No Surprise: Bad Speech, Bad Policy
There's not a lot of point in going over George W. Bush's speech to the nation last night in its entirety as it might as well have carried the title "Same-Old-Same-Old Way Forward." I have only a few notes…
It sure didn’t take him long to slip in a cynical reference to 9/11 saying "On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq."
I guess we're still supposed to be stupid enough to make that connection even though none of the 9/11 attackers were Iraqis, Saddam Hussein had no weapons with which to harm us and Iraq never attacked our country. But, hey, why drop an old favorite after all these years, right?
"Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue -- and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties," said Bush.
Well, isn't that just peachy? He should have just said "We're going to send more American troops into this worthless situation, they're going to die and, dang it, even if things go well, terrible stuff's going to continue to happen there."
He ends with these words of nothingness: "The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed."
He still says this despite the fact that our freedom was never threatened by Iraq and the reality that the true test of our nation's character will actually be whether or not the Democratic Congress -- and a handful of Republicans -- have the guts and will to neuter this man's authority before we lose more of our troops and become even more despised and disrespected in the world.
Ultimately, we have a president with no character, so to exhibit integrity as a nation we need to get rid of him and his shotgun-toting sidekick, Dick Cheney.
Given that the point of last night's speech was to explain why he's going to defy the will of the American people, Congress and military experts who have served in Iraq, it had to be the best speech ever given by an American president to have a prayer of success.
It wasn't even close. Now the ball is in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's court -- let's see what they do.
It sure didn’t take him long to slip in a cynical reference to 9/11 saying "On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq."
I guess we're still supposed to be stupid enough to make that connection even though none of the 9/11 attackers were Iraqis, Saddam Hussein had no weapons with which to harm us and Iraq never attacked our country. But, hey, why drop an old favorite after all these years, right?
"Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue -- and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties," said Bush.
Well, isn't that just peachy? He should have just said "We're going to send more American troops into this worthless situation, they're going to die and, dang it, even if things go well, terrible stuff's going to continue to happen there."
He ends with these words of nothingness: "The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed."
He still says this despite the fact that our freedom was never threatened by Iraq and the reality that the true test of our nation's character will actually be whether or not the Democratic Congress -- and a handful of Republicans -- have the guts and will to neuter this man's authority before we lose more of our troops and become even more despised and disrespected in the world.
Ultimately, we have a president with no character, so to exhibit integrity as a nation we need to get rid of him and his shotgun-toting sidekick, Dick Cheney.
Given that the point of last night's speech was to explain why he's going to defy the will of the American people, Congress and military experts who have served in Iraq, it had to be the best speech ever given by an American president to have a prayer of success.
It wasn't even close. Now the ball is in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's court -- let's see what they do.
posted by Bob Geiger at 1/11/2007 06:15:00 AM
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