The madness of President George
The US political debate today has the feel of a Magritte painting or perhaps a Duchamp urinal; in other words, surreal.
Our president is so out of touch with reality he may possibly be mentally and emotionally disturbed. He is undertaking to escalate a failed war that has destroyed a functioning (albeit unfree) society, killed hundreds of thousands, maimed even more, cost trillions, spawned hatred everywhere, strengthened the hands of the West's enemies and destablized an entire region. And he is doing so against the opposition of most of the country, his own generals, the winning side in the last election, the Backer commission - meaning his own daddy - and all of America's allies.
What's more, he's doing so on behalf of a plan that even its proponents do not expect to work. (The authors of the plan, Frederick Kagan and John Keane have said "It is difficult to imagine a responsible plan for getting the violence in and around Baghdad under control that could succeed with fewer than 30,000 combat troops beyond the forces already in Iraq."
And yet Bush proposed barely more than 20,000 and failed to understand, at least so that anyone could understand, what they would be doing that we haven't tried before. Ditto the happy talk; George W Bush: "Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace."
It would be absurd if it were a movie - say, "The Madness of President George" - but since it's real, it's a tragedy - a tragedy many hundreds of thousands of times over that so many people will lose their loved one's owing to the vanity, ignorance, extremism and egomania of one small group of delusional individuals. (And by the way, this might be a good time to ask what's up with your Tony Blair. Is there no amount of this man's metaphorical feces he will not swallow and call it chocolate ice cream?)
So what's going to happen here? Well, first we're going to get a lot of standard semiotical analysis n which we are instructed about how Bush looked and felt as he drove his nation futher off its cliff. For instance, Newsweek's Howard Fineman on MSNBC: "I have never seen [George W Bush], in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky." Or Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "The plan, outlined by the president in stark, simple tones in a 20-minute speech from the White House library, is vintage George Bush -- in the eyes of admirers, resolute and principled; in the eyes of critics, bull-headed, even delusional, about the prospects for success in Iraq".
The politics, for once, are unpredictable. Despite the position of most of the country and virtually every Democrat and independent, Democrats are divided about the potential political costs of trying to cut off funding for the fiasco. Of the '08ers, so far Edwards and Kerry say yes, Clinton says no, and Obama says he'll think about it. Republicans are also divided between trying to run away and calling those who recognize reality "traitors".
(On Fox News, anchor Gretchen Carlson called Sen Ted Kennedy (D-MA) a "hostile enemy" of the United States because he has demanded that Congress vote on whether to approve funding for escalation in Iraq. In an interview with White House counselor Dan Bartlett, Carlson compared Kennedy to insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, saying that Kennedy represented the same kind of force "right here on the home front."
My fear, expessed best by Harold Meyerson, is that Bush will further double down on disaster by expanding the war into Iran. Bush hinted at this last night. And he gives every indication of having no connection to reality, but many to his own twisted notions of his God-appointed role in Biblical prophecy.
If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention.
Termed "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today” in the National Catholic Reporter, and author of “the smartest and funniest political journal out there” in the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Alterman is professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
He is also the “Liberal Media” columnist for the Nation, the Altercation weblogger for MSNBC.com, and a contributor to the Huffington Post.
He is a senior fellow at both the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, for which he writes and edits the Think Again column, and the World Policy Institute at New School University in New York.
He wrote the national bestsellers:
What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003, 2004),
The Book on Bush: How George W (Mis)leads America (with Mark Green, 2004).
His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and his It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001) won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award.
Alterman is also the author of Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy (1998). His newest book is When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences (2004, 2005).
A frequent lecturer and contributor to virtually every significant national publication in the US and many in Europe in recent years, he has also been a columnist for Worth, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and the Sunday Express. A former adjunct professor of journalism at NYU and Columbia, Alterman received a BA in history and government from Cornell, an MA in international relations from Yale and a PhD in US history from Stanford.
He lives with his family in Manhattan, where he is at work on a history of postwar American liberalism and a history of the rock‘n’roll business.
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