Like everything else in his life, George W. Bush thought war would be easy. Now, the wheels are coming off Bush's war fantasy and he simply doesn't know how to fix it.
During the 2004 election cycle, Bush's former ghost writer, Mickey Herskowitz, released a tape that he had made secretly while talking to Bush in 1999. When the tape hit the public, Herskowitz was ripped to shreds by the GOP and the story on the tape was quickly killed. But, in that tape was a revelation from Bush that tells a very sad, sick tale about what kind of person George W. Bush is, and the horrendous situation our country is in now with him as our President.
In this secret interview, Bush said that he had learned one thing very, very clearly from watching his father as President: to be successful with an unpopular domestic agenda, the key was to be a War President.
In the tape, Bush forecast exactly what he was going to do as President: attack Saddam Hussein, finish the job his father left unfinished, and then use the political capital he gains from a successful war to ram through a strongly Conservative agenda of severe tax cuts, the end of abortion, destruction of federally-supported environmental protections, faith-based litmus tests for government programs, the elimination of Social Security, and the blanket domination of the Republican party for many years to come.
Since taking office in 2000, Bush has had success with tax cuts and other parts of his domestic agenda, but at this point of his administration, he is not where he thought he would be as a War President. Alas, Bush truly believed that the Iraq war would be easy, short, and glorious. To Dubya, Baghdad would be Paris 1944 and he would be FDR + Abraham Lincoln all rolled into one.
Being immature, arrogant, and greedy, Bush thought that the war in Iraq was all about HIM. That the money spent, the American soldiers lost, the Iraqis killed, the infrastructure destroyed, the lies spread, the lives wrecked...... they were all just stepping stones to HIS greater glory and power.
Where we are today - stuck in a 3-year-old grinding, expensive, and bloody national nightmare - was all forecast in that secret interview with Herskowitz back in 1999, for it revealed the real George W. Bush: self-inflated, vicious, and crass. The war in Iraq had many purposes for the NeoCons Bush brought into power with him, but for Bush himself the main reasons were just two: his domestic agenda and his ego.
Like all arrogant, self-absorbed, and stupid men through out history, Bush has brought about the one thing he never thought could happen...... a quagmire and the possibility of defeat. He didn't consider carefully the one enduring historical reality: once you start a war, you can never be sure where it's going to end up.
Just ask Jefferson Davis about this. When the South fired on Fort Sumpter, Davis' ears were filled with the cheers of the crowds. Five years later, most of the South was a smoking ruin. Same when Germany rolled into Poland, same when the Spanish sent their invincible armada. Once the Dogs of War are out of the kennel, even the most confident and well-armed leaders can end up stunned by where events end up. Just ask Lyndon Johnson. Just ask King George III.
Like everything else in his life, George W. Bush thought war would be easy. Like getting into Yale. Like owning a baseball team. For Bush, he didn't need combat experience, he didn't need to think deeply about the terrible realities that wracked Lincoln's conscience every day during the Civil War. For Bush, it was all just too easy. I give orders...... and I will be a War President!
Now, the wheels are coming off Bush's war fantasy and he simply doesn't know how to fix it. This is not where he was supposed to be in 2006. He was supposed to be a War President with 70% approval ratings and every one of his conservative policies written into law. His ass kissed by the Media, the American public, the Military, and by History. Not a little beetle trapped by the forces of war into 33% approval and nearly universal loathing and hatred, a man so ineffectual he can't write a contract with his Arab buddies to run a few ports without being viciously savaged. This was not the way it was supposed to be for George W. Bush, War President.
Bush thought he would be Winston Churchill, but instead he's become Lord Cornwallis, trapped in an untenable postion by his own arrogance and bad planning. Each day, the situation only gets worse and Bush's insistence that everything is going great becomes more shrill. At what point does the President's confidence become self-delusion? At what point does the insistence that we must win become the reason that we cannot?
Bush's War President fantasy has killed and maimed nearly 15,000 Americans and at least 35,000, maybe 50,000 Iraqis. Every projection about the war, from the cost to the outcome, has been wrong. How badly does a President have to perform before his judgement gets called into question? How unsuccessful does a foreign adventure need to be before it's purpose gets challenged?
Bush said in his press conference today that the reason we have to persevere in Iraq is because "Democracies don't start wars." This, as justification for a preemptive war he himself started. The audacity of it (or the sheer necessity to say something, anything, that might save his ass from failure) is simply shocking.
Bush - the former high school cheerleader - never seems to give up on cheering. He wanted to be a War President so he could crow "Mission Accomplished" and receive the people's applause. But now that the applause is no longer ringing and the blood grows ever thicker on his hands, what now, Mr. War President? Cheerleading simply isn't enough......