When I first began blogging nearly three and a half years ago, I made the hardly original observation that no president running for office had ever been voted out while America was in a major military engagement. It’s only natural, patriotic, even, to want to support your commander in chief during a time of crisis. However, the intoxicating smell of blood about to be spilled happens to drown out what can yet prove to be very valid questions about a president’s motives for going to war against a country without just cause or even illegal reasons.
Bush cannot run for a third term yet we’ve seen time and again that he’s willing to commit more and more warm bodies into the meat grinder of Iraq (many of whom are being caught in the crossfire between Shi’ite militias and Iraqi government troops) and countless hundreds of billions, if not trillions, more in an ever desperate crap shoot to win back everything that PNAC and Dick Cheney ever promised him: Namely, a legacy worthy of a dead Democrat like Roosevelt or Kennedy.
If you’ll notice, the two highest points of Bush’s capable stewardship from an approval standpoint were when we either got attacked on 9/11 or when we irrationally invaded Iraq. This graph, courtesy Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, shows this very disturbing trend, at how even an idiot’s approval ratings can go through the roof when violence on an epic scale is visited on us or on someone else by us.
Consider: In the Gallup poll ending September 10th, 2001, Bush’s approval rating was a humdrum 51%. Right after 9/11, his approval rating shot up to an irrational 90%, almost 40% within hours of the 9/7-10 poll. Just before the largely unquestioned invasion of Iraq, Bush’s approval rating had settled back down to 57% yet the next Gallup after the invasion shows his rating shooting back up to a very respectable 71%.
The interesting thing is that Bush’s rating actually went down from 37% to 34% in the Gallup polls taken just before and after the announcement of the surge. In the week the surge began (Feb. 2007), his popularity sank even lower to 32%.
It could be said that Bush is merely the victim of political fatigue, of a nation getting tired of a lame duck president and yearning for change. But that doesn’t always apply, especially regarding his fellow Republicans. If Eisenhower could run again in 1960, he and not Marilyn Monroe would’ve beaten the pants off Jack Kennedy and Kennedy was the first one to admit it. If Reagan hadn’t started falling asleep during Cabinet meetings and drooling on his PDB’s, he, too, would’ve been a shoein for a third term.
The fact is, since November 2-5, 2006, Bush’s approval rating has never been above 38%. As of the last Gallup poll, his actual approval rating is a mere 28%, with 69% disapproving.
Iraq is a dead horse that ain’t ever going to get livelier no matter how many additional troops flog it. Ergo, it looks like a good time to have contractor ships fire on the Iranians (providing OPEC with a wonderful reason to gouge us another three dollars for a barrel of oil) and to try to make them look bad by waggling our fingers and sabers at the Syrians and North Koreans.
After McCain’s drooling and doddering through a Beach Boys song last year about bombing Iran and for all his anti-Iranian rhetoric, an invasion of Iran based on even the most specious of claims and most circumstantial of evidence will automatically focus attention on McCain as Bush’s presumptive heir and less on Obama and even Hillary, who voted to allow Bush to call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
The press, starting with Fox as the Pied Piper behind whom all the other outlets will march, will hail McCain as not only a maverick but a visionary, as well, the one man who saw the threat coming and thank God we're going to elect him as our next president (or else) since he used to be in the military and all.
Another war against another Muslim nation could still prove to be the political stimulus package and popularity surge that the Republican party will need this November to pull them out of their own public relations recession. And, in times of war, as always, truth will be the first casualty, with children a close second.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire