NBC News: The "Defining, Pivotal Moment" on the Iraq War



The unbelievably filthy handling of this Second Iraq War by that ever self-interested Organization Man Donald Rumsfeld has never been fully adressed by this President. After the Rumsefeld-induced Congressional beating at the November 2006 elections, the Secretary was quietly replaced -- after an astonishingly gymnastic rhetorical reversal -- and nothing more was said. If only Rumsfeld had prosecuted the Iraq War with the overwhelming intensity which he brought to his personal quixotic battles with the Pentagon bureaucracy ...

It is, perhaps, a tragedy of catastrophic proportions that the recent injection of the hugely competent General Petraeus and new SecDef Robert Gates may be far too late to turn the tide of a war which Bush the Elder wisely passed on. Tim Russert, the Dean of the Washington journo Establishment, last night on NBC Nightly News stressed the intensity of yesterday's Republican Moderates meeting-confrontation with President George Bush.

If the Presidential election were held today, the Democrats would win. Easily. As it is, campaign contributions -- usually the protected province of the Republican Party -- are flowing, like water, into Democratic coffers. The Republican Party, always tempermentally loyal with a strong vertical hierarchy, is in grave jeopardy in its continuing backing of this praetenaturally stubborn President.


Of course this Stubbornness is borne in reaction to Bill Clinton, who defeated his father, and was -- by modern Presidential standards -- unnaturally influenced by polls. Bush the Younger, who, Hamlet-like, felt existentially called-upon to avenge his father's unexpected defeat -- is almost wholly in reaction to Clinton's triangulated presidency. As a result, he is the "Gut President," governed almost wholly by his "Instincts," howver flawed they are.

Every white politician secretly desires to be Winston Churchill -- the grusome Giuliani, quite pathetically, has even affected something approximating a Churchillian strut (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). The current president is no different. But this war cannot be prosecuted by repeating rhetorically dead lines, or falling back lazily on rah-rah speeches in the Southern and Western congressional which are suffused with military bases and whose support is never in doubt. Churchill -- or a skillful Churchill impersonator -- gave radi addresses that unified Mid-century Britain in the Hour of the Wolf. That is what made Churchill Churchill.

This President, as the eloquent Frank Luntz mourns, has done nothing rhetorically of the sort. In fact, with the aid of his Divisive enabler Karl Rove, he has cleft America in twain and squandered his "political capital," to such a morbid degree that he is presently in the process of decimating the Moderate wing of the Republican Party (Remember Lincoln Chaffee?).

Responsible people who understand politics deeply know that an unmitigated and immediate withdrawal from Iraq is Daffy Duck logic. No one wants another Fall of Saigon. But we need an adult President, one who is willing and able to give mature grown-up press conferences and radio adresses as to the progress of the war and our aim. We have seen precious goddam little of that up until this moment.