Is it just me, or is George W. Bush just imploding?
What would possess any sane politician to hand the nation a Vietnam/Iraq analogy on a sliver platter? Especially when the point of the analogy is that we should have stayed in Vietnam?? Oh. My. God.
And then to use Arlen Pyle from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American as a symbol of all that was upright and virtuous about our involvement there when clearly Pyle was a metaphor for American stupidity/cupidity that got us stuck in that god-damned dead end quagmire hellhole in the first place?? Do his speechwriters hate him??
Or do they just think that the American public is that %^&*ing stupid???
Everything I’ve been reading suggests that our commentariat is just gobsmacked. What does one say in response to a president who has obviously lost all strategerical trains of thought?
W doesn’t dream up these analogies. This is the work of the spin mandarins. It’s interesting to imagine the strategy behind the utterance. First of all, it’s a speech to the VFW. The Mandarins pride themselves, I would imagine, on having mastered the ways and means of neuro-linguistic programming and manipulative discouse. Just the mention of Vietnam is going to scramble the signals of many in the audience because it will trigger traumatic recollections. W is then positioned as the strong, healing voice of the father who can get a rudder back in the turbulent stream. As far as the national discussion goes, the Mandarins know that Vietnam functions as a lump in the throat for many, a thought stopper, a way to close off the possibility of discussion. I think the strategy is so cynical, however, that even those prodded into a confused state by the ploy will see the desperation and the manipulative control beneath the words.
Yes, I know he’s playing to the crowd with “We could have won if only we’d let our boys finish the job they went there to do,” but of course he’s wrong. And he knows he’s wrong. It’s practically Soviet in its audacious mendacity.
It took a couple of days, but the conservative noise machine has found its footing: We could’ve/should’ve/would’ve won Vietnam if our craven Congress hadn’t pulled the rug out from under the brave troops. Bad Congress! Bad! We need to get behind our Dear Leader who has committed no errors and is without blame in this situation. More Friedman Units!
…but he’s not capable of thinking in the first place, and almost
incapable of reading in the second. What gets my nanny is the
overwhelming number of nincompoops that put him there to begin
with. Where are the people who think for themselves and refuse to
be guided/led/misled by his puppeteers?