Ah...the unreality of it all...that General Petraeus was entering the world stage in a role that no one believed except those who were vested in believing him. A commander in chief who is supposed to make policy was not there, instead a General, who does NOT make policy, explained it. A public with a memory shorter than a flash cube that can barely make its way through seven years of lies, believing some, rejecting other assertions.
I don’t know if you like Frank Rich. He an NYT political columnist who used to be stuck in theatre.
But then, politics in America is ALL theatre.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their "Briefing for America," as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.
Last week the latest General to hide behind could not say whether we were safer or not and that passed without hardly any noticed from a useless press and exhausted public that is shocked by nothing anymore. In fact the newly remastered Stark Treks received more viewership. This whole country is just waiting for this dictator to leave office.
The bullshit comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam aside, about the only thing this impotent administration can still do is yell toothless threats sort of the way Fred Sanford did at his son Lemont if you remember the series. Wrll, Karen Hughes DID award cal Ripken Junior as the US Special Envoy. I guess he supposed to strike out Al Quaeda batters...er...bombers.
Even if military "victory" were achievable in Iraq, America could not win a war abandoned by its own citizens. The evaporation of that support was ratified by voters last November. For that, they were rewarded with the "surge." Now their mood has turned darker. Americans have not merely abandoned the war; they don't want to hear anything that might remind them of it, or of war in general. Katie Couric's much-promoted weeklong visit to the front produced ratings matching the CBS newscast's all-time low. Angelina Jolie's movie about Daniel Pearl sank without a trace. Even Clint Eastwood's wildly acclaimed movies about World War II went begging. Over its latest season, "24" lost a third of its viewers, just as Mr. Bush did between January's prime-time address and last week's.
Frank Rich points out that not only have we been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II, we may be in even longer than we were in Vietnam!
Hell Petraeus did not even have the courtesy of special airtime on primetime soap operas. Brittany Spears, zoftig or not, could have beaten Petraeus easily.
...
It is true that they (Dems) do not have the votes to overcome a Bush veto of any war legislation. But that doesn't mean the Democrats have to go on holiday. Few used their time to cross-examine General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker on their disingenuous talking points, choosing instead to regurgitate stump sentiments or ask uncoordinated, redundant questions. It's telling that the one question that drew blood — are we safer? — was asked by a Republican, John Warner, who is retiring from the Senate.
Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the "General Betray-Us" headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction. This left-wing brand of juvenile name-calling is as witless as the "Defeatocrats" and "cut and run" McCarthyism from the right; it at once undermined the serious charges against the data in the Petraeus progress report (including those charges in the same MoveOn ad) and allowed the war's cheerleaders to hyperventilate about a sideshow. "General Betray-Us" gave Republicans a furlough to avoid ownership of an Iraq policy that now has us supporting both sides of the Shiite-vs.-Sunni blood bath while simultaneously shutting America's doors on the millions of Iraqi refugees the blood bath has so far created.
Very few Americans are still actually fooled by what the administration says. So no one can blame us for not watching this, the latest of as highly staged series of special announcements, that we all expect will be followed by basically no real change in strategy. The Republicans have lost this war in every way you can lose a war. No one but the most obviously biased and memory impaired actually thinks Bush has a strategy other than...as the cover of the National Review says: STAY.
You bet. This is the strategy of out Fighter Pilot In Chief. Wait until the Dems take over so they can share the defeat.
Mr. Bush, confident that he got away with repackaging the same bankrupt policies with a nonsensical new slogan ("Return on Success") Thursday night, is counting on the public's continued apathy as he kicks the can down the road and bides his time until Jan. 20, 2009; he, after all, has nothing more to lose. The job for real leaders is to wake up America to the urgent reality. We can't afford to punt until Inauguration Day in a war that each day drains America of resources and will. Our national security can't be held hostage indefinitely to a president's narcissistic need to compound his errors rather than admit them.
It's like we are all playing in a game that no one wants to play anymore. $12 million a day comes out of our pockets for this war, and America realizes that no one on Capitol Hill represents us. Or hears us.
(Here is the link- though you will need a subscription to access it)
http://select.nytimes.com/...