- Bush Initiates Iraq Policy Review Separate From Baker
Group's (Washington Post). Excerpt:
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- President Bush formally launched a sweeping internal
review of Iraq policy yesterday, pulling together studies underway by various
government agencies, according to U.S. officials. The initiative... parallels
the effort by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to salvage U.S. policy in
Iraq, develop an exit strategy and protect long-term U.S. interests in
the region...The White House's decision changes the dynamics of what happens
next to U.S. policy deliberations. The administration will have its own
working document as well as recommendations from an independent bipartisan
commission to consider as it struggles to prevent further deterioration
in Iraq.
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 When I saw the Newsweek cover featuring Big Daddy Bush
muscling toward the front with a diminished little Dubya skulking in the
background, my first thought was: How is Junior going to react to this?
Bush II's resentment toward his father is well-known -- a resentment no
doubt compounded by his lifelong, abject dependence on Daddy's financial
and political pull -- and I knew that Little Bush would not simply accept
this media humiliation and move on.
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- Because for all his vaunted (and totally mendacious)
"unconcern" with opinion polls and popularity ("Ah just
do whut muh gut tells me is right"), Little Bush is actually one of
the most vain and insecure men ever to sit in the White House; only Nixon
can match him in this regard. Why else would he need to have his authority
bolstered in such ludicrous ways -- such as all those little "Commander-in-Chief"
and "President of the United States" tags embossed onto his fancy
quasi-military jackets and his running gear and belt-buckles and boots
-- and probably his toilet paper as well? At every turn, he feels the anxious
need to remind others, and himself, that he really is the president, he's
the decider, he's the commander: "See, it says so right here on muh
jacket!" (Meanwhile, the exaggerated swagger he affects -- a labored
caricature of stereotypical masculinity -- bespeaks other sorts of insecurities
prowling in the presidential psyche, but we won't go into that here.)
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- Bush has also taken every opportunity during his tenure
to diminish, downplay or even belittle his father's personal influence
and political record. He evinces far more personal animosity toward his
father than, say, Bill Clinton, his supposed political bête noire.
Thus the Newsweek cover was probably a greater humiliation for Bush than
the election results themselves. Indeed, the latter only confirmed his
contempt for the American people, as he made clear in his post-election
press conference with his casual put-down of voters: "I thought when
it was all said and done, the American people would understand the importance
of taxes and the importance of security." The not-so-subtle implication
here is that the American people were too stupid to understand how good
they've got it under his glorious reign.
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- Little Bush's suddenly conceived internal Iraq policy
review is just another salvo in this ongoing struggle. The Cheney militarists
will certainly not give up without a fight, even after the "Gray Hawk
Down" disaster of Rumsfeld's resignation. Bush Junior will certainly
not keep swallowing Daddy's cod liver oil without throwing a fit now and
then. American policy will continue to drift back and forth between Junior's
hyper-aggressive corporatist militarism and Daddy's slightly less aggressive
corporatist militarism (which is pretty much the default "bipartisan"
foreign policy of the past 60 years).
-
- The comforting storyline that the "grownups"
are stepping in to set things to right is the usual dangerous, reductive
nonsense of the corporate media worldview. Daddy's men and Junior's men
are all part of the same political network (or crime family, if you prefer).
There may be power struggles between them over certain issues, personality
conflicts, policy disagreements, but they are all ultimately working for
the same mutual interest: their own aggrandizement (in various forms
power, honors, riches, ideological triumph, etc.).
-
- The "war in heaven" is real, but there will
be no actual losers amongst the combatants. Loss of face is the worst punishment
the vanquished will endure; even if they're booted from public office,
like Donald Rumsfeld, they simply return to their private world of vast
personal fortunes, corporate directorships, and backroom sway. Until the
political winds shift again, and they're back in the saddle once more
like Robert Gates, returning to office 14 years after his shadowy service
for Reagan and Bush; or indeed, like Rumsfeld himself, who went a quarter
of a century without official title between his Nixon-Ford tenure and his
restoration by Junior Bush. The profitable, bloodsoaked game goes on, regardless
of elections and internal squabbles.
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- Where does that leave the rest of us? Not as citizens
in control of our political fate, but more like Kremlinologists, trying
to discern through opaque and oblique signs what is really going on with
our masters. Or like the "birds i' the cage" of King Lear's vision,
prisoners who:
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- ...hear poor rogues
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- Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
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- Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
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- And take upon us the mystery of things,
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- As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
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- In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
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- That ebb and flow by the moon.
-
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- Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared
in print and online in venues all over the world, including the Nation,
CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor,
Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire
Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder
and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog. He can be
reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com
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