We all had a good laugh when that CNN anchor unwittingly provided ladies room commentary while George W. Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans last week. But toilets flushing is exactly what the president’s speech deserved. The Year After Katrina speech was an effort to wipe away another monumental failure of this administration. As difficult as it is to wipe away the debacle of Katrina, Mr. Bush faces an even more daunting task in repackaging the Iraq War as a success.
Despite the fact the president admits there was no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, the Iraq War has been re-christened the "Global War on Terrorism." Out with Hussein, in with the Islamo fascists. Out with the WMDs, in with the strategic importance of Iraq. This war has a new justification every six months, like an ad campaign for the same old toothpaste in a brand-new box.
As a measure of Mr. Bush’s desperation, he is holding more press conferences and allowing those one-on-one interviews with network anchors he hates so much. He has met with the media only a fraction of the time of his father and Bill Clinton — despite the fact the nation is at war. Now you can see the president with Brian Williams. See him help give Katie Couric new gravitas. He also is planning a series of 10 speeches on Iraq. These are not political, the president says with a straight face, but in the next breath proceeds to dump the blame for the Iraq fiasco on his political opponents. "Why can’t every Democrat be like Joe Lieberman?" he seems to be saying. You, the American public, also come in for your share of the blame. It is your responsibility to support your president. You don’t appear to fully appreciate that Mr. Bush is really Winston Churchill. Get yourself some backbone.
The November mid-term elections promise to be a day of reckoning and Republicans sense disaster. Mr. Bush knows he pretty much had carte blanche to run the Iraq War any way he wanted. The problem wasn’t that Congress didn’t give him everything he needed; It wasn’t that members of the media (this columnist included) held his feet to the fire; It is that we were all too compliant. It was only after all of us saw there was no strategy once we ousted Saddam Hussein, that opposition began to form. There was never a moment that stands out more than when the president, dressed like "Top Gun," preened on the deck of an aircraft carrier with the Mission Accomplished banner.
It was only after we found out the administration slimed our proud military tradition by sanctioning the use of torture that we balked. It was only after we found out it was subverting our laws by inventing new ones and bypassing its own Republican Congress that we rose up and protested. On this last point, it is Mr. Bush, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman who have been most cynical. Democrats and Republicans joined to castigate the administration, using the war to make an imperial presidency. The president knows most members of Congress on both sides support reasonable measures to prevent terrorist attacks at home. What they don’t support is Mr. Bush playing fast and loose with the Constitution.
Mr. Bush makes it a point to brag about the way we have adapted our strategy to fight the war. Even the president can’t pretend "staying the course" can work anymore, so even that policy has been repackaged. What is this big shift in strategy? Mr. Bush increased the number of troops in Baghdad by shifting them from the surrounding countryside. For a brief time, the administration went around boasting of a decrease in casualties, but soon the killing increased again. Let’s not forget, he accomplished it by reactivating some Marine Reserve units. Marines who thought they were done with this war.
At this point, it is legitimate to ask whether this president is really so isolated from reality and whether he has become delusional on the subject of Iraq. Nary a peep out of Mr. Bush about the civil war in which he has embroiled our troops. Does he expect the Shia and Sunnis to make a formal announcement on the day civil war has officially begun in Iraq? His generals have learned you either tell this president what he wants to hear or you are outta here. Someone should ask the president what his criteria are for deciding whether it is or is not a civil war.
But wait, if most of the killing in Iraq is done not by al-Qaeda but homegrown Shia and Sunnis, then Iraq could not be part of the "global war on terror" and Mr. Bush’s latest argument for the war is bogus.
The president will get his answer from the voters in November: Flush it!
