The President’s speech sounded a lot better on radio than it looked on TV. Bush was trying to be measured and serious, but he came off as looking sedated on TV. One could easily tell that he didn’t particularly want to be there. Of course, considering the news he must be faced with, I would rather be doing anything other than taking the questions from the media.
The substance of his speech wasn’t anything we didn’t already know. The US isn’t going to roll over for the UN, especially since countries such as France are essentially feeding Saddam’s war machine while he rapes and tortures his people. What moral authority do they have when they’re bankrolling genocide? Since when did the UN become this saintly organization that has the right to decide the foreign policy of the United States. Bush says it never did, and he’s right on that point. If the UN wants to be a real agency for international peace they should start acting like one. If they want to coddle Fidel, Muhammar, and Saddam, then they have no moral or ethical basis, and should be done away with. The UN has now become the League of Nations, no matter how much Europe complains.
I think Bush knows the score. He knows that France, Germany, Russia, and China don’t want Saddam Hussein removed. They want their own power, and they want to have access to the Iraqi market for their weapons technology. I think he knows that the sense of moral superiority displayed by many in the anti-war crowd is a baseless sham. I think he knows much, much more than he can tell without endangering lives. That weight shows. If Bush is a cowboy, he’s a damn introspective cowboy. This isn’t someone who is sending American and British troops into the desert to die for oil or because Saddam tried to kill his Dad. It’s because he sees a threat that the world cannot or will not see.
When all is said and done about this war, I think Bush will be judged more favorably by history than those whose partisanship and blind dislike would ever even consider.
The speech was weary and monotonous, using September 11 repeatedly as justification for imposing terror on a regime that took no part in those attacks and who has been made irrelevant by a containment policy, with no signs to indicate that policy should be abandoned in favor of venturing into the uncharted territory of “pre-emptive war”.
Your own self-interest, or at least the self-interest of the Republican party dogma, shines just as brightly in your rhetoric as the self-interests of France, Germany and Russia often do. Like you, Bush is just salivating at the prospect of the dismantling the UN, which would give the US disproportionately high, rather than equal, footing in dictating global affairs, which Bush and conservatives perceive to be their God-given entitlement.
And beyond the basic theories that the war is a ploy to raid Iraq’s oil fields and distract Americans from Bush’s ruinous economic policies leading the country into a financial gas chamber, there are tentacles of these issues that dig even deeper than what the public or even the pundits have put forward. One example is the GOP’s obsession with turning Alaska into Bush Petroleum, which Republicans want so badly they’re currently trying to hold the budget hostage by tacking on ANWAR drilling requirements to the budget despite the widespread opposition of legislators and the public. Given that Americans gluttonous and self-serving values will always triumph over their principles when it comes down to the prospect of prolonged $2 gas prices, Bush most likely believes that the instability and rising prices in the oil market caused by war in the Middle East will sway public opinion his direction on this #1 domestic issue on his agenda.
Also, war will cost tremendous money and sink us even deeper into a bottomless deficit abyss. Although bad for future generations and civilized society as we know it, this is terrific for the Republican Party since bankrupting the country will finally provide them the opportunity to destroy the social programs they’ve been trying to do away with for decades. As Bush’s hero Ronald Reagan said when asked what he thought of the debt burden his administration left for future generations, “At least the Democratic social programs won’t be able to continue at their high rate of spending.” Republicans still undoubtedly wear crushing debt as a badge of honor if they think it puts the opposition party and their constituency at a disadvantage.
And on the subject of the almighty greenback, a windfall for the oil companies and the defense industry equates to a windfall for the Republican Party campaign coffers just in time for the 2004 election. We’ve already witnessed the party of “smaller government” create a multi-billion dollar bureaucratic boondoggle otherwise known as the Homeland Security Department as a payola to Bush’s pork-barrel defense industry contributors, undoubtedly providing $80,000 a year government jobs to the nephews of Bush’s biggest defense industry campaign donors.
The Bush administration is taking a gamble with this war, but appears to believe that whatever the outcome, his party and their constituency will get a windfall while simultaneously undermining political opponents at home and abroad. Seems as though the candidate Bush who promised to “bring the country together” is not only dividing us here at home, but dividing the rest of the world against us as well.
To argue that the UN puts the world on an "equal footing" is fallacious. The UN does not diminish (as much as it would like) the US’s massive economic and military power. The disparities of power between the US and the EU are entirely the result of the European’s continued economic self-strangulation and their unwillingness to develop a military capable operating even in their own region.
Nor is it logical that Bush wants to go to war to drive up oil prices. Not only is war a horrifically expensive way of doing that, but the economic losses from such a move would be unacceptable. The only compelling logic for war in Iraq is that there is a threat that negates the risk of economic disruption, and that is exactly why the rhetoric of the Bush Administration does match his intent.
The fact remains that the Left wants to dig up ulterior motives for the war because they realize that the actual motivations are entirely logical. Iraq is a logical extension to the war on terror for a number of reasons. (I’ll post a link to an article that explains this in more detail shortly.)
Time to sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch the shitstorm commence!
Either way, this should be highly entertaining.