What beats me, Bush, reading extracts from your latest speeches in Salt Lake City and Idaho to rally support for your war, is where you find the balls to keep repeating the same old platitudes we’ve heard a hundred times before. And how do you manage get away with it? Oh, I know you have nothing but hand-picked audiences, prepped to roar approval at your every word. But how can you believe this tired old pablum yourself? How can you repeat it with apparent sincerity and conviction?
You say, for example, with a straight face—well, not exactly straight: you can never quite conceal that smug little smirk—that the constitution in Iraq is a "landmark event" in the Middle East. "Producing a constitution is a difficult process," you say, with your customary knack at wild oversimplification: "We know this from our own history. Our Constitutional Convention was home to political rivalries and disagreements."
Oh? Like the differences between Sunnis and Shiite Muslims? And the Kurds? The disagreements between those who want, passionately, to backtrack a millennium, and those who are committed, with equal passion, to join the twentieth century? Between those who want to keep women under wraps, and those who want to set them free from the tradition of restraint? Between those sitting on a wealth of oil and those sitting on empty stretches of desert sand? And the centuries of hatred and mutual mistrust? How can you eke a comparison out of this?
And this Iraqi constitution, I have to say it, Bush, if it does get written and signed to meet an arebitrary deadline, is nothing more than a shotgun wedding demanded by the United States. The absurd haste with which it’s being pushed through bears not the slightest resemblance to the drafting of the Constitution in this country, and it’s disingenuous in the extreme for you to pretend it does.
And that’s not even to mention your continuing misrepresentation of the progress and prospects of your war. The media yesterday reported newly daring raids by the insurgents, a whole new tactic, a "rain of bullets in broad daylight." Your rosy assessments of progress and of the potential for a peaceful, working democracy sound increasingly hollow, Bush; and increasingly far removed from the realities we read about in the press and witness nightly on our television screens. Next time you make a speech, I for one ask that your words be honest and credible in the light of the realities as we know them Is this too much to ask?
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3 comments:
The real value, to me, of small groups discussing issues is, that every now and then, a rare fact or idea ignites something in one or all of our minds, that is potentially powerful. if any of us recognizes such a moment, we know the right people to get the idea to.
From a Chinese teaching: One may sit in his room, but if his words are well spoken, they can be heard for more than a thousand miles.
Contrary to what 'anonymous' thinks.
I am also struck by the literary research aspect of what you are doing with this journal. It's a great tradition and valuable for people to study our times, later.
Gah,
I pray for the day when people can actually come to one of those little presidential get togethers without having to sign a loyalty oath with their own blood first. I mean really, whenever he actually gets asked a REAL question, (on the rare occassions that it's happened) the reaction is always the same....there's a 10 second pause with a deer caught in the headlights look, followed by 5 seconds of intense blinking like a mental patient, 2 seconds of lip-licking and finally a lop-sided smirk followed by either a reference to freedom or 9/11. Man...just 5 minutes in the room with this f***er....Cindy's right, I don't think even he believes the sh*t coming out of his own mouth.
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