Of the many benighted traits of the Bush family during the 20th Century, self-delusion was not one of them. More than a little sadly, the same cannot be said about the current ranking member of the family. George the 2nd, the only admitted substance-abuser of the dynastic clan, has taken the archetypal delusions and denial of the addictive personality to new heights--primarily due to the fact that while American voters have elevated more than a few fools to lead us, there have been precious few addicts among them.
More's the pity, because this dangerous "dry-drunk" is delusional about the nation's worst foreign policy decision in almost half a century. And, by his own admission, he once knew better, back when he was still partying and therefore less arrogant and a great deal more human. Wet-drunks are hell on the furniture, spouses and automobiles, but a dry-drunk with his reactionary finger on the trigger of the United States military is Hell on Earth for one and all.
Please read Bob Herbert's column in today's The New York Times, excerpted below, and you will understand why I can write so disrespectfully of the man who is the leader of the country I love so dearly.
As he explained in his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House":
"My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."
How is it that he ultimately came to see the fiasco in Vietnam so clearly but remains so blind to the frighteningly similar realities of his own war in Iraq? Mr. Bush cannot explain our mission in Iraq and has nothing resembling an exit strategy, and his troops - hobbled by shortages of personnel and by potentially fatal American and Iraqi political considerations - are certainly not fighting to win.
As the situation in Iraq moves from bad to worse, the president, based on his public comments, seems to be edging further and further from reality. This is disturbing, to say the least. The news from Iraq is filled with reports of kidnappings and beheadings, of people pleading desperately for their lives, of American soldiers being ambushed and killed, of clusters of Iraqis being blown to pieces by suicide bombers, and of the prospects for a credible election in January tumbling toward nil. ...
The president said he is personally optimistic and he delivered an upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Iraq, he said, is well on its way to being "secure, democratic, federal and free."
If you spend more than a little time immersed in the world according to Karl Rove, you'll find that words lose even the remotest connection to reality. They become nothing more than tools designed to achieve political ends. So it's not easy to decipher what the president believes about Iraq.
This is scary. With Americans, Iraqis and others dying horribly in the long dark night of this American-led war, the world needs more from the president of the United States than the fool's gold of his empty utterances.
Perhaps someone can dislodge the president from Karl's clutches, shake him and tell him that his war is a tremendous tragedy with implications far beyond the election in November.
At the moment there is no evidence the president understands anything about the war. He led the nation into it with false pretenses. He never mobilized sufficient numbers of troops. He seemed to believe the war was over in May 2003. And he seems not to know how to proceed now.
The tragic lesson of Vietnam is staring the president in the face. But he'll have to become better acquainted with the real world before he can even begin to learn from it.
