WE'RE LESS SECURE NOW UNDER BUSH
So, we in the opposition have to tackle this genuine and sincere fear head-on by showing would-be GOP voters -- in non-threatening language and with examples they can accept -- that the Bush Administration by its actions actually has made life in the U.S. far more dangerous for the citizenry. While making sure that our shoes are X-rayed when we fly on airplanes, the Administration has neglected serious examination of containers in our ports, toxic-chemical movements in our cities, and chemical plants inside their laughable "security fences." Bush's wars abroad have made America and Americans much more likely targets for terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security, as demonstrated by post-Katrina failures that resulted in thousands of people dying, is a bureaucratic nightmare of inefficiency and incompetence. In short, Bush&Co. policies have made us less secure.
Rove and Company, true to their usual M.O., are trying to turn their major weakness -- the disastrous war in Iraq -- into their major strength. They realize they simply have to turn around the numbers of Americans who have come to believe that the war was a mistake and needs to be terminated as soon as is practicable. Right now, the polls indicate that nearly two-thirds of the citizenry is looking for a decent and certain way out of Iraq.
DELAYING THE INEVITABLE
Simply put, the Bush Administration has no real plan for Iraq. They're winging it, hoping that they can make it through the 2008 election, and then dump the problem on the next president. I'm not making this up,that's what Bush himself has said. As CBS reported:
"President Bush made it clear Tuesday that there will be American troops in Iraq when he leaves office and it will be his successor's job to bring them home. In response to a question in a White House news conference about if there will come a day that when there will be no American forces in Iraq, Mr. Bush answered, 'That, of course, is an objective. And that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq'."
Prior to the November election, Bush will "withdraw" some American troops (trial balloons for this are being floated by U.S. generals), which can be re-inserted in-country after the balloting. Don't forget that construction proceeds apace in building the huge, permanentmilitary bases in Iraq and the massive new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
It will be interesting to see how the Bush crew responds to the recent denunciations of U.S. military and occupation policy coming from Afghanistan's leader Karzai, and Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki and other elected Iraqi officials, calling for a timetable for withdrawal -- very much what the GOP shot down in Congress when the Democrats suggested it. Lest we forget, polls inside Iraq report 80% of the population wants the U.S. Occupiers out.
MAD DOGS ON A PANT LEG
It is a long-established pattern that Bush&Co. never give up on their goals, but prior to elections they make all sorts of tactical adjustments, doing and saying whatever is necessary to convince the voters that they've become more reasonable and less ideologically extreme; then, once they've managed to scrape by with one vote more than the other guys, it's back to their original plans.
Our oppositional goal must be to convince those in "Middle America" who can be convinced that the only hope for a decent U.S. future is to jettison that incompetent bunch of reckless ideologues at the top and their rubber-stamp lackeys in Congress, and try a fresh start.
We've got four months in which to do it. Let's saddle up.#
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