Let’s play a parlor game, shall we? How many soldiers, commandos and marines does it take to protect our dear leader when he takes a quickie trip to India?

India is one of our friends and trading partners, and as far as I know not a members of the Axis of Evil or even a just a plain old generic state sponsor of terrorism. They’re one of the good guys, so to speak. So surely they don’t hate their our Emperor-in-Chief nearly as much as one of those countries filled with Islamo-fascist terrorists. Why, I bet they like him there more than the citizens of New York City do (or, at a minimum, no less).

So what do you think: besides the usual Secret Service detail how many heavily armed men need to keep Dubya’s butt safe while wandering about — New Dehli, say? A hundred? Five hundred? One thousand? Or does that seem excessively high to you?

Follow me below the fold for the answer . . .
Well, would you believe this number?

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – About 5,000 personnel including snipers, commandos and U.S. marines using helicopters, bomb detectors and electronic jammers will protect President George W. Bush during his visit to India this week, officials said on Monday.

The personnel would be part of a three-ring security cordon around the U.S. president and First Lady Laura Bush who are due to arrive in New Delhi for their maiden visit to the subcontinent on Wednesday, they said.

“He is a much-threatened VVIP. We are fully geared,” Manish Agarwal, a top Delhi police officer involved in security operations, told Reuters.

Sadly, I was a little off in my earlier estimates. I’ll bet you did much better than I. I should have known King George would need to be at the center of an especially large 3 ring circus circle of security. When you’re a War President you probably need to be surrounded by the troops, even when you’re not wearing a flight suit and codpiece. Still, 5000 sounds like a lot.

I wonder how many President Gore or President Kerry would have needed?

Yes, I know. I’m so silly. That’s a rhetorical question, at best, as long as Diebold and the Supreme Court get to count our votes for us.

But to step away just a bit from my frivolity on this subject, isn’t this the perfect example of what Bush has wrought? No country in the world is safe for him without a massive security detail. And more and more the world is blaming us, the garden variety plebes of America, for Bush’s follies.

How many are willing to travel outside the United States and loudly broadcast your citizenship these days? I know a number of friends who plaster Canadian Maple Leafs on their luggage when they travel. My son, who journeyed to Japan last Summer, was amazed at how angry so many of the ordinary Japanese he met were regarding the United States and Iraq. And they blame us as much as Bush for what’s happening there.

Ironic, isn’t it. That the President so many thought would make them safer has actually made us so much less safe. Terrorist attacks world wide are on the increase. International polling shows that most people around the world feel the threat from terrorism has grown under Bush’s watch as a direct result of the Iraq War, his central front in the War on Terror.

Maybe surrendering our ideals and our civil liberties, and promoting torture and pursuing illegal wars against innocent peoples, isn’t the best strategery for a conflict with international terrorists. Maybe, just maybe, we should have had a little more faith in our country’s strengths, and a little less fear of its weaknesses.

Too late now. We will be suffering the consequences of Bush’s catastrophic policies for decades to come. The inability to travel without fear outside our borders is only one of the smaller prices we have to pay for the worst presidency ever.