In case you missed it, Maureen Dowd noticed the president’s recent rhetoric has a familiar ring to it.
How could President Bush be cavorting around on a long vacation with American troops struggling with a spiraling crisis in Iraq?
Wasn’t he worried that his vacation activities might send a frivolous signal at a time when he had put so many young Americans in harm’s way?
“I’m determined that life goes on,” Mr. Bush said stubbornly.
That wasn’t the son, believe it or not. It was the father — 15 years ago. I was in Kennebunkport then to cover the first President Bush’s frenetic attempts to relax while reporters were pressing him about how he could be taking a month to play around when he had started sending American troops to the Persian Gulf only three days before.
Bush Sr. said “life goes on”; Bush Jr. says he wants to “go on with my life.” Both seem annoyed that anyone would rudely interrupt their leisure time by bringing up an unpleasant subject like war. They are, after all, trying to relax.
Are they equally irresponsible? Not even close.
This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can’t get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani’s. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.
The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn’t bother to ask his father’s advice. Now he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would get bogged down as “an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land,” facing a possibly “barren” outcome.
Now, watch this drive…