Bush and Cheney Hit the Bricks
Colin Powell, talking about his schedule for a tell-all book skewering the Bush Iraq effort
History is written by the winners.
It’s time to get some winners into the White House.
It’s time for the losers in Iraq to step aside: Bush and Cheney.
Right now.
The Bush administration signaled its defeat in the battle to define the significance of the Iraq war when it decided — either out of desperation or the fatal lack of moral and intellectual imagination that has doomed this presidency — to impugn the patriotism of its critics.
These critics apparently number about 60% of the US population, a chunk of voters that even the notoriously wedge-happy brinksmanship of Karl Rove would normally think twice about alienating.
Bush is no longer driving the Iraq story with bravado, body counts, and photo-ops. He’s been forced to yield the initiative to his critics and react to the non-stop, serial disparagement of his presidency and his war.
That’s what losers do.
Call it bold, unscrupulous, quixotic, or courageous. But call it the howl of the defeated, of a White House that has no viable options, that has lost the aura of success and the ability to impose its version of events.
All it can do is bitch, impotently and viciously.
If that’s the best it can do, the Bush presidency is doomed.
Cheney hit the nail on the head when he fulminated about people “rewriting history” on Iraq.
What’s really happened is that the people who thought they had won the war in Iraq — and would be able to have their favorite cover stories immortalized in history as fact — are facing the unraveling of the enterprise, a re-examination of their roles, actions, and statements, and possible jail time.
The administration is still trying to play the winner.
But when your defense of the decision making process that took us to war is “We weren’t lying, we were just stupid and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor”, the war is already lost.
It looks like manipulation of intelligence, inadequate troop levels, de-Baathification, Abu Grahib, and suicidal unilateralism will be featured as chapter headings and not consigned to grudging footnotes when the history of Iraq gets laid down.
And the Bush administration looks more and more like the bitter loser who is described in terms of amazement and contempt by bemused historians, not the complacent winner who gets to laud his own achievements and minimize his errors with all due modesty.
Colin Powell will probably write the big, fat book that defines the accepted view of the Iraq debacle, not the illiterate Bush and his preferred amanuensis, Bob Woodward.
Because mistakes were made. Important mistakes, costly and bloody ones, not only in selling the war but executing it.
Big, fatal mistakes.
The current crisis is not about misuse of intel or borderline-criminal viciousness in stifling dissent.
It’s because the war is recognized as a mistake, and all the crap and lies that could be forgiven if we were sitting on top of the world in Baghdad (and Damascus and Teheran) is unforgivable as the disgusting prelude to a truly colossal screw-up.
Bush has exclusive ownership of the Iraq war — a valuable asset at one time, but now a deadly liability — and there’s nobody around to shift the blame to.
His other option — abjectly admitting he lied his ass off, totally fucked up, and has sole custody of a bastard war that is the worst US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam — is simply a quicker way to political suicide.
Every time Bush tries to open his mouth to explain away the deception and negligence laid at his feet, he only reminds people that he is trying to defend a war — and a presidency — that people have already made up their minds about.
More than that, he is trying to get the American people to take the word of a loser for what happened.
Losers don’t get to write history, George. They end up in the dustbin of history…or in front of a war crimes tribunal.
Or maybe get eased out of office before their term is up.
Iraq is not the problem.
Bush is the problem. Not only because he is incapable and mendacious.
Because he is mired in denial. And his floundering attempts to recover some shred of political credibility and clout from the current mess — thereby obstructing any emerging national consensus on dealing with Iraq — will simply put Bush’s core competency for failure more nakedly on display.
And I think that, on both sides of the aisle, the interest in allowing continued drift in our billion dollar a week Iraq adventure, just so that Jr. can try to save his worthless, lame-duck ass, is dwindling more quickly than a snowball in Crawford.
My humble suggestion:
Propose that Bush and Cheney immediately step down and be replaced by a government of national unity: McCain as president and Kerry as vice president.
I know — re-frigging-diculous. But hear me out.
No problemo constitutionally, I think. McCain replaces Dennis Hastert as speaker of the house, gets the top spot when Bush and Cheney take the last helicopter ride to scumbag limbo, chooses Kerry as veep.
The momentum behind the idea would simply be that we just can’t afford three more years of Bush — three more years of drift and desperation. He’s totally discredited, his administration has been rendered dysfunctional by corruption, legal problems, and Bush’s burgeoning paranoia, and he lacks the character and ability to turn things around even if he hadn’t totally painted himself into a bloody corner with lies and cover-ups.
Get the dumb dude from Crawford and the lumpy, snarling lardmound out of Washington and replace them with some guys who have some national cred and some institutional standing with the legislative branch.
As a bonus: McCain and Kerry promise not to run for president in 2008. Given my reservations about Kerry, that’s almost enough justification for the whole scheme by itself.
The Congress would love it. Freed from the incubus of Karl Rove and the onerous job of dealing with George’s screwups, lies, and posturing, it could spend three years haggling gleefully over pork and positioning its favored candidates for presidential runs.
The American public, I think, would give the new team a thumbs up, a welcome sign that the pols in Washington are willing to confront and deal with a crisis instead of bickering over partisan advantage.
McCain and Kerry could certainly do a better job than Bush and, if the two caucuses in Congress could work together, who knows, maybe something good gasp could even get accomplished.
Just the idea that people might start talking about Bush and Cheney resigning gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
The more I think about it, the better I like it.
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
