Dumbshit-Clusterbombed-Fuckheaded-I'm-the-Decider-Stay-the-Course Bullshit
Couldn't agree more with #3's assessment here. And Bush's hacks have the gall to call this a surge and a new way forward. 21.5K in additional soldiers is no more than have already sent before -- that hardly qualifies as anything but another ripple -- and it's just the same old dumbshit-clusterbombed-fuckheaded-I'm-the-Decider-Stay-the-Course bullshit. At this point the only way I can see to get our soldiers out of Iraq is to have daddy Bush or his surrogates suggest that we need to add more troops and stay. Or possibly W is really planning on exiting Iraq sooner than we think, via Iran and Syria.
posted by Paul @ 9:45 PM
4 Comments:
Look on the bright side. Yeah, this sucks from a moral standpoint (US soldiers needlessly dying to prop up a failed policy), from a tactical standpoint (more of the same limp wristed crap that's been failing for years), and from a strategic standpoint (tying down US forces in a quagmire while slowly bleeding our international credibility).
On the other hand, W is giving the Dems a big political present. He's mooning the American electorate while planting a sloppy wet smooch on St. John of McCain. Surge this, America! I've always considered McC unsinkable in a general election. But Bush seems to have propsed a little lovers' suicide pact: let's you and me go off the cliff together, Thelma and Louise style.
Do you think that Bush is trying to destroy McCain's prospects on purpose? Maybe subconsciously?
I like to think of this as a Rovean bonus. You can always count on the Bushies to choose the least responsible option from any field of alternatives, so they probably would have picked this anyway. But they must know how much this binds McC to their policy, and they still loathe the guy. They likely see this as a way to salvage at least something good. They may not be able to win a war, but they can humiliate a war hero. Which, come to think of it, is their campaign MO.
I think McCain is doing quite well at destroying his prospects himself. When Bush's popularity was soaring at the beginning of the Iraq War, McCain was stinging in his criticisms of Bush's handling of the war (no doubt partly motivated by Rove's dirty tricks in the 2000 campaign). Then suddenly, as if overnight, the spigot of his cold criticisms was turned off and the warm gush of praise turned on. This, however, coincided with Bush's falling popularity. Since then he's vied mostly with Liebermann at being Bush's biggest ass licker. It seemed obvious to me at the time that McCain's flip-flop was purely a political calculation designed to ride Bush's coattails and woo Bush supporters and their cash for his 2008 presidential campaign. A year and a half ago, this may have looked smart, but now it's quite clear that the American public has finally caught on that Bush's Iraq policy is not just bull headed, but it's bull-shit headed. Now that Mr. straight-shooter McCain has already flip-flopped on his support of Bush once and gone on record for troop increases, he can't afford to go back on these, and this will probably cost him the ring of presidential power he so covets. Rather than ask whether Bush is trying again to destroy McCain's prospects, I rather wonder what strange psychological compulsion ever compelled the senator from Arizona to side with a man who fucked him over in the first place? This is just self-inflicted political suicide and I think it says a lot about McCain's judgment and ability to be president.
As for TMcD's point about this clusterfuck troop increase being good for the Dem's prospects, I agree. John Edwards was spot-on to call it "The McCain Doctrine." But I just can't stand looking for a silver lining in a cloud of so many lives ruined for what will undoubtedly turn out to be an exercise in futility that hurts American interests.
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