'Staying the Course' Reality Check
After telling us for two years that he's "staying the course," Bush is now trying to back away from his own statements about his foreign policy in Iraq. Could it be that Americans are catching on and the president is nervous? Here's an excerpt from Peter Baker and Jim Vandehei of The Washington Post (hat tip to Think Progress):
Strategically, we are staying committed..... That sounds like 'staying the course' to me. Changing tactics doesn't mean a thing if you're headed for a cliff. You can drive a tank towards the cliff, you can drive a truck towards the cliff, you can ride a bicycle towards the cliff, you can ride there with one hand on the steering wheel, you can drive with no hands on the steering wheel and it all doesn't make any difference: you're staying the course on the way to the cliff.
Bush and Karl Rove love their words games and claim the Democrats are defeatists. Well, actually, there's a war in Afghanistan that was supposed to be finished some time ago. And there's still the not so small matter of Osama bin Laden escaping to Pakistan while Bush sent our troops more than a thousand miles the other way to Iraq in order to..... Well, Bush is still trying to explain to Americans what he's trying to do.
Keep in mind that Bush does this from time to time. He's says something and when people throw it back in his face pointing out how ridiculous what he's saying is, he gets frustrated and says that not what he meant. But it's never clear what Bush means because there's never been much connection between what he says and what the facts are. The facts are this: Bush is digging a hole in Iraq and instead of recognizing what a strategic blunder he has made, he just does the same thing over and over and over and the hole just gets deeper and deeper.
And now he wants to go and do the same thing in Iran.
...Many Democrats accuse the president of advocating "stay the course" in Iraq, but the White House rejects the phrase and regularly emphasizes that it is adapting tactics to changing circumstances, such as moving more U.S. troops into Baghdad recently after a previous security strategy appeared to fail.
"Strategically, we are staying committed to the fact that this is an important mission and one that should be accomplished," said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Democrats, this adviser said, say "we're 'doing the same thing over and over' when that's not the case."
Strategically, we are staying committed..... That sounds like 'staying the course' to me. Changing tactics doesn't mean a thing if you're headed for a cliff. You can drive a tank towards the cliff, you can drive a truck towards the cliff, you can ride a bicycle towards the cliff, you can ride there with one hand on the steering wheel, you can drive with no hands on the steering wheel and it all doesn't make any difference: you're staying the course on the way to the cliff.
Bush and Karl Rove love their words games and claim the Democrats are defeatists. Well, actually, there's a war in Afghanistan that was supposed to be finished some time ago. And there's still the not so small matter of Osama bin Laden escaping to Pakistan while Bush sent our troops more than a thousand miles the other way to Iraq in order to..... Well, Bush is still trying to explain to Americans what he's trying to do.
Keep in mind that Bush does this from time to time. He's says something and when people throw it back in his face pointing out how ridiculous what he's saying is, he gets frustrated and says that not what he meant. But it's never clear what Bush means because there's never been much connection between what he says and what the facts are. The facts are this: Bush is digging a hole in Iraq and instead of recognizing what a strategic blunder he has made, he just does the same thing over and over and over and the hole just gets deeper and deeper.
And now he wants to go and do the same thing in Iran.
posted by Craig at 9:32 PM
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