The chronically no-fault White House and its no-fault President were on their no-fault roll again around the country. George W. Bush, the Commander-in-Chief of the politics of non-faultism-went on another redundant symbolic trip to Katrina land. There, near the wreckage that even now is much of New Orleans, he announced: “I take full responsibility for the federal government’s response.”
Politicians often resort to such “full responsibility” language when they know no one can impose any real accountability-in this case for a continuing cascade of Bush’s governmental blunders, incompetence, corrupt contracting and fundamental dereliction of duty. All these abysmal failures are occurring in spite of the many billions of dollars made available by Congress for rebuilding and critical services.
Month after month, the same pictures of huge swaths of the devastated city dominate television news programs. Half of the population of New Orleans has not returned because there is still nothing to return to. Most of the hospitals are still closed.
Thousands of trailers purchased for the people who lost their homes are still parked, undistributed along the affected Gulf regions, in Hope, Arkansas-the hometown of Bill Clinton. Your 400 million tax dollars at work.
If George W. Bush heard one message from the bone-weary residents during his trip again and again, it was the question, “Mr. President, are you going to turn your back on me?” “Not again,” he replied to one witness. And then off he flew to the ranch at Crawford before taking off again to visit cities sounding his anti-terrorism theme. A theme he is hoping will win for the Republicans in the November mid-term elections.
Polls and other indicators show that he is losing ground. More and more Americans are going with the majority who don’t believe him on Iraq and not just his fabricated arguments for the boomeranging invasion of 2003. They don’t believe the Iraq war is: worth the cost; worth the distraction from the problems here at home, or has anything to do with the terrorism he invokes when he speaks of 9/11.
This past week the President-obsessively-compulsed with his disastrous war policies-chose assemblies of veteran groups to reach new depths of historical hysteria. He compared the struggle against “Islamic extremists” to the battles against Nazism and Communism.
Consider this grotesque exaggeration. The Nazis launched an expansionist world war against numerous countries with what was then the most powerful military machine in the world. They slaughtered many millions of civilians. The Soviet communists possessed multiple nuclear capabilities which could destroy the United States in an hour-as the U.S. could do to them. Does George W. Bush have any idea what his prepared cue cards are telling him to utter?
The thrust of the opposition to the U.S. in the Middle East is to get the U.S. out of their land, their oil resources, and to stop backstopping the Israeli occupations of Arab land and control of precious Arab water in Palestine and Syria. Many in the Middle East want an end to the decades long military, political and diplomatic support of what they see as dictatorships over their own people.
As Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld each said once in the aftermath of 9/11, dictatorships, destitution, poverty and hopelessness are breeding grounds for the emergence of terrorists. But Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld are not following the logic of such a recognition in perpetuating their failed and perilous policies overseas.
Inside the Bush Administration-from the General Casey to then CIA Director, Porter Goss-to outside the government among prominent former Generals, Ambassadors and intelligence officials, there is the realization that our military presence in Iraq is a recruiting magnet for training more and more young men for violent sabotage.
Many of the retired government officials, who have served under Republican and Democratic Administrations, have spoken out. They have written articles, given media interviews, co-signed letters, testified and some have marched in protest. But they’re not yet ready to say publicly that Bush and Cheney should resign for their disastrous performances against the interests of the United States and its position in the world.
The Bush regime simply has no standards for failures in its operations because it has no intention of ever admitting their failures and changing course. The no-fault-Bush and Cheney have every intention of continuing the loss of the lives of American soldiers and the bloody casualties among Iraqis until they hand the situation in Iraq over to their successors in January 2009. Mr. Bush has said as much a few weeks ago.
He will never withdraw our troops and close our military bases no matter what the cost to our country and its ignored critical necessities here at home.
So, taking the lead in full page advertisements in The New York Times is a new group by the name of The World Can’t Wait. They are not waiting for Congress to impeach Bush. They want a mass mobilization to make Bush/Cheney resign. Richard Nixon resigned and Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned for causes far less momentous than the crimes of these stubborn recidivists in control of our federal government.
In one of his desperate rhetorical reaches last week, Mr. Bush assailed his critics as “blaming American first.” No, Mr. Bush, a growing majority of Americans are blaming you-George W. Bush-not America. Every day you demonstrate how you are ruining America.
Accept your responsibility at long last and retire to Texas along with Mr. Cheney, as an act of mercy.
