Section: Croton-on-Hudson That Was the Week That Was
September 20, 2007
Iraq, the Republican Dilemma
Is Iraq worth the shedding of any more American blood? For most Americans, polls show the answer has become a resounding no. For the more than four years of the Iraq war, George W. Bush has acted like a snake-oil salesman at a carnival sideshow and treated Americans as a bunch of backcountry rubes waiting to be fleeced. All too often he has succeeded. A majority in Congress, entranced by his spiel, lined up and supported spending that is mounting into the trillions. In the beginning, many Americans supported the invasion. Some even encouraged their children to enlist and march off to Mr. Bush’s war in the belief that Iraq was a threat.
Make no mistake about it. Iraq is George W. Bush’s war, a new kind of conflict for which our soldiers were hopelessly unprepared. Despite his cruelly obvious attempt to prolong it long enough to hand off to his successor, Mr. Bush owns this war lock, stock and barrel. And, no matter what he does to fob it off on someone else, it will be pinned on him by historians just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. The time has come to turn off the shrill calliope, and tell Bush & Company to fold its tents like an Arab tribe that has sullied the only well in the oasis, and depart.
A Congressional Circus
The week began with a two-day dog-and-pony show put on by Gen. David Petraeus and American Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat and an Arabist. It was baldly timed to coincide with memorial ceremonies marking the sixth anniversary of the triple tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001. The General assiduously took notes through the questioning, studiously avoided directly answering most questions, and substituted a smooth and memorized patter that regularly danced around the subject. Low-key and unaggressive, Ambassador Crocker seemed ill at ease and uncomfortable yet gave occasional answers with surprising bursts of frankness.
The Monday morning joint hearing before the House armed services and foreign affairs committees got off to a shaky start with a comedy of errors. The microphones for the two witnesses were dead, and remained that way as technicians scurried around trying to restore them to life. In the meantime a protest staged by Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War started at the rear of the hearing room. Visibly agitated by the commotion, Rep. Ike Skelton remarked to ranking Republican member Duncan Hunter over his own open microphone, “That really pisses me off down there. Those assholes…” A staff member quickly shut off the sound system.
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