Some of the comments that he has made make it abundantly clear that this war in Iraq has already turned him from a man with a pro-active policy, into a man with a retroactive policy. He now says that he will increase the size of the Army and add 10 brigades. He says that he will add a force that will be a hybrid type of force that will have the ability to rebuild areas that we defeat quickly as in the case of Iraq. Speaking at the Citadel Giuliani said;
“We also have to think about the constructive role that America plays in combat zones when the fighting is over,” he said. “The reality is that America is sometimes faced with a difficult choice. After defeating the enemy as we did in Iraq, after a sudden victory in deposing Saddam Hussein, we have a choice.” “It will be difficult,” he said, “and will require a new organization of our military and civilian components that are needed to do this — some kind of hybrid we’re going to have to create.”
What is this man proposing? What victory? Maybe Rudy believes that we initially scored a victory and because we didn’t have this “hybrid” force to cement it. We now find ourselves in a position where we need 10 new brigades. I truly don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about. He tries to clear it up with another view on Iraq;
Oh, I can’t wait.
Giuliani went from a Mayor that cleaned up New York City and truly worked in a bi-partisan way to solve some of the oldest problems in the City to a shadow of his former self. He was a true maverick, unfortunately, his quest for higher political office has shaped Giuliani into what he is now, a candidate that is trying to capture the conservative right of his party. In the process, of trying to appeal to that conservative wing, he has discarded the Giuliani that thought for himself and used bipartisanship to advance the things he thought were right and not just politically expedient. Now he is a “poster boy” for the legions of hell bent for leather right wing idealists that believe we can, and must force our will on people that don’t quite see things our way.
Giuliani’s personal life derailed him. His highly transparent affair, while his wife was living in Gracie Mansion was almost a death blow to any aspirations that Giuliani had for higher political office. That along with his prostrate cancer took him out of the race for the Senate seat that is now occupied by Hillary Clinton, the bane of the hard core conservatives. The actual saving grace for Giuliani was the fall of the Twin Towers. The attack on The World Trade Center took Giuliani from a complete wash-out for further government service, to “America’s Mayor”. This was the beginning of the transformation of Rudy Giuliani.
Now he is the Republican du jour. so to speak. He gave speech after speech about the greatness of New Yorkers and how these terrorists would not bow their heads and how proudly, they would triumph over terrorism and rebuild those fallen towers. Pretty heady stuff. Of course nobody at the time asked why after the attack in 1993, better measures against terrorism weren’t taken, or why these attacks had happened on the Republican watch, but no matter. He was these on the small screen and at all the 9/11 events with that toothy smile, glad handing every Tom, Dick and Harry (and George) that he could. Always wearing a smile that most fathers keep tucked away for their daughters wedding.
In real life, although I’m sure he too had friends that perished in the attack of9/11, politically, it was the best thing that could have ever happened. People forgot his messy divorce, and America’s Mayor is now a “terrorism buster” of comic book proportions (even though he has yet to bust a terror cell). Gone is the former Mayor that changed the face of NYC with bi-partisan cooperation and realistic goals, and in that Giuliani’s place is “America’s Mayor” that wants to bring the ideals of America to lands far away and to build an Army that can not only fight, but occupy.
Rudy, since his days as a Federal Prosecutor and then the Mayor of New York City, has truly reinvented himself from someone that you could take at his word and someone that knew how to get things done, to a caricature of his former self, to the man who glad-handed everyone at the funeral of those that died in the horror of 9/11. This just goes to show that terrorism can be good for business, or maybe even a shot at The White House.
