Brave Words

I saw some parts of your Veteran's Day speech replayed on television last night, Bush; and read more in the newspaper today. Brave words, attacking those who dare to question your wisdom on the invasion of Iraq and the conduct of the war. Now it's the Democrats at fault, who "had the same intelligence" and voted for the invasion (not quite accurate, since you had much more of the intelligence at your disposal, along with the ability to pick and choose what you wanted to be made available; and had the power to influence the very nature of the intelligence that was generated by your agents.)

What struck me once again, however, was the disconnect between the words you spoke and the manner in which you spoke them. I realize, of course, that Presidents themselves write little of what they say in public, especially in formal speeches like yesterday's. It's all written down for you by experts--in writing and communication as well as in political spin. But unlike other Presidents before you--Ronald Reagan is the prime example--the words seem to come as uncomfortably from your lips as those of a child in a fourth grade reading class; as though they were strange and foreign things, whose meaning was not quite clear to you, but which you are called upon to utter despite your discomfort with them. Your conviction always seems to be at an odd remove from the words.

Now I choose to believe that this is because you are at heart a simple, credulous and essentially gullible man, with a poorly developed sense of his own strengths and weaknesses, and that you know the words they write for you to be misleading and untrue. At the same timne, the disconnect between you and the words you are given to speak reflects some truth about yourself. I choose to believe you are caught in an immensely complex web of lies that others have been creating for you since long before you were elected, in their militaristic pursuit of economic power in the world, and that you can no longer extricate yourself. I believe that under all the swagger you have some inner consciousness (perhaps more accurately, an unconscious realization) that you have been nothing more than a tool in their hands, and that you have no choice now but to speak the words they write for you. I believe--have always believed--that you are simply out of your depth in an ocean of secretive and powerful currents that sweep you along in a course that they, not you, determine.

I have to add, Bush, that my suspicion continues to center on your Cheney and his neo-conservative cabal. I watched your Darth Vader lay his wreath at Arlington in the Veteran's Day ceremony yesterday, and my stomach turned. How could this man approach the tomb with such a pompous display of reverence, when he himself--and this is the conspiracy theory I subscribe to--was largely instrumental in sending so many to their unnecessary deaths? Talk about irresponsible, Bush! You throw that word at the Democrats who have finally found the guts to raise some difficult and important questions. But you turn a blind eye to the immeasurable irresponsibility of those who, through you, both conceived, incompetently planned, and conducted this dreadful war.

Fire the lot of them, Bush. Your Cheney, your Rumsfeld, your Rice. All of those people who led you so wickedly astray. That action, and only that action, would give you the credibility to turn this thing around and regain the confidence of the American people that you are, as you say, a "leader." But at the level of my own deepest intuition, I don't believe that you're capable of this, because it is they who have enlisted you in their service, and not the other way around. It is they who lead. The rest of us have simply followed them into disaster.