Cole Lectures Bush: Get A Course, George

Juan Cole dissects Bush's latest speech and then tries to teach Bush a lesson:

You aren't waging a global struggle. You are spending a billion and a half dollars a week on a war of choice in Iraq. That, you asked for. You told interviewers way back when you were governor of Texas that you wanted to "take out" Saddam one day. You said in another speech that he tried to kill your Daddy. It seems to me that you have some sort of personal vendetta with Iraq. I doubt you even had ever heard of Usamah Bin Laden in 1998 when you were giving that interview about taking out Saddam. As for the struggle against al-Qaeda, I can't see that you are putting any significant resources into it. You neglected Afghanistan. It is back to producing heroin for a living, which may well turn into narco-terrorism. Although you claim to have stopped some al-Qaeda operations, you haven't in fact been able to stop al-Qaeda from hitting a whole string of targets, including London. You are just causing a lot of trouble in Iraq and playing into Bin Laden's hands there.

You say no country in the Middle East should be allowed to have "weapons of mass destruction." The only country that actually has weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East proper is Israel, which is the main thing driving other countries to try to get them. Why not call for a nuclear-free zone, promise Israel a US nuclear umbrella, and get Israel to destroy its? As it is, you just look like a hypocrite to people in the region, winking at Israel's bomb but going ballistic about the possibility of any other country getting nukes.

As for the rest of your speech, it is all made up as you go along, just like your whole administration. You are a fanatic about a few things like Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction" and Syria and Iran, but you don't actually seem to do much governing. When Katrina hit you were asleep at the switch. Your main accomplishment is to throw so much dust in the eyes of Americans that they let you push a million people into poverty last year, while reducing the taxes on the super rich by some enormous factor. Syria is a small weak country and I can't see that it has any power to do anything to the United States at all. The National Intelligence Estimate is that Iran is at least 10 years from having a nuclear weapon, assuming it is working on one, which is not proved (and you lied to us about Iraq being at work on one, so why should we pay any attention to you on this issue?)

Mr. Bush, I don't recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship to reality. And I am very, very worried that you will allow to happen to the Oil Gulf what you allowed to happen to New Orleans. After watching you for five years I have become convinced that you don't have the slightest idea what you are doing in Iraq, that you are just reacting and playing it by ear. You can't do that, George. This Iraq thing is extremely complex. It needs serious, concerted thought by high-powered people, not just your cronies and yes-men and ideologues of various stripes (from Right to far-Right). You might just need the help of Iran and Syria to get Iraq right. Did you ever think of that? Iraq is the biggest policy failure in US history so far. You need to get a handle on it, the way you do on tax cuts for the billionaires (you've been very effective in making your rich friends richer). Otherwise all that extra treasure you've thrown to your tuxedoed "base" is going to go right down the tubes, drowned in a world of $20 a gallon gasoline.

You can't "stay the course" because you don't have a course. Get one.