How Did We Ever Let This Guy Get Away with Being a War President?

[babylonsister]

How Did We Ever Let This Guy Get Away with Being a War President?

By Gary Brecher, eXiled Online. Posted November 17, 2008.

Only a fool like Bush could pick an anti-American Arab country, add an invading army, and expect a nice fluffy democracy soufflé.


What George W. Bush loved best about his job was being a war president. Playing war, that is, as opposed to making war like a grown-up. Remember him strutting onto that carrier in his little flight jacket? You never saw Eisenhower, a real general, playing out his martial fantasies this way. You can take the drink out of the drunk, but you can't take the swagger out of a fool.

Compare Bush's eight years to Clinton's, and you see how much he loved to play the soldier. No one expected that from a Republican: Reagan and Bush senior were cautious about betting America's chips. Liberals used to make fun of Reagan for picking on tiny helpless nations that couldn't fight back. Now they are remembering with pure nostalgia Reagan's invasion of Grenada, air raids on Libya, and even our 1984 withdrawal from Beirut.

We'll never know how far W. would have gone to find himself a war because he had all he needed delivered by air on Sept. 11, 2001. Remember how people felt in those days? A friend of mine said, "It was like the aliens had invaded."

We needed our president to be a hero and made him into one, even though it was obvious he wasn't up to the job. He didn't take the first plane to Manhattan, stand there and say, "We're coming for you bastards!" Instead he sat in a roomful of children, reading <i>My Pet Goat</i>, then dropped off the radar for hours before his handlers got him ready.

Maybe there's a lesson here: if the president doesn't cut it in a crisis, we're better off admitting that to ourselves and telling him so instead of pretending he's a great leader. When you make a weakling into a hero, you give him a lot of power. If we'd kept our eyes open and faced the fact that Bush reacted badly to 9/11, we might have been able to ask for a little more detail about his big plans.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/107321/how_did_we_ever_let_this_guy_get_away_with_being_a_war_president/?page=entire

[Uben]

1. Not we, they!

I didn't vote fot the bastard! I doubt many here did either.

If I were the Decider, Bush woulda been over in Iraq in the 110 degree heat in full dress military gear, going door to door trying to root out insurgents like he had all our men and women doing. He might have lasted 30 minutes before he started crying.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. More likely 30 seconds ...

this is the guy who couldn't even fulfill his military obligation in the National Guard back in the Vietnam era.

:argh:

[Stuart G]

3. The real example of a War President is Lincoln........

He hated it, despised it, and wanted it over as quick as possible. He knew the truth about war and its consequences and lived its hell every single day he was President, waiting till an attack on a federal fort till hostilities began.

..Look at Bush, planning, and hoping to start a war, while Lincoln waited till it had started. What a miserable excuse for a human being.

[Lint Head]

4. I didn't vote for the son of a bitch. He was never my president.

This country has not had a president for the last 8 years. If we had a president they would have been watching out for the economy, the infrastructure, protecting the people's rights, preventing an obviously known attack, preventing the leak of a secret agent's name, helping citizens after a disaster among other things. :dem:

[babylonsister]

7. I didn't either and knew he'd be destructive. But we still were saddled

with him. We are in the process of doing better, so that makes me happier.

[Submariner]

5. A SCOTUS appointee - Bush never was a legitimate president

Just an election stealing spoiled brat.

[babylonsister]

6. If we ever learn anything from history, this is one huge lesson.

Look at the damage he's done. Makes me cringe to consider it.

[givemebackmycountry]

14. "Get over it"

Says Tony Scalia.

:sarcasm:

[roberto]

8. bush a president ??? !!!

He was not there, He was just cheney's and CIA's puppy. Just there as an excuse.

[foxer]

9. Changed uniforms so often, I thought he was in the Village People

[laststeamtrain]

10. K & R.

The withdrawal from Iraq begins late January.

Right?

All the money we spent on war can be spent on public works now.

No more bridges falling down.

Right?

That's what I voted for.

The transition away from neoconservative foreign policy can begin. It was a big mistake.

Faster, please.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. His supporters are accustomed to pushing things over the line.

And, he's one of them. I think they see him as a Jack Bauer.

[bertman]

12. WE--the Americans who knew Bush was a fascist from Day One--DID ASK FOR THE DETAILS.

We tried to get Congress to slow down and THINK about what they were doing. But Noooooo, they were all PATRIOTS, so they jumped on the War Wagon, with the Deserter-in-Chief at the reins.

The runup to the Iraq War was no different from the run-up to the Spanish-American War (Remember the Maine) or the run-up to World War II (Remember the Reichstag fire?). Karl Goebbels, I mean Rove, had the plan and orchestrated it like the Leonard Bernstein of fear politics. But he couldn't have done it without the collusion and active obfuscation of the Corporate Media.

It's time for America to find a new source for news. The TV is about profitability and enfotainment. The 'internets' is where the real news is. A complacent, manipulated public will allow itself to believe whatever its leaders want it to believe. That's what happened in '01 through '07. '08 is a new beginning. Let's not let it fail.

[glitch]

13. Only a fool would think Bushco intended to create a democracy in Iraq.

Even after all the looting it is remarkable that some people still take Bushco at their word and give them the "incompetence" pass.

[Voice for Peace]

15. I can't imagine Obama bombing anybody for political, ideological, or financial reasons.

This is a man who is accountable not only to us but to his own conscience, and he knows it.

His spirituality is directly related to his conscience.

He knows that his power comes not from ego but from authentic integrity. He knows what that feels like, and he can feel it when he's off.

This is HUGE. HUGE. I think few presidents in history have had that kind of character. :fistbump:

[Doctor_J]

16. Two words - Big Media

No media reform = no democracy