bush resigns

(Magazine cover we'd most like to see found here.)

Salon's Gary Kamiya is on fire, tonight.

According to the Bush administration and its supporters, the Democrats and a majority of the American people are a cross between Benedict Arnold, Neville Chamberlain and Tokyo Rose. What set the Bushites off was a one-two punch from the Democrats -- the bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's statement, "As long as we follow the president's path in Iraq, the war is lost." The words were barely out of Reid's mouth when the Bush dead-enders -- a peculiar group now consisting of less than a quarter of the American people, two GOP congressmen and two GOP senators -- began Googling "great traitors of history." Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., called on Reid to resign. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the spending bill amounted to a "surrender" to al-Qaida. White House spokesperson Dana Perino said, "Tonight, the House of Representatives votes for failure in Iraq, and the president will veto its bill."

Ah, yes.  We here at FDL are intimately familiar with the Righty Smear trick.  But, then what happened?

The problem is, no one believes any of this anymore -- probably not even the people who are saying it. The gap between reality and Bush spin, always large, has become a Grand Canyon. As a result, the Orwellian rhetoric so beloved of the Bush administration is rapidly becoming devalued. "War is peace" just doesn't have that inspiring ring it once did.

Yeah, just don't expect the BushCo Dead-Enders to let go of "Ignorance is Strength" any time soon.  It's, like, the cornerstone of their whole belief system.

But as most of you know, facing Reid's stern indictment of the cascading set of errors that has been the Republicans' War in Iraq, the White House fingered "Dean" David Broder to carry their water.  Oh, ouch!  How could anyone argue with wise, sensible, "nonpartisan" David Broder?

Well, lots of ways, really.

If the American public were still playing by the genteel Broder rules, the GOP's attempt to demonize Reid and the Democrats might have worked. But it isn't. Broder's column, which was rebuked in a letter signed by all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, has instantly became a symbol of the vacuity and conformism of establishment thinking. The previously irresistible force of patriotic conformity has run into the immovable object of democracy. The overwhelming majority of Democrats, and a sizable minority of Republicans, no longer believe anything Bush or Cheney say about the war. They believe it is lost, they want the United States to get out, and they want their voice to be heard. And more and more of them have had it with the rigged game in which the Bush administration is given carte blanche to issue one highhanded and false statement after another about the war, while the Democrats are expected to tug their forelocks, salute the flag, and speak in an manner approved by their betters.

The best part of the article, though, is when Kamiya starts to dive into what has to be one of the Rightards' favorite tricks, the one that aggrivates me the most, in fact, the selective and entirely inappropriate invocation of actual great leaders from history to justify the President's haplessness and ineptitude.  Chris Matthews has notably compared the Toddler in Chief to Abraham Lincoln, and of course, those dickheads over at NRO's The Corner just love, love, love to wave around the scanty handful of World War Two facts they've been able to glean from John Wayne flicks and The History Channel's "War of the Week", as if those have any bearing on the pigheaded, moronic, and deeply arrogant policies of the Bush Administration.

Mr. Kamiya?

Throughout the Bush presidency, there has been one infallible rule: If someone starts talking about World War II, watch your wallet.   Ever since Bush invaded Iraq, his supporters have been desperately trying to convince the American people that Iraq is the WWII of our time. They constantly invoke the Blitz, the invasion of Poland, the Hitler-Stalin pact, the fall of France, Pearl Harbor and other momentous events from the Last Good War.

Unfortunately for the GOP, Bush's own words have rendered the Churchill comparison absurd. Churchill called for blood, toil, tears and sweat. Bush called for tax breaks for the rich and continued shopping. He didn't raise taxes, or impose a gas tax, or institute a draft, or in any way put the country on a war footing.

But-!  But-!  He said we were on "war footing" like 800 times between 2003 and 2006, didn't he?  Doesn't that automatically make it so? 

Kamiya has done his homework, by the way.  (Godammit, Jonah Goldberg, stop trying to cheat off his paper!  Would it kill you to do your own research for once?)

Besides, if there are any legitimate analogies between Iraq and WWII, they aren't ones that Bush wants Americans to think about. Iraq more closely resembles Stalingrad, where a delusional Hitler refused to cut his losses, or the Maginot Line -- that heavily armed defensive wall that the Germans simply went around. The Battle of Britain, Iraq ain't.

That's the friggin' truth.  In fact, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look more and more like Napoleon's drive into Russia every day.  They've bankrupted our treasury, broken the military, and provided years of hands-on training for future generations of jihadi.  The situation in Iraq is no closer to being resolved than it was in 2004.  In fact, it's looking further and further from resolution every day.

The American people know the score:

Poll after poll has shown Americans' exasperation. One of the most telling was a Newsweek poll taken right after Bush's State of the Union address at the end of January. More than half the country, 58 percent, said they wished the Bush presidency were simply over. This group included 86 percent of the Democrats who responded, 59 percent of the independents, and even 21 percent of the Republicans. And 64 percent of Americans said they thought Congress had not been assertive enough in challenging Bush's conduct of the war.

But, hey, you know that Bush doesn't follow the polls.  He's going to stick to his guns no matter what us goddamn peasants think.  Cos, you know, that's the kind of guy he is.  Stubborn, determined, and focused to the point of, well, imbecility. 

How much longer is this catastrophe going to continue to be forced upon us?  How many more lives will be uselessly squandered?  Some days, I have to take deep breaths and tell myself that someday, someday our troops will be back home and safe with their families and friends.  Until that day, all I can do is pray for their safety, and clearly that's not doing much good.

Let's give Gary the last word tonight:

War supporters are counting on a certain level of John Wayne war-movie immaturity on the part of the American people, a Technicolor conviction that America is ordained to be, must be, eternally victorious. But Americans are more grown-up than that. They know America, like every other country, sometimes loses. Many of them lived through Vietnam, and they know that the sky did not fall. They are quite capable of weighing the pros and cons of the Iraq war and making a rational cost-benefit calculation about whether it's worth continuing to fight. They understand the concept of a tactical retreat, of cutting your losses, of losing a battle but winning the war.

Bush is talking like Churchill, but it's an empty act. He's a defeated man, searching for others to blame for his defeat. He's stalling, hoping for a miracle that will save him and his bungled war. But the end is coming. The only question is how many more people will have to die before it does.