I've supported GW Bush over the last several years because I believe both John Kerry and Al Gore are bloviating non-entities. I still think that, and I think the country would be worse off if either of them had been elected. I've put up with a lot of insults, derision and general anti-Yank sentiment in my new home because of my support for the president. I supported Bush while holding down my bile over his Nixonite domestic policy and his incessant ass kissing of his worst enemies because of one thing--there's an existential threat to civilization in the form of the latest variant of fascism. There's a war on, and I trusted him to get the job done. Instead, he's let himself get tied in knots by politcal correctness, less-than-half measures, inconsistency and an inexplicable willingness to let the incompetents at State and CIA run this war.
In other words, you've lost me, Mr. President and if you've lost me, I hate to think how many others are gone. You, sir, have proven yourself a knave and a fool, and I sincerely regret my support for you. If there is one consolation, and it would be a weak one, it's that the alternatives were worse,
3 comments:
OK, now WAIT A MINUTE, Mr Firmin. Just because you finally caught up with reality here and have given Bush the elbow doesn't mean we are all ready to accept your still trying to blame everybody but Bush for his problems.
It was not State and CIA that screwed the pooch here, it was the Executive Branch and the Department of Defense. I am continually amazed at the capacity of those who otherwise valorize the hard-headed business-inspired notions of market, accountability, and survival of the fittest, to grant Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the entire lot of them a pass on their phenomenally inept handling of THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES.
You rejoice that neither Gore nor Kerry were elected because you believe they were incompetent blowhards, but Bush et al have proven over and over and over again that no matter the red-blooded appeal of their feel-good "live free or die hard" rhetoric, they were and remain as criminally incompetent a group of bureaucrats and politicians as has ever been assembled in a single administration bar none.
It simply does not wash, Mr Firmin, to lay the ongoing fiasco and terminal tragedy of American policy and action in the Middle East at the feet of the administrative underlings to these elected bozos. Though I understand the appeal such a tactic might have to someone who himself might hope to hold high office one day, since you are barred from doing so by your criminal record I cannot imagine its appeal to you.
The "magic" of the GOP approach has always supposedly been that hardnosed politicos coming out of the business world (though this is largely a myth - almost as many GOP politicians are lawyers as are Dems) would never tolerate the sort of indiscipline and coddling that produces the typical liberal mush that would otherwise prevail. Yet it is clear now that we would have been far better off with the typical "liberal hawk" that is produced when Dems are forced into war by circumstances than we have been with the feckless, ideologically-driven, right-idealist, blind-to-reality stupidity that Mr Firmin and millions like him voted into office not once, but twice.
If you are going to repent do so in a way that will get you past the gate; you would never allow that Clinton or Carter's failures were really those of some faceless civil servants, why, other than the obvious and not terribly edifying reasons, would you allow this to Bush?
I'm not sure why some people insist on trying to read what's not there. Were "knave and "fool" not strong enough expressions of blame? Would "mountebank", "idiot" or "clueless" have been better? Pointing out the gross failures of State and CIA, both of which were parts of the executive branch the last time I worked there, do not in any way excuse the President for his personal failure to competently exercise the powers of his office.
ALWAYS a little room to squirm in up there on Cold Mountain, I see....
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