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| Thank God W Isn't President Anymore |
| 2012-10-02 |
| Today is one of those days in which we are particularly grateful that George W. Bush is no longer the president of the United States. The news from Afghanistan is grim. With the latest round of deaths, we pass a milestone: 2,000 US combatants have died in what is now the longest war in American history. The milestone has been reached just as the surge in troops has come to an end without achieving the goals of pacifying the country or even launching peace talks with the Taliban. Our Afghan "allies" remain as corrupt and ineffectual as ever, with the added wrinkle that the most dangerous place in Afghanistan for US troops these days seems to be the neighborhood of US-armed and trained Afghan forces, who are shooting and blowing up their nominal allies faster than the Taliban can do it. This is all bad news and very disturbing, but there is a crumb of comfort to be had. Because these failures happened on President Obama's watch, the mainstream press isn't particularly interested in relentless, non-stop scrutiny of the unpleasant news. If George W. Bush were president now, and had ordered the surge and was responsible for the strategic decisions taken and not taken in Afghanistan over the last four years, the mainstream press would be rubbing our noses in his miserable failures and inexcusable blunders 24/7. The New York Times and the Washington Post would be treating us to pictures of every fallen soldier. The PBS Newshour would feature nightly post-mortems on "America's failed strategies in the Afghan War" and every arm-chair strategist in America would be filling the op-ed pages with the brilliant 20/20 hindsight ideas that our pathetic, clueless, failed president was too dumb and too cocky to have had. There would be no end to the woes and the recriminations. There would be the most moving and eloquent examples of hand wringing in the New York Review of Books, elegantly demonstrating that the cretinous assumptions and moral failings that led Bush into his failed Afghan policy weren't his alone, but reflected broader, deeper failings in America itself. One is almost sorry for the sake of the authors of these diatribes that Bush is gone; the failure of our Afghan strategy is so sweeping, so unavoidable, that it would be the best possible backdrop against which to paint a stirring portrait of a failed president misleading a flawed people. What works of polemical literature have been lost, what inspired jeremiads will never be penned, what scalding portraits of America's inherent flaws will never see the light of day because W left the White House too soon. If only President Bush had uttered that fatuous nonsense about "wars of choice" and "wars of necessity" that President Obama used: how much fun the press could have had mocking his grotesque and pathetic efforts at "strategery." |
| Posted by:Beavis |
| #6 The press is doing everything it can to sway these elections. There is no truth in the press, we all know that. But the elections won't lie. Zero will lose in a way that will make the cater loss look like a close race. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2012-10-02 20:56 |
| #5 Uh, uh, US TASS, OR AMERIKAN PRAVDA - THEY REPORT, YOUSE DON'T DECIDE??? gut nuthin, D *** NG, dats twice in five minutes. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-10-02 19:34 |
| #4 It is incredibly sad that the media has abandoned its role as even somewhat partial arbiter. They just don't ask the questions, or pursue the stories that are everywhere with the Obama administration. Just won't go there. It is a truly dangerous development for our country. |
| Posted by: remoteman 2012-10-02 13:31 |
| #3 If "W" had gone to Vegas while Benghazi burned ? This piece of |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-10-02 11:21 |
| #2 If George W. Bush had mentioned "57 states", what do you bet the MSM would be reminding us constantly? Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2012-10-02 11:13 |
| #1 George W. took an unmerciful daily beating by the lame stream media that Obama has has a pass on for nearly four years--not because Obama is any great shakes as a president--he is most likely the worst president we have ever had--but just because the press has given up its role as a free press. The MSM might as well just dry up and go away for the lack of any good they do. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2012-10-02 11:12 |