Convenient Enemies and Convenient Friends

I've encountered some strange gloating on some right wing websites about Osama bin Laden supposedly being dead, as if right wing Republicans were more gleeful that Bush would have that embarrassment off his back rather than relieved that the mastermind behind 9/11 is gone. In a sense, Osama bin Laden has become an inconvenient enemy of late, despite the fact that he was initially the reason why Bush launched a war on terrorism in the first place. These truly are strange times and on many of these strange developments there just aren't enough words around to describe the current presidency.

There's a famous scene in a play by Samuel Beckett; I believe the scene is in Endgame. One of the main characters gets upset because there's a fly buzzing around; to paraphrase, he cries out, "Quick! Get him before he dies of old age!"

Given the nature of White House press briefings and Bush Administration spin and photo ops, absurdist theater is alive and well, and oh so quick to respond. If Osama bin Laden dies of natural causes, there can be no doubt that the White House will try to claim credit. But, when it comes to the real world, the White House is anything but quick. After five years, Osama bin Laden has not been brought to justice. Afghanistan was a job left unfinished. Iraq was not a cakewalk. Victims of Katrina waited for days for help. America waits for an energy policy. Bush is always in a hurry but nothing useful actually gets done. But in Bush's universe, the games go on.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has choice words for the latest White House games:

American officials are dubious about Mr. Musharraf's committment to destroying Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But at the press conference, W., who no doubt thinks he has seen into General [Musharraf's] soul, acted as though he were willing to believe the Pakistani president when he says he is "on the hunt" for Osama and the Taliban at the same time he's setting up a safe haven for them—and getting huffy at the idea that American forces have the right to go into Pakistan to track Osama.

(snip)

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, who is coming to the White Housse next week to dine with W. and General [Musharraf], expressed a sly skepticism about his neighbor's protestations that he is strategizing against militants. As David Sanger reported, the Afghan leader told Times editors and reporters at a meeting Thursday that he had tried to get Pakistan's help in repelling the resurgent Taliban by giving the Pakistanis "information on training ground, on operation, people, their phone numbers, their G.P.S. locations."

"Our friends come back to us and say this information is old," Mr. Karzai continued. "Maybe. But it means they were there."

Asked where Osama was, he smiled and replied: "If I said he was in Pakistan, President Musharraf would be mad at me. And if I said he was in Afghanistan, it would not be true."

Bush is developing a growing list of convenient enemies and convenient friends and it's getting very difficult to follow the superficial logic of which is which and even sometimes who he would prefer to forget. Even the rules change so often in the Bush presidency that it's hard to know which rules apply and which rules do not.

There are reasons why laws are greater than the capricious assertions of any one man; too many Americans have forgotten that, including many in Congress, and time is beginning to run out.

My Republican grandfather was a good man and he had some good rules in life. One of them, in the language of his era, went like this for people he had just hired: judge a man by what he does, not what he says. Times have changed and the modern version is easy enough: judge people by what they do, not what they say. We have seen what Bush can do and it ain't much.

Today's right wing Republicans are already bombarding the airwaves with expensive ads that have little to do with their poor performance over the last five years. We'll know in November whether Bush and his fellow Republicans are being judged for their actions or judged for their words.