There is a fantasy world in Iraq which is visible to George W. Bush that most Americans can’t see. It is propped up by a “coalition” of forces (Bush claimed 37 countries… yet most of these have fewer than 30 soldiers committed to the cause) including the mighty Fiji… and Bosnia… Kazahkstan… the list goes on and on.
This Iraq, we are told by Bush, is getting better all the time, like a Beatles song. The schools and markets that were closed in Baghdad are now reopening (and people are being shot there daily, or being blown up like the Sunni leader, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, in Anbar Province that we were apparently depending on who bought the big one yesterday.)
Fantasy Iraq is a place where we are building an “enduring relationship”, which means we will be there until Hell freezes over (a long time), with young Americans providing training targets for insurgents.
And although Bush said some troops would be home by Christmas, and others would be back by July, according to his plans the number of troops in Iraq could be higher in the summer of 2008 than it was in the fall of 2006 before the surge began. It is a very special kind of reduction where the quantity goes up instead of down. It takes a special vision to view troop reductions this way… Bush’s Vision.
I think Bush has lost his mind. The world that he sees and whose existence he tries to show to us, does not exist for anyone else. And while Republicans, through the sheer political will power of Party support, still bolster his Presidency, they are falling away in flakes, like paint chipping off an old house. One day there will be nothing but exposed wood and we see what has been underneath all the time.
We press on with a madman in charge, ready to push his legacy upon us.
“The way forward I have described tonight makes it possible, for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together,” he said.
Hopefully, they will come together to strap the straight jacket on the Commander in Chief.