Paul Gowder's post, "End of Paranoia?", one of the featured articles at the Carnival of the Liberals, makes the amusing and accurate claim that the Bush administration has cured us of paranoid fantasies by enacting every shenanigan that we could only have dreamed up in our worst nightmare. Gowder forgot to mention the cure of one paranoid delusion that many of us thought we were suffering from - that Bush believes his presidency is a mission from God. The occasional messianic glint in his eyes and the crusading tone of his speech were not audio-visual illusions after all.
Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.
Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq !" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.''
But that was in private. In public now, George Bush is approaching the Iraq issue with a more sober voice although he still will not acknowledge that much of the devastation requiring reconstruction is the result of his own reckless and ill advised adventure. ( Dick Cheney, the bad cop to Bush's good one, maintains a much harder stance).
"Reconstruction has not always gone as well as we had hoped, primarily because of the security challenges on the ground," Bush said in a speech to foreign policy veterans. "Rebuilding a nation devastated by a dictator is a large undertaking. It's even harder when terrorists are trying to blow up that which the Iraqis are trying to build. The terrorists and Saddamists have been able to slow progress, but they haven't been able to stop it."
Some Democrats, meanwhile are terrified that being too critical of Bush's mistakes will cost them votes and are unnerved by comments made by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi. They can not decide which play book on Iraq they ought to follow - so with pathetic predictability, they are quibbling with each other. Hillary Clinton has wrapped herself in the flag. Sen Joe Lieberman, currently the most popular senator among Republican partisans is scolding his Democratic colleagues for criticizing President Bush. Congressman Jack Murtha steadfastly continues to call for a troop withdrawal. I fervently hope that the Democratic Party will come out with a coherent and firm message on Iraq about budget, timetable, milestones and a demand that the Bush administration award most of the reconstruction contracts to middle eastern companies (the gesture will be far more reassuring to the Arab heartland than Karen Hughes' clumsy blunderings through Islamic countries and the Pentagon planting paid "good news" stories in the Arab press). But at no time should the Dems stop reminding Americans about the hideous mistakes made by this bully administration - even if that strikes some as unpatriotic and churlish.
I am not one to quote poetry with flourish. But the bleak and exhausting story unfolding in Iraq calls for poetic validation. Thanks to one of Maurice Leiter's Friday Poems (Had I Only) on Leiter Reports, I recently discovered the writings of C.P. Cavafy and these apt sentiments in one of his poems.
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It's clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes forward in honor and self-assurance.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he would still say no. Yet that no - the right no -
undermines him all his life.
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