Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Podunk University has a truly powerful ring to it, hasn’t it?
Ask any garbage man how much richer his life is now that he is a Sanitary Engineer. Merde’. That’s what he hauled before; that’s what he’s still hauling today. Our invasion of Iraq was a masterpiece of confusion under the old name; it remains as much so today.
Name it what you will, but a rose is a rose is a rose—and a skunk cabbage is a skunk cabbage is a skunk cabbage. Legislate all you wish, you don’t change the smell or the behavior of anything. I really don’t know what Gates or anyone else was thinking.
All I CAN conclude is that candor has not replaced idiocy, hypocrisy, self delusion or fantasy in this administration. Bush or Obama, the beat goes on. Whether the administration considers a New Dawn to be an upgrade from Iraqi Freedom or a downgrade doesn’t matter a fig.
The new mission doesn’t matter. We didn’t know what we were getting into originally and we go right on limping because of all the times we shot ourselves in the foot. We didn’t send in enough troops to secure the place—or Saddam’s arsenals, and those munitions are blowing people up today. Yes, there are still nasty explosions in Iraq.
We were promised—by an administration that seemed to have no idea what a little ordinance can do to an oil field or a pipeline—that the war would pay for itself out of Iraqi oil revenues. By saying so out loud, Bush convinced the entire Muslim world we were merely after Iraq’s oil.
Iraqi militants learned fast that oil fields/pipelines are the easiest things in the world to blow up (we could have figured that out by reading the official postwar study of the affects of strategic bombing during World War II). As a result, we got zip.
And now the Chinese and the French are moving into those oil fields and can be expected to clean up big time. Do you suppose they see it as a “New Dawn”? I would imagine. We spent our blood and money and won’t be getting a dime or a drop back.
For us that’s scarcely a new dawn, just a slightly darker night. We demand that Tiger Woods call a philanderer a philanderer, no euphemisms, please. But we try to make a whole war go away by just coining a new name for it.
Was that another “boom” I heard coming from Iraq? It must have been the new dawn coming up like thunder. The new name certainly sends a strong message—that we haven’t stopped fooling ourselves yet.
Showing posts with label Bush Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush Administration. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Obama--Was Sarah Palin Right?
You know what Barak Obama needs most? A Dick Cheney. Even I don’t believe I said that. I was no fan of Vice President Cheney for the last eight years; I’m not really a fan now. But he’s exactly what Obama needs to be a successful president.
George W. Bush may have shown a paucity of intellect from time to time, but he had the wit to get out of Cheney’s way at crucial moments and let the old master get things done. (If Obama had a Cheney, I’m not sure he’d know to do that, but he should.) There was a reason why papa—George W.H. Bush—recommended Cheney in the first place.
GWH Bush, the placator, the diplomat, understood something about the presidency—that Obama does not. You can play the presidency in one of two ways to be successful. Be charming and stubbornly determined (think FDR or Reagan) or nasty and determined (think L.B.J.)
Johnson got more legislation through in four years than just about any other president I can think of. He didn’t do it by looking for consensus or by letting the House and Senate do their own things. He’d threaten a recalcitrant Congressman with anything from no goodies for his district—ever—to public exposure of all his peccadilloes (nice to have J. Edgar Hoover as a buddy).
Johnson could be brutally convincing—he got his votes and his laws, from both sides of the aisle. There’s not a hint of this in Obama’s measured, cool, law school brief style. Not passion, no fire, no fight. You can’t even imagine it.
Even the charming presidents had ways and means of turning on the heat. Somebody, somewhere knew how to combine Reagan and Roosevelt’s charm with the ability to break political bones and spill political guts and blood when needed. Or there’d be no New Deal and no such thing as Reaganomics.
Sarah Palin’s speech writer said something about Obama that has turned out to be terribly true. He has all the smoothness and deferential manner required of a good community organizer—where you have to try to get people to do things with very little carrot and absolutely no stick. But you, yourself, don’t actually ever do anything.
