Not surprisingly, given that the report is at first blush a sober and damning assesment of Bush's monumental cock up, but on further review is a Readers Digest report full of truisms and assumptions presented as fact and nostrums lacking any mechanism for actually being brought to fruition. It's just like those teevee commercials, you know the ones where the girl works 5 hours a week and makes 2 grand, but we have no idea how this is accomplished, but it does happen and don't you worry about the picyune little details, just buy the book. Well, in this case, that's what we have, a book being sold by teevee and the beltway media.
That's why you have this curious campaign that seems as much focused on the stars as the recommendations. Why do they talk so much about how well the group got along, how they checked partisanship at the door, like they had this bonding kumbayah moment and must share it with the world. Since they don't really have product, since the report says the same thing I said last week, get everybody together and then have Iran and Syria get the insurgents to get along and train a bunch more police and everything will be wonderful, as if 3 years of fighting can be overcome because they wrote the script for it this time.
As if the dead and wounded, the families torn apart, the devastation, the hatred and torture and bullets and drill holes can be undone via the agency of pages from a book
Maybe that's it, they think that they can prove to the Democrats by example, that they should strive for bi-partisanship, for the "center," if they want to solve the country's problems. Or not.
Maybe it's just what it is, foma for America, or at least Bush America, while George W Bush continues to stay the course but with his left hand on the steering wheel instead of his right (no political significance, that's all we got!), and the looting of Iraq can follow to completion, and as the looting of the American Treasury can continue unabated, and the Grovers prove how useless government really is.
Perhaps the biggest irony of the Bush-is-incompetent frame is that these "failures" — Iraq, Katrina and the budget deficit — have been successes in terms of advancing the conservative agenda.
One of the goals of Conservatives is to keep people from relying on the federal government. Under Bush, FEMA was reorganized to no longer be a first responder in major natural disasters, but to provide support for local agencies. This led to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Now citizens, as well as local and state governments, have become distrustful of the federal government's capacity to help ordinary citizens. Though Bush's popularity may have suffered, enhancing the perception of federal government as inept turned out to be a conservative victory.
The Iraq Study Group, chaired by the Bush Family Fixer, and the Democratic Chief Enabler and Blind Man, yeah, there's a prescription for a real roadmap for a solution of our illegal war and occupation of Iraq.
2 comments:
The FDL quote is correct, the goal is to solidify the distrust of government by making government untrustworthy. And you make gov't untrustworthy by appointing cronies in oversight positions and instruct the cronies to suspend oversight. Conservatives hate democracy, because it gives everyone equal rights, and denies the rich the elite position they think is their birthright.
I am of the opinion that this president is such a coward that he may just take up the ISG on some of its suggestions, then when the suggestions fail - as has everything else, turn around and say,"See, we knew they wouldn't work, but you all wanted us to do this. So Iraq isn't our fault anymore. It's their's. (meaning the ISG)." That way, in his little mind, he gets out from underneath the Iraq mess being his legacy. He can't think beyond his lifetime and how history books will see him. He is the worst president ever, but for many reasons.
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