The Chicago Tribune has irresolutely endorsed Bush for re-election... on the ground that Bush is resolute.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0410170332oct17,1,3673281.story?coll=chi-news-hed Their endorsement of Bush is quite striking for its explicit and implicit criticism of Bush. It is an endorsement based on wishful thinking on one hand, and on admiration of Bush's presentations on the other.
The over-riding issue in their analysis of the election, quite reasonably, is national defense. But how the Tribune analyzes our defense is pretty shocking. They tell us what they hearBush say sounds good to their ears, but they fail to appreciate adequately what they report that they have seen -- which doesn't look very good. Their view is in italics.
Bush talks more freely about what is at risk. Bush embraces a bolder struggle. Bush insists on taking the fight to the terrorists. Bush' sense of duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's.
But this is what they've seen:
There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned.
Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.
The Chicago Tribune allows itself to be more impressed with what Bush says than with what they report he has done. One can only recall the famous con man's line, "Who are you going to believe -- me, or your own lying eyes?"
When they praised Bush's sense of duty to defend America as being wider than Kerry's, I immediately thought of wide in the geographic sense: Bush, lucky member of the Texas Air National Guard, going off to Alabama to carry out his duty so he can work in the political campaign of a friend of his father's, and later telling the Texas Air National Guard he was transferring to Massachusetts to complete his Guard duties while he attends Harvard Business School -- except hardly anyone remembers seeing him carry out his duty to defend America in Alabama, and his spokesman finally admits to the Boston Globe in September 2004 that, yes, Bush NEVER showed up for Guard duty in Massachusetts. Bush's wide sense of duty looks like the fisherman holding up his hands, wide apart, as he tells about the fish that got away... Oh yes, John Kerry actually enlisted in the Navy and went to the other side of the world to fight in Vietnam. A sense of duty -- a fufillment of duty -- doesn't get much wider does it?
The Tribune says that "For three years, Bush has kept Americans, and their government, focused--effectively--on this nation's security. " Holy Cow! Maybe the Tribune's editors need new bifocals or something. Have the editors read Richard Clarke's, Against All Enemies? If there is one thing that Bush misfocused on, it was how to defend the nation's security.
Bush's current lines about national defense are amazing. In recent days, he is blasting Kerry saying that Kerry will wait for the U.S. to be attacked before he will defend the U.S. Hey, Bush is accurately describing his own record. Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism coordinator in the White House under Bush I and Clinton and Bush II, tells in his book how in 2001 he couldn't get Bush, Condi Rice or Ashcroft to pay attention to the al Qaeda threat. Even though Al Qaeda had bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and attacked the U.S.S. Cole, the Bush White House ignored Al Qaeda -- until September 11, 2001. Bush focused? Not exactly. Almost immediately Bush refocused on Iraq and ignored Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. What record was the Chicago Tribune looking at?
The Tribune says,
Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president. There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned. And there are reasons--apart from the global perils likely to dominate the next presidency--to recommend either of these two good candidates. But for his resoluteness on the defining challenge of our age--a resoluteness John Kerry has not been able to demonstrate--the Chicago Tribune urges the re-election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.
There are lessons he needs to have learned. What a funny construction. I don't even know what tense this is. They seem to be saying that they are not sure he's learned the lessons to carry out the president's duty to defend America, aren't they? If they thought he had learned the lessons, they'd simply say that, right? If you can't quite say, he hasn't learned his lessons, you say that. If you want to irresolutely endorse a man who can never admit he learned a lesson because he can never admit he made a mistake, then you say something obscure like, "There are lessons he needs to have learned."
The Tribune's endorsement says,
Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.
Bush has placed the nation, its men and women in the armed services, and the next President, in an impossible box. We never should have invaded Iraq. Iraq did not ally itself with al-Qaeda and didn't bomb the U.S. in 2001. Osama bin Laden was not captured. He was believed to be in Afghanistan, and Bush failed to direct the Pentagon to hunt him down. How can the editors see Bush as resolute?
Even in Iraq, Bush has been irresolute. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief, who has returned from two years in Iraq notes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37171-2004Oct15.html in "Iraq's Barbed Realities (Oct. 17, 2004) that the clear U.S. strategy for pacification should have been to get people employed again. U.S. officials were repeatedly warned that failure to provide employment would fuel an anti-American inferno -- the one in which our men and women are now being killed. Bush failed to focus on what needed to be done to secure our troops who were going to be in Iraq when the Iraqi Army collapsed -- he was irresolute.
After four military contractors were killed, strung up, and defiled in Fallujah, and the U.S. military went in without a strategy. Then without meeting any objective of achieving security or taking out the insurgents, at Bush's direction, they pulled out. The surrender of authority in Fallujah to the insurgency demonstrated deep irresolution in the U.S. strategy and objectives, and gave enormous comfort to our enemies. All over Iraq Americans have been pulling back. This is simply another instance of Bush's failure to focus on his duty to defend America.
The problem for America and for Kerry is that, having been led by President Bush into this war, we can't walk away. We can't walk away simply and we can't walk away in any complex way.
President "He of focus" Bush disregarded the most famous advice of his Secretary of State: "If you break it, you own it." Having removed Hussein and broken Iraqi government and its system of law and order (such as it was), we can't simply walk away. What is the measure of achievement of the President's insistence on victory? Surely in the near and midterm, it is NOT going to be the absence of violence. Perhaps it is the inauguration of an elected government. And that may be the occasion for a declaration of victory and withdrawal -- if, if, if, security is being maintained by Iraqi's with assistance from an international force, one that is not simply a fig leaf for 100,000+ U.S. soliders and Marines. If our withdrawal creates a power vacuum that is filled by the Iraqi insurgency, then the repercussions will undermine American security for a generation. We will have been established as they say in Texas as, "All hat and no cattle."
The Tribune says,
Bush has scored a great success in Afghanistan--not only by ousting the Taliban regime and nurturing a new democracy, but also by ignoring the chronic doubters who said a war there would be a quagmire.
The world supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. There were some doubters who feared a quagmire in Afghanistan, given the history of the British a century ago, and the Soviets, a little more than a decade ago. Is it a great success to ignore "chronic doubters?" Is it a great success to "nurture" a new democracy? Man oh man, this is a very low bar. One can spend a lot of time "nurturing" and end up with sickness, failure, death. This is like giving a hard-working, not very successful student an "A for effort!"
Besides, to raise the dreaded "quagmire" invites us to look for the real "quagmire" -- back to Iraq where our men and women are being slaughtered -- even in the supposedly secure Green Zone. President "Focused on duty" Bush so utterly failed to assure that the men and women for whom he is the Commander-in-Chief have the weapons and tools they need. Vehicles not armored and no body armor, etc. Units are so demoralized they are refusing orders to transport fuel in vehicles which can't be adequately maintained.
To appreciate the hollowness of the Bush presidency, one simply has to carefully read the editorial endorsement of one of America's premier newspapers.
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