{"id":7005,"date":"2006-03-30T11:22:17","date_gmt":"2006-03-30T16:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7005"},"modified":"2006-03-30T11:22:17","modified_gmt":"2006-03-30T16:22:17","slug":"bushs-hollow-impatience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-hollow-impatience\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s hollow impatience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Responding to a question about Iraq’s future, the president suggested he’s getting a little impatient<\/a> with the progress — or lack thereof — in establishing a government in Iraq. His comments are in desperate need of a follow-up question.<\/p>\n

“[T]here also has to be tangible benefits on the street. I try to speak to the Iraqi people all the time. Sometimes the message gets through the filters, sometimes it doesn’t. I want them to hear a couple of things. I want the Iraqi people to hear I’ve got great confidence in their capacity to self-govern. I also want to hear the — the Iraqi people to hear it’s about time you get a unity government going. In other words, Americans understand newcomers to the political arena, but pretty soon it’s time to shut her down and get governing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Iraq pronouncements go, this one wasn’t terribly controversial, at least as far Dems go. Rumsfeld and Cheney preach patience and enjoy comparing Iraq’s development to 18th century America, but Bush’s line to Iraq that “it’s about time you get a unity government going” isn’t much different from what a lot of Bush’s critics might say.<\/p>\n

My follow-up question, though, is, “Or what?”<\/p>\n

The president sounded impatient. He wants Iraq to start functioning now<\/i> and wants a unity government formed immediately<\/i>. What’s more, based on his unscripted comments, Bush doesn’t just want Americans to hear about his frustration; he specifically said he wanted “the Iraqi people to hear” his sense of frustration.<\/p>\n

What Bush didn’t mention was the result of additional delay. He wants Iraq to know his expectations, but not to hear a word about consequences<\/em>. If Iraq doesn’t “get governing,” what happens? Will U.S. troops be withdrawn? According to Bush, absolutely not. Will the U.S. establish some deadlines or timelines for progress? Bush rejects the notion out of hand.<\/p>\n

In this sense, Bush’s comments were entirely meaningless. It’s like the old joke about the unarmed policeman seeing a criminal and shouting, “Stop! Or I’ll say ‘Stop’ again!” Bush says, “Form a unity government! Or I might ask again sometime soon!”<\/p>\n

It also points to why timetables and target dates aren’t just tolerable in Iraq; they’re necessary. It’s worked before — Iraqis completed their Constitution under an arbitrary American-defined deadline — and it could work again.<\/p>\n

Here’s the idea: tell the Iraqis to form a government by May 1st or troop withdrawals begin on May 2nd. I bet Bush would be amazed at how quickly negotiations can proceed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Responding to a question about Iraq’s future, the president suggested he’s getting a little impatient with the progress — or lack thereof — in establishing a government in Iraq. His comments are in desperate need of a follow-up question. “[T]here also has to be tangible benefits on the street. I try to speak to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}