(Obama carried that tactic into his role as a senator. Senators don’t really DO anything except pass legislation—and I know of no major legislation that carries Obama’s signature, or even a couple of his finger-prints.)
As Palin’s speechwriter had her point out, “I’ve been a governor; we have to DO things.” It got a big, appreciative laugh at the Convention, but it has proven to be dreadfully right on. You can imagine Palin deciding she wants something and going out to twist a few arms out of their sockets until she got it. Can you see Obama doing that? He certainly hasn’t yet.
Obama begins to remind us of Warren G. Harding—the man who LOOKED presidential and, for that reason and only that reason, was nominated and elected in 1920. Harding’s own dad once said to him, “Warren, it’s a good thing you’re not a girl. You’d be pregnant all the time.”
If you can’t twist arms, DO things and make other people do things they might rather prefer not to—you’re not going to walk out of the Oval Office labeled a success. You may not even get invited back into it for a second term.
As a Republican, I probably should be happy that Obama is shaping up to be a second Harding; as an American I’m nervous about it. If you have a man who knows how to get what he wants, he may get it right some of the time.
If he doesn’t know how to get what he wants at all—if he isn’t even clear about wanting anything—you’re likely to wind up going nowhere. That’s wrong all the time.
George W. Bush may have shown a paucity of intellect from time to time, but he had the wit to get out of Cheney’s way at crucial moments and let the old master get things done. (If Obama had a Cheney, I’m not sure he’d know to do that, but he should.) There was a reason why papa—George W.H. Bush—recommended Cheney in the first place.
GWH Bush, the placator, the diplomat, understood something about the presidency—that Obama does not. You can play the presidency in one of two ways to be successful. Be charming and stubbornly determined (think FDR or Reagan) or nasty and determined (think L.B.J.)
Johnson got more legislation through in four years than just about any other president I can think of. He didn’t do it by looking for consensus or by letting the House and Senate do their own things. He’d threaten a recalcitrant Congressman with anything from no goodies for his district—ever—to public exposure of all his peccadilloes (nice to have J. Edgar Hoover as a buddy).
Johnson could be brutally convincing—he got his votes and his laws, from both sides of the aisle. There’s not a hint of this in Obama’s measured, cool, law school brief style. Not passion, no fire, no fight. You can’t even imagine it.
Even the charming presidents had ways and means of turning on the heat. Somebody, somewhere knew how to combine Reagan and Roosevelt’s charm with the ability to break political bones and spill political guts and blood when needed. Or there’d be no New Deal and no such thing as Reaganomics.
Sarah Palin’s speech writer said something about Obama that has turned out to be terribly true. He has all the smoothness and deferential manner required of a good community organizer—where you have to try to get people to do things with very little carrot and absolutely no stick. But you, yourself, don’t actually ever do anything.
(Obama carried that tactic into his role as a senator. Senators don’t really DO anything except pass legislation—and I know of no major legislation that carries Obama’s signature, or even a couple of his finger-prints.)
As Palin’s speechwriter had her point out, “I’ve been a governor; we have to DO things.” It got a big, appreciative laugh at the Convention, but it has proven to be dreadfully right on. You can imagine Palin deciding she wants something and going out to twist a few arms out of their sockets until she got it. Can you see Obama doing that? He certainly hasn’t yet.
Obama begins to remind us of Warren G. Harding—the man who LOOKED presidential and, for that reason and only that reason, was nominated and elected in 1920. Harding’s own dad once said to him, “Warren, it’s a good thing you’re not a girl. You’d be pregnant all the time.”
If you can’t twist arms, DO things and make other people do things they might rather prefer not to—you’re not going to walk out of the Oval Office labeled a success. You may not even get invited back into it for a second term.
As a Republican, I probably should be happy that Obama is shaping up to be a second Harding; as an American I’m nervous about it. If you have a man who knows how to get what he wants, he may get it right some of the time.
If he doesn’t know how to get what he wants at all—if he isn’t even clear about wanting anything—you’re likely to wind up going nowhere. That’s wrong all the time.
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