Bush to America: Go To Hell

George Bush refuses to accept the will of the American people. Despite polls showing overwhelming support for a timetable for phased withdrawal from Iraq, the President and his embattled, scandal-scarred inner circle continue to defend the course of their grotesquely mismanaged war by implying that their fellow citizens are traitors.

Every day, whether from the floor of Congress or TV talk-shows, the few remaining Bush dead-enders continue to question the patriotism of the Democrat’s plan, including anyone who supports it, labeling the entire enterprise “defeatist” while claiming it impossible to support both the troops and withdrawal. But the divisiveness of this tactic smacks of McCarthyism and its logic seems blatantly disingenuous.

It’s a plain fact that soldiers who disagree with our mission in Iraq—or aren’t even sure what the real mission is nowadays—feel supported knowing that their fellow citizens are trying to bring them home. In the view of many, a timetable for withdrawal is supporting our troops.

And calling withdrawal “defeatist” ignores another sad fact. We have already been defeated. Not just by bombs or terrorists, but by the historic blunders of our own civilian leadership. By ignoring the cultural realities of Iraq and invading without a robust plan to secure the country, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others all but ensured the outcome we now face. Their ignorance and incompetence let the Chaos Genie out of the bottle, and an extra twenty thousand troops won’t come close to putting it back.

We may never know what it would take to restore order in Baghdad because we have never been able to maintain order in Baghdad. If securing Baghdad has been the objective, we have been failing almost from day one. And Americans understand this. They understand that asking a few hundred thousand soldiers who don’t speak the language and don’t understand the customs or culture to police an entire nation is a recipe for failure, especially when that “nation” is actually an artificial fusion of three radically different tribal communities with long-standing hatreds and grievances.

A new zenith of Presidential arrogance and defiance will occur this evening when George Bush vetoes broadly supported legislation that ties further Iraq war funding to a phased withdrawal. His administration’s bruised but stubborn ego will continue to cling to a failed policy, even if he has to tell the vast majority of voting citizens, including our soldiers, to go to hell.

- JT Compton

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