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Thursday, May 15, 2008
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 SOME GAVE ALL
In the six years since President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had concluded in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner that his administration paid for, then lied about, 4,000 American servicemen and women have lost their lives. For the first time that I'm aware of, over 95% of the causalities were suffered after a war was declared over. That's pretty impressive when you think about it.
It used to be that war demanded shared sacrifice. The soldiers went to fight and die and the civilian population gave up the luxuries of peacetime. Gasoline and sometimes food was rationed, wage and price controls were almost always imposed, and taxes were raised across the board to pay for the war, which is always an expensive exercise.
President George W. Bush knows this because, as his book reading competition with Karl Rove indicates, he is a serious student of history and military affairs. That's why in the days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he darkly asked the American people to make the ultimate sacrifice. He wanted you to go shopping. "Buy yourself something shiny," he seemed to say. "And for Christ's sake, don't pay attention. This is a job for Big Government."
And nobody really did pay attention. As everybody was obsessed with whether President Bush could actually spend more money and antagonize homosexuals more than even John Kerry, both Afghanistan and Iraq started sliding irretrievably into chaos.
Of course, dark and desperately dumb threats were made - and not just by the terrorist vermin who murdered 3,000 innocent people for no reason at all. The government began darkly intoning that if the unprecedented power accumulated by President Bush and Vice President Cheney were in any way minimized - even if only to reign the executive branch back within its constitutional limits - everybody would die violent and terrible deaths. To question the psychotically tyrannical USA Patriot Act was to invite the beheading of those you love most.
 And the only way these apocalyptic visions could be held at bay was to get yourself something pretty, like a Segway. After all, this is wartime and no one wants to be seen contradicting their commander-in-chief.
Perhaps no one sacrifices during a time of foreign conflict as does the president of the United States. For example, bankrupting an entire country is hard work and doesn't pay all that well. George W. Bush knows those better than most. He also knows that he could receive endless riches if he returned to the private sector and bankrupted companies one at a time, like he did before he entered government service. But President Bush is a patriot and he knows that his country needs him. Three trillion dollars doesn't just pointlessly spend itself and 60 years of American foreign policy has to be destroyed in a particularly reckless way.
But the president revealed this week that he's given up more than previously thought. That's right, he quit playing golf five years ago.
US President George W Bush has revealed that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.
"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said in an interview for Yahoo and Politico magazine.
"I don't want some mum whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them." Of course, he could have been in solidarity by reversing a criminally negligent policy of trying to occupy a country of full of crazy people who hate one another with a dangerously small military force, but that would be crazy talk. Besides, Rumsfeld wouldn't let him.
On the other hand, giving up golf gives him more time to express his quiet dignity and solidarity with the fallen through the power of dance.
Y'know, maybe I was wrong. Maybe - just maybe - George Walker Bush is everything that a president should be. Or he thinks it's Lent.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Dancing Days By: Led Zeppelin From: Houses of the Holy
PermalinkLabels: Fun With Politics
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