One man out of our 300 million population has brought this on us
A few days ago I posted a commentary entitled I s Cheney the crazy uncle in the attic? I have since come across the following bit by Hendrik Hertzberg in the 1/29/07 issue of The New Yorker. I think it sums up the sad situation that we, as a nation, are now in.
The day after the address, Vice-President Cheney—in an instantly notorious CNN interview in which he dismissed talk of blunders as “hogwash”—said, “The critics have not suggested a policy.” That is hogwash.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is in its fourth week of hearing such suggestions. The Iraq Study Group has a plan. Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb have a plan. The Center for American Progress has a plan. But what all their plans have in common is that they recognize that what remains is the search for the least bad of a bad bunch of options. Implicitly, they recognize that Bush’s policy—and, therefore, Bush—is a failure. And so, rather than looking for a policy that might be within our means and might mitigate the disaster, Bush is betting all his chips—all our chips—on the only choice that allows him the fantasy that in the end people will say: Bush was right. He is sending twenty thousand because twenty thousand is all he has. Next to nothing in the way of ground forces remains for other contingencies. His Presidency and his “legacy” are in ruins anyway, so he imagines he has nothing to lose. If only that were true of the rest of us.
I have long felt that tying down a major part of our military forces—not to mention the loss of life, the many wounded, and the draining of our financial resources--in this horribly mismanaged adventure in Iraq has left us with virtually no resources available to face off enemies that we may have to be fighting in any future unavoidable confrontation.
It is tragic that one individual—yes, just one man out of over 300 million of our population, our president, George Bush--is primarily responsible for bringing our nation to this demeaning condition.
The day after the address, Vice-President Cheney—in an instantly notorious CNN interview in which he dismissed talk of blunders as “hogwash”—said, “The critics have not suggested a policy.” That is hogwash.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is in its fourth week of hearing such suggestions. The Iraq Study Group has a plan. Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb have a plan. The Center for American Progress has a plan. But what all their plans have in common is that they recognize that what remains is the search for the least bad of a bad bunch of options. Implicitly, they recognize that Bush’s policy—and, therefore, Bush—is a failure. And so, rather than looking for a policy that might be within our means and might mitigate the disaster, Bush is betting all his chips—all our chips—on the only choice that allows him the fantasy that in the end people will say: Bush was right. He is sending twenty thousand because twenty thousand is all he has. Next to nothing in the way of ground forces remains for other contingencies. His Presidency and his “legacy” are in ruins anyway, so he imagines he has nothing to lose. If only that were true of the rest of us.
I have long felt that tying down a major part of our military forces—not to mention the loss of life, the many wounded, and the draining of our financial resources--in this horribly mismanaged adventure in Iraq has left us with virtually no resources available to face off enemies that we may have to be fighting in any future unavoidable confrontation.
It is tragic that one individual—yes, just one man out of over 300 million of our population, our president, George Bush--is primarily responsible for bringing our nation to this demeaning condition.
posted by Mycroft Watson at 9:46 PM
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