Thanks for not paying attention
It’s a sad day when our president does not understand thecomplexities and problems of today’s dynamic challenges for astronger and more respected America.
He doesn’t understand that joking about the search forweapons of mass destruction, which the public now knows neverexisted, reflects his misunderstanding and insensitivity to thedelicate situation caused by his unjustified decision.
Nor do he or his Republican friends understand that distributingpurple-heart band-aids at their convention or denying benefits toour veterns shows no respect for them. You see Bush at campaignstops strutting up to the stage to the roar of the carefullyscreened crowd, yet he does not acknowledge the fact that thecountry is mourning the loss of over 1,000 (mostly young) liveslost in a dismal effort to provide the Iraqi people with arepresentative democratic government.
He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him tolook solemn for a moment and speak of the brave Americans who madethe ultimate sacrifice for their country, before linking it toal-Qaeda, which makes a lot of sense now that the world isexperiencing more terrorist attacks than ever before.
But if you study what he says publicly, he does not hold himselfor anyone else in his administration accountable for the massivefailures and broad mismanagement of this war, or anything else forthat matter.
In fact, he says that Iraq has been a “catastrophicsuccess.” Indeed, he has made a series of”catastrophic” decisions, but if the purpose of hisdecision to go to war, for which he has offered 23 differentrationales to date, was to confuse and mislead the American people,he catastrophically succeeded.
He doesn’t even feel a personal responsibility for thethousands of dead young men and women who wanted to be all theycould be, as a soldier or just as a student.
Their bodies come back in his eyes, not as people with mothersand fathers or wives and children that will suffer anincomprehensible memory of their family’s fabric torn apart,but as a political liability, which is why the press is notpermitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins. How then canhe mourn?
To mourn is to express regret, and he regrets nothing. He doesnot regret that his reason for rushing to war, as he knew and wenow know, was unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret thathis stubbornly optimistic plan for the war’s aftermath hasmade a disaster of his “mission-accomplished.”
He won’t admit that rather than controlling terrorism, hiswar in Iraq has spawned it, nor that his back door draft of theGuard and Reserves has stretched our military much too thin.However, he now admits to “miscalculations” in Iraq,which seems to be one of the greatest understatements in Americanhistory! He wanted to go to war and he did. He didn’t havethe mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those whoknew those costs … he just had them fired or retired!
Bush does not understand that you go to war not because you wantto, but because you have to. Yet, this president knew it would notbe far-fetched for Americans to cheer the overthrow of a foreign,murderous dictator.
And in result, you become a wartime leader, the country getsbehind you and dissent becomes inappropriate. Yet, he does not makean effort to sit in the church with the grieving parents and wivesand children. He just continues making his excuses and arrogantnotions that America is more secure by replacing a dictator withchaos.
He doesn’t seem to feel for the 35 million of us who livein poverty, nor the thousands of police officers that know assaultweapons are the last guns we need to allow people to legallyown.
He must not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black orfor the working people that his proposed plan will deprive of thechance to work overtime at time-and-a-half. It is amazing how manypeople in this country this President does not seem to feel for,yet he will dissemble feeling.
He will say in all sincerity that he is relieving the wealthiest2 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of therest of us, that he is polluting the air and water for the sake ofour economy, that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coalmines to save the coal miners’ jobs, and that he is deprivingworkers of their time-and-a-half overtime benefits becauseit’s actually a way to raise them into the professionalclass.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for Godand the flag and democracy, when what he and his party are reallydoing is choking the life out of our democracy. But there is onemore sad thing about all of this, which is that the largest publicoutcry of peace rallies ever held for any war in our history failedto stop the war in Iraq.
These hundreds of millions of people understood that this”beacon of light” to the world was morphing into whatit was making a case to overthrow, a rogue nation.
The president we get is the country we get. The people heappoints are cast in his image and the rollbacks of much of theprogress that was made in the ’90s that they’ve pushedthrough from within their respective agencies portray his defectivecharacter and judgment.
How can we sustain what is left of our reputation abroad as theUnited States of America given the well-funded but ill-preparedwarmongering, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving and themonarchical economics of this president?
He cannot mourn, but is a figure of such moral vacancy as tomake us mourn for ourselves. But that is the lesson of thiscommentary … If you don’t vote, people like Bush and Cheneyget elected!
And for our soldiers, about whom we should never forget … weowe them the truth about what we have asked them to do and what isstill to be done, so let’s re-defeat Bush/Cheney on Nov. 2and give them a commander in chief who will!
Joseph Grinnell is a senior environmental science andeconomics double major. He may be contacted [email protected].
