He must have meant other ‘politicians’

April 23, 2007

Bush, today:

“I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn’t be telling generals how to do their job…. And therefore I will strongly reject an artificial timetable withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job.”

Washington Post, in January:

When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline his new strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take action they initially resisted and advised against.

Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and for second-guessing his commanders. “It’s important to trust the judgment of the military when they’re making military plans,” he told The Washington Post in an interview last month. “I’m a strict adherer to the command structure.”

But over the past two months, as the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated and U.S. public support for the war has dropped, Bush has pushed back against his top military advisers and the commanders in Iraq….

Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq.

Bush’s decision appears to mark the first major disagreement between the White House and key elements of the Pentagon over the Iraq war since Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, split with the administration in the spring of 2003 over the planned size of the occupation force, which he regarded as too small.

Bush believes “politicians in Washington” should listen to the generals, just so long as a) he’s not included among the “politicians”; and b) he gets to fire the generals who don’t agree with him.

He neglected to mention these minor details this morning. I’m sure it just slipped his mind.

Impeach. Plenty of reasons why:

http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/polisci/patterson5/student/olc/indeximpeach.mhtml

  • Referring of course to the fact that Bush is a politician just like the rest of them, and pushing an arbitrary timetable (ie: none) for pure politics and despite the military opinion/concensus.

    Combine this with Krugman’s exceleent column and it really dismantles everything about continuing the war.

  • What a retarded talking point. Nobody’s telling the Generals how to do their jobs, Congress is doing their jobs, by telling the Generals what their mission is and giving them a timeline to do it in.

    Bush apparently thinks he alone gets to define for all time what the mission is in Iraq. Earth to Bubble-Boy: You’re an unpopular, lame duck, and if this really is a Democracy, you work for the people who want us out of Iraq. Refuse to listen to your boss, and suffer the consequences.

    Aside from Bush’s idiocy, I’m wondering… how people who take orders from Bush even sleep at night???

    He orders them to invade Iraq with a tiny fraction of the recommended troops, with no real plan, and they don’t quit en masse? They trust the military genius of a political hack with zero combat experience? A moron who doesn’t even know who the major players in the region are? They send their people on a suicide mission into a well-marked quagmire because a dry drunk in a flightsuit tells them to do it?

    Scarey.

  • One good thing about Bush is you can be sure he’s either lying or not telling the truth.

    And of course he has always stood by his 2001 statement (quote by Tim Grieve at Salon today): “There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity.”

  • Bush sends tens of thousands of additional soldiers into harm’s way, and for what?

    So that he can “tell the generals” to have American soldiers—the United States military, of all things—to build a twenty-first century version of the Berlin Wall.

    Wow. At least Saddam got giant, god-like statues and some seriously-spectacular palaces. What do we get? A cheap, downsized copy of the world’s most infamous symbol of totalitarian government.

    Only in Bushylvania….

  • What else can we expect from the man who said this?

    “The attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer — honestly answer — in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job,”

    Bush speaks in a language of is own…. Bubble-eese.

  • Indeed, Steve, this is now all that Bush has left, his one-size-fits-all policy solution. Illegal immigrants crossing your border? Build a wall. Terrorists flying planes into buildings? Um, build a wall of posts at street level outside the White House. Yeah. Israeli-Palestinian conflict causing you political heartburn? Send mixed messages but ultimately give tacit approval to Israel building a wall. Sunni-Shia civil war spoiling your nice little Iraqi adventure? Build a wall.

    I’d guess this is what happens when you have government by the rich. They all grew up keeping “other people’s problems” at bay by livign in gated communities, set off by walls.

    Even the fraud they claim to idolize, St. Ronnie, must be spinning in his grave at how far his party has fallen from his taunting of Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down [that] wall.”

    Is this really the best leadership our capitalist money can buy?

  • Is this really the best leadership our capitalist money can buy?

    If the best things in life are free, Zeitgeist, then the trillions spent to prop up America’s puppet government—where the puppet is controlling the puppet—would make sense. I am, however, going to laugh my a** off when someone in Iraq stands up in front of the cameras, and calls out “Mr Bush, tear down this wall!”

    By the way—anyone got the phone number for Al Jazeerah? They might like the idea, and right now, I’d do business with just about anyone if it would get that blasted “Faux Texan Terrah-ist Prairie Dog Varmint” out of the People’s House….

  • Bush believes “politicians in Washington” should listen to the generals, just so long as a) he’s not included among the “politicians”; and b) he gets to fire the generals who don’t agree with him.

    He is a politician, to be sure. But he’s the only politician who is also “commander in chief”, so he kind of DOES get special pardon in this context. He may listen, but according to the “command structure” that he so loves, he is the top dog.

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