Changing course in Iraq ‘undermines the whole premise of his presidency’

December 9, 2006

US News reported yesterday that the H.W. Bush gang, sent in to give Bush 43 a hand, are feeling a little dejected. Apparently, they expected the president to take the Iraq Study Group a little more seriously.

They consider him rather dismissive of the group’s conclusions…. “We have a classic case of circling the wagons,” says a former adviser to Bush the elder. “If President Bush changes his policy in Iraq in a fundamental way, it undermines the whole premise of his presidency. I just don’t believe he will ever do that.”

White House advisers say Bush won’t react in detail to the ISG report for several weeks, while he assesses it and awaits various internal government reports on the situation from his own advisers. Bush tells aides he doesn’t want to “outsource” his role as commander in chief. Some Bush allies say this is a way to buy some time as the president tries to decide how to deal with rising pressure to alter his strategy in Iraq and hopes the critical media focus on the Iraq war will soften.

This really is the height of cowardice. Bush could embrace reality, but the “whole premise of his presidency” is to stick with this disaster, so he invariably stays the course. Bush could take the ISG seriously, but then he might look bad, so he stays the course. Bush could show some leadership, but he prefers to “buy some time” and wait for the next distraction to take some of the heat off.

The unfolding tragedy is almost too painful to believe.

Josh Marshall’s response to the US News piece was particularly good.

What a pitiful coward this man is. Maybe if I just sort of shuffle the papers a bit and clear my throat everybody will get off my case. That’s his response. […]

He won’t ever change course. Not because there’s anyone who can’t see that the present course is a catastrophe, but because changing course would cut the legs from under the collective denial of the president and his supporters. As bad as things get they can still pretend they’re on the way to getting better. It’s a long hard slog to January 2009 when it becomes someone else’s fault. Once they pull the plug themselves, though, they admit it was all a disaster, that the whole presidency was, in Dick Gephardt’s half forgotten phrase, “a miserable failure.”

That is why we’re in Iraq today. Get your head around it.

As I noted earlier, Bush may have convinced himself that he’s a modern-day Truman, doing what’s right in the race of national indignation, but he’s obviously deluded himself into embracing a ridiculous fantasy.

We’re all paying the price.

When FDR famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he had never met George W Bush. Along with what other posters have written, I fear the we have yet to witness the full wrath of W’s stupidity and vanity.

  • I think that now Bush has nothing to lose. He’ll do what he wants.

    How do we address his last excuse, that he is doing this unpopular war for a future that only he can foresee?

  • What does one expect from a little boy who has had to deal with his father’s disapproval of his failures at everything he’s touched since the minute he was slapped on his bottom and didn’t cry right?

    When he stands before the Congress at the State of the Union, amidst the smoking ruins of the Green Zone after the Iraqi Resistance has blown it up (an event Juan Cole says is a matter of “when,” not “if”) perhaps we’ll finally have arrived at the moment where the Congress stands up and tells him to just leave.

    How a fuckwit who could fail at masturbation managed to become President of the United States is beyond me. This moron gives Caligula a good name in comparison.

    And go take a look at the Barney-palooza at whitehouse.gov. As the friend who pointed it out to me said, “it’s like looking at a trainwreck.” He can’t even do that right.

  • I think we give Bush far to much credit when analyzing his thought and action. I don’t think his rationale for what he does is either right or wrong. I don’t think he makes mistakes, because in order to make a mistake, one must be trying to act wisely and correctly in the first place.

    The ugly truth is that he’s just a petulant, dim-witted little brat with the mind and self-absorbtion of a 2-year old.

  • From TP on 12/7

    President Bush “may not be in much of a hurry to accept [ISG co-chairman Jim] Baker’s ideas about [Iraq] — or much else. Asked if Baker would help implement the report, a spokesman for Mr. Bush said, ‘Jim Baker can go back to his day job.‘”

    If Shruby could spit as well as George Allen, he’d lay a big loogie at JimBoys cowboy boot and walk away feeling like a real man. But since he can’t spit, he’ll just use his spokesman to tell his superior in every way but rank to take a hike.

    Shruby revels in being an insufferable and, for the time being, relatively untouchable little prick. He exists in his bubble of invulnerable priviledge and the slings and arrows of derision and dissent bounce off like they didn’t even exist. Noisy little gnats of no consequence.

    At least he’s not wearing his cloak of invisibility any more. He’s come into much clearer focus for all but the most indoctrinated of Shrubists. The carte blanche of the rubber stamp congress has been diminished to some extent.

    In the words of Snoop Dogg on the arrogance of Suge Knight, the now jailed former head of Death Row Records, “When you get that kinda power, you gotta treat people right so when you get in a down situation, it’ll be more favorable for you. It’s like the minute he got locked up, everyone was like, ‘Damn, I’m glad he got locked up.’ If you got the power, why not try to make some of these people you friends? As opposed to makin’ everybody really scared of you. When you like that – when you go down – ain’t nobody gon’ be ther for that call.”

    Screw Shruby. He’s losing friends and he’s not the badass he never was. He can still cause trouble but the majority of the world is on to his game.

  • I think that there is a strong relationship between the direction that Bush will take in Iraq going forward and his father’s tears at Jeb’s goodbye this week. George Snr. broke down as he spoke about Jeb’s loss in 1994, which ruined his chance to be the Bush standard bearer in 2000, possibly even 1996, and take back the presidency. However, fate intervened and we now have had 6 years of Junior’s reign and the inevitable ruin of the Bush name. The end game of the Bush presidency will be complete tarring of the Bush name and the associated tarring of everything that GHWB did in his life, thus tears. If only Jeb had not lost in 1994, …..

  • The only “premise of his presidency” so far as I can tell is his endlessly proclaimed “I’m the decider”. He made the sack of soggy shit he now finds himself in, and I hope he chokes on it. Those who enabled him can choke on it, too, for all I care.

    I wish our newly elected Democrats had one-hundredth the sense of the rewards for hubris that the ancient Greeks did, but they don’t. We really have become a very shallow, ignorant and uninspiring nation.

  • Apparently, they expected the president to take the Iraq Study Group a little more seriously.

    They consider him rather dismissive of the group’s conclusions…. — CB

    And why should anyone take seriously something that’s called a *Study Group*? Study groups are formed in schools, for self-improvement of people involved.

    That’s not to say Bush would have taken their advice if they’d called themselves a “Comission” if it went contrary to his “commander-in-chief” self-image, but…

  • Before the invasion, even many republican war supporters admitted that Bush was taking a huge gamble. Implied were serious odds against success. Bush must have been counting on that “fatherly” advice putting the brakes on his wheel of fortune and having the pointer land on “you are the luckiest son of a bitch in the world”. Now that “success has not happened as fast as we wanted it to”, they have to keep the wheel spinning, while all the spaces on the wheel are now printed “you are fucked”. So keep the wheel spinning until the next president gets to decide when he is ready to rake in the proceeds of Bush’s big gamble with destiny. Better that the next president is a democrat so the country can unite in bipartisan defeat.

  • The Premise of the BG2 Presidency is that he will not make the mistakes of Bush 41.

    Losing in Iraq would be making one of Bush 41’s mistakes. Thus BG2 is going to stay in Iraq for the remainder of his presidency.

    Or maybe just until Saddam dies. I’m still conflicted on that.

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