Slow, Grinding Defeat

George Bush is angry.

As his voice and demeanor evidenced during his third speech in as many days (his latest Defending My Indefensible Policies Tour), Bush can neither accept nor grasp why the American people still don’t “get it”.

Why don’t they understand that any Muslim we capture and detain must be presumed guilty? Why don’t they understand that those men must be “questioned” (tortured) in order to keep us safe? Why don’t they understand that those men must be detained indefinitely and deprived of any access to justice? The justification--that a few of those we have captured have actually given us important information.

Why don’t the American people get it? Why don’t they believe that we can eventually kill every terrorist currently alive? Why don’t they believe that we can achieve total victory? Why don’t they view this struggle in the same light as World War II? Why do they care so much about their own civil liberties? Why don’t they trust us to spy on them? Why don’t they trust us to keep them safe? Why don’t they trust us to respond to disaster? Why don’t they trust us to steward the environment? Why have they turned on me and the Republican party?

Yes--as his speeches and tone demonstrate, our President is that stupid.

But the American public is not. Fearful, perhaps. Cautious, certainly. But not deluded enough to see through his latest round of propaganda.

For example, the President claimed today that he signed into law the Detainee Treatment Act, proving that he does not support torture. Yet he failed to mention that his own signing statement reserved for him the option of ignoring the law as he saw fit! Americans are not too simple to catch that hypocritical deception.

The public understands that spin and speeches and fearmongering don’t compare to the facts, whether on the ground in Iraq or in the rubble of the Ninth Ward or in Presidential signing statements.

We have been losing the “War” in Iraq for several years now. The proof is simply the fact that we cannot provide security to the citizens of that country or our troops. Winning would include an increasing degree of security, and losing would include a decreasing degree of security. Thus we are losing and losing badly.

So when Bush and his party talk about “Staying the Course,” they are talking about staying the course of failure. They are talking about sticking with a loser. They want to keep the nation on the slow, grinding path of defeat.

When Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice compare our occupation to WWII or the Civil War or any other conflict, they insult our intelligence and our motives. It has become crystal clear to the rest of us that war is neither an effective nor moral response to terrorism.

It has also become clear that we have failed our own Gulf Coast citizens, most of whose shattered lives remain in limbo thanks to the inaction, ineptitude and incompetence of the Federal response.

The increasingly desperate rhetoric of the blind, deaf and dumb Bush Administration will do nothing to quell the legitimate anger of the public. This November, the voters are poised to take America in a new direction.