The first thing I noticed about this speech was the total lack of animation, or emotion with Bush's delivery of this speech. President Bush spoke in a dull, monotone voice--there was no passion, emotion, nothing. It was almost like the president was replaced by a robot--The New and Improved Bushatron 2000, complete with no emoticons! The president was looking into the camera like he was a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-truck.
Now let's look at the transcript of the speech. I'm going to pull some quotes out from the speech and comment on them. The text of the speech is from The New York Times:
The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.
Talk about an admission of guilt here! President Bush only now admits the responsibility for mistakes in Iraq six years into his presidency! The president is already well into his second term. The 2006 congressional midterm elections are over. And the next elections are for the 2008 presidency. This is way too little, way too late, and President Bush will get away with this without any punishment. But let's go back to that comment again--Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me. Where mistakes have been made. If you look at this Bush administration's past six years, and the past four years of the war in Iraq, President Bush has never admitted a mistake. What we get here is this vague comment of President Bush accepting responsibility for mistakes, if they've been made by the administration. And the Bush administration doesn't even know if mistakes have been made in this war. But if there have been mistakes, then where mistakes have been made, then the president will accept responsibility. There is a slick parsing of the language here--President Bush is accepting responsibility for mistakes in this Iraq war that he can't seem to find.
We benefited from the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group — a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton.
You've got to love how Bush talks about the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group." Of course, Bush tossed the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group in the trash. And now he's embracing the ISG report in order to market his escalation of the Iraq war.
The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow — would — would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On Sept. 11, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.
Remember the Domino Theory? It was a great little theory, proposed by the Eisenhower administration, to express the dangers of Communist expansion into Southeast Asia. The theory went like this. If Communist-backed "national liberation" movements succeeded in the nations of Vietnam, then Laos, and then Cambodia, these three nations would fall under de facto control of both Communist China, and the Soviet Union. The more Southeast Asian nations which fell under this Communist control, the greater the Communist threat was to neighboring countries, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and perhaps even spreading into Taiwan, Japan and Australia. It is like watching a line of dominos fall, even though you only knocked one end domino down. The only way to stop these nations from falling under Communist control was to take direct action against these Communist liberation movements. Thus, the Domino Theory was a major factor in prompting the United States to enter into the Vietnam War. There was just one problem with the Domino Theory--it never really occurred. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fell under Communist influence, but that was it--it never spread beyond those three nations in Southeast Asia.
Guess what--The Domino Theory is back! Radical Islamic extremists would grow — would — would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. The "radical Islamic extremists" would first take over Iraq, and then turn towards the moderate, peaceful Mideast nations of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Israel--spreading their Islamofascism throughout the Middle East, and then throughout the world. At least that is what George W. Bush wants you to believe. And the real nightmare scenario that Bush planted in this new Middle East Domino Theory is that the "radical Islamic extremists" would possess Iranian nuclear weapons. Remember Condi Rice's comment on a smoking gun turning into a mushroom cloud? They are using the same metaphor here. Only this time, President Bush is calling for an escalation of the Iraq war, and possibly a war with Iran, to keep nuclear weapons out of both Iran, and the "radical Islamic extremists." The Bush administration's original arguments for invading Iraq was to also keep Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.
Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured Al Qaeda document describes the terrorists’ plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring Al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq’s democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.
Anbar Province is an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab province in Iraq. While the political system in Anbar may have collapsed, allowing al Qaeda to fill this power vacuum, I would say that the situation in Anbar is far more complex. Anbar has become a province of chaos and anarchy, where control is diffused among al Qaeda terrorist groups, Iraqi Sunni insurgents, tribal leaders, and who knows what or who else is there. Each of these groups will have their own agenda in this lawless province--say, the Sunni insurgents would be more interested in attacking Shiites. But what we have here in Bush's speech is that al Qaeda is responsible for "taking down Iraq’s democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad." And Bush even claims to have a captured al Qaeda document which reveals this strategy. What Bush doesn't want to say is that the sectarian violence against Iraqis is being caused by Iraqis--Shiite Iraqis are fighting Sunni Iraqis. Instead, the American public is continually being fed the same PR-line of al Qaeda is responsible for the insurgency in Iraq.
Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.
We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.
If there is one set of comments by President Bush that really scare me, it is right here. I have not really seen any evidence of either the governments of Iran or Syria providing support for terrorists in Iraq--I could be wrong here. I have not seen any evidence of Iran providing support to terrorists or insurgents in Iraq. I know that both Syria and Iran have supported Palestinian militant groups that have engaged in terrorist attacks against Israel, but that is not Iraq.
We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.
Those three sentences sound like a Bush call to war against Iran. And President Bush is backing up that call by sending another carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf region. A U.S. attack against Iran will be a disaster of proportions that I can't comprehend. We don't have enough troops on the ground in Iraq to take on both Iraqi insurgents and the Iranian army, which numbers around 350,000. Then there is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Force, which was intended to guard the Iranian Revolution, and assist the Islamic clerics in the enforcement of the Iranian government's Islamic codes and morality. This force numbers between 100,000 to 350,000 with ground, air, and naval units. President Bush is looking at a potential attack against fresh Iranian military forces, where our own armed forces, and reserves, have been under the strain of Iraqi combat operations, and could end up breaking down.
This is not a winning strategy.
There are a few other minor comments that I found rather surprising. Consider this:
Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.
I wonder who the speechwriter was that put this in? There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship? How about a victory ceremony on the deck of an aircraft carrier? I'm sorry, Mr. President, but that victory ceremony on the deck of a battleship took place after the Japanese emperor Hirohito announced, on radio, that the Japanese government accepted the Allied conditions of the Potsdam Declaration, thus completing Japan's surrender to the Allies during the Second World War. Saddam never surrendered his country to the American forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Instead, he went into hiding. Saddam was finally captured on December 15, 2003--eight months after Bush made his "Mission Accomplished" speech. There is a big difference here between a government that surrenders its authority and sovereignty to an invader, and a government that goes into hiding after an invader takes control of the country--there is no surrender by that government to the invader. The nation, and its people, have not surrendered its sovereignty to that invader--look at the Sunni reaction to both Saddam's capture and his execution. Instead of a unified Iraqi population that accepts the surrender of Iraq's sovereignty to the U.S., we have a divided country along sectarian lines where the Shiites, who accept the toppling of Saddam's regime which results in their own ascendance to power in Iraq; the Sunnis, who oppose the complete Shiite rule out of fear that the Shiites will force the Sunnis into a permanent minority status in Iraq; and the Kurds, who move closer to their own goal of establishing an autonomous homeland for themselves. Of course, Bush is right about one thing--a U.S. victory in Iraq will not be like past victories our fathers and grandfathers achieved. Victory in Iraq will be more like a hollow victory of Vietnam, where politicians will boldly announce that victory has been achieved while the rest of America will know that the U.S. was soundly defeated.
And finally, I love President Bush's version of bipartisanship:
Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration. It will help strengthen our relationship with Congress.
Bipartisanship for Bush is Joe Lieberman, who is pretty much the Bush administration's lapdog regarding the Iraq war. Lieberman is a hawk, who completely supports President Bush's proposed troop surge. That is not true bipartisanship, where President Bush will have to seriously work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on forging a compromising position regarding a new U.S. war strategy for Iraq. This is the stale, Bush administration's version of bipartisanship--a rubber stamp.
I will say that this speech was another rehash of the same, tired, old policies that this Bush administration is trying to force upon the American public so that the Bush neocons can continue this war. This surge of American troops was another plan to keep the U.S. in Iraq until after 2008, where Bush can then shove this mess to his successor, claiming he did everything he could in this war. This surge of troops is just another attempt to salvage Bush's presidential legacy--let someone else take the fall for losing Iraq. But I've said that in previous posts. It is the same game of keeping these neocon extremist policies alive for the next two years, before the next election. That is the writing on the wall here--keep the war going until the next election. Keep the war going so that Bush can hand it off to the next president and save his legacy. Keep the war going so that the PNAC neocons can blame the next president for losing the war, and not following the neocon agenda. Keep the war going so that President Bush cannot be regarded as a failure.
Just keep the war going.
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