I’m no longer resentful of the President and his embodiment of a closed-minded xenophobic, neophobic, religiously zealous, segment of the population. I just think he is pathetic. His entire message this evening was that of a shallow, simpleton defending his actions as successful and righteous in the face of overwhelming evidence of their ongoing failure and his faith in what would seem to be the false God of American-brand Liberty under Capitalism.
The re-orientation of the ‘mission’ in Iraq away from a preemption of a rogue state using weapons of mass destruction to a preemption of asymmetric non-governmental network tribes from establishing a lawless environment in Iraq as a base of operations was delivered without acknowledging the irony that had we not removed the legitimate government of Iraq in the first place, we wouldn’t have to preempt anything.
The selection of Ft. Bragg as the venue for the speech, rather than the traditional Oval Office setting for an address to the Nation, underscored, I think, a largely rhetorical connection between the President and his cohort and the average American on the street. One only needs to appear more ‘homey’ or ‘compassionate’ when one actually lacks such convictions. Delivering what amounts to a pep talk to a room full of special ops troops as a way to show that things are ‘OK’ in Iraq and that the war is going well, is no different than standing in the firefighters at Ground Zero and promising vengeance on those who attacked the building. It is no different than wrapping one’s self in the American flag and proclaiming, in essence, if you believe in the flag and all it stands for, you must believe in me and all I stand for, since here I am with the flag. It is pathetic. It is weak. It is offensive. I have a hard time imagining something less Presidential.