THE BUSH TRAGEDY-"Botched Search To Clarify World Affairs & A Dencent Into Messianism"

Sins of the Son
An attempt to penetrate the family drama behind George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq.
Reviewed by Michael Getler
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page BW03

THE BUSH TRAGEDY


Yet Weisberg also provides a broad, dark, nuanced way of thinking about why we went to war -- a value that far outweighs his amateur shrink and converted believer status. "Act One of the Bush Tragedy," he writes, was "the son's struggle to be like his dad until the age of forty." Act Two was "his growing success over the next fifteen years as he learned to be different." And the "conclusive third act" has been a "botched search for a doctrine to clarify world affairs" and a "progressive descent into messianism."

The "final irony" of Bush's disastrous venture into Iraq, Weisberg argues, is that "it vindicated his father's choices," particularly the elder Bush's decisions in 1990-91 to force Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from neighboring Kuwait but not to topple the Iraqi dictator, for fear of setting off a violent power struggle among Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. Because exactly such a struggle has occurred since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Weisberg writes, what once looked like Bush 41's failure to finish the job "now looked like an act of wisdom. . . . Appreciating the value of stability now sounded like maturity. Avoiding needlessly bellicose rhetoric seemed like common sense." And so a son who wanted a parental "acknowledgement that he, not (brother) Jeb, was the outstanding son" and "who tried to vindicate his family by repudiating his father's policies ended up doing the opposite of what he intended."

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From a military standpoint, at least, things do seem to be getting better in Iraq, and that improvement could grow into something more positive than most critics could have imagined a few months ago. On the other hand, no matter how Iraq turns out, it doesn't alter the manner in which this country was taken to war under false premises based on false intelligence stated with false certainty. Nor will it change the incompetence with which that war has been managed, or its huge cost in lives, treasure and reputation.

The Bush Tragedy is a relentless indictment not just of the president but of his surrogate family members as well -- Vice President Dick Cheney and top political adviser Karl Rove, in particular. Weisberg does not depict the president as Cheney's puppet, even on Iraq -- though he does contend that the vice president recognizes Bush's need "to make himself his father's antithesis." He sees Cheney's cardinal sin as pushing Bush toward open-ended claims of executive authority and privilege. As for Rove, Weisberg argues that he "put an indelible political stamp on the War on Terror" by seizing on the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to generate a political realignment that would keep the GOP in power for many years. Reinforcing Bush's worst instinct by politicizing the war was Rove's greatest disservice, ensuring that Bush would lose the ability to pull the country together, Weisberg says.

more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/18/ST2008011801413.html

"Bwaaa ha ha ha ha. You were maybe expecting something else from a cabal of corrupt republicon chickenhawks. Smirk. Bwaa ha ha ha ha. Suckers. Smirk."

- Commander AWOL

He's a basically stupid man who has grown up coddled in a rich kid's cocoon with no awareness of ordinary people's lives. He's surrounded by advisers who have been evil and conniving all their lives, and he's neither smart enough nor ethical enough to do anything but follow their advice.

(paraphrasing) "With commander cuckoo bananas in charge. . . anything is possible."

system is.