For
this column, he deserves a big sloppy smackeroo (on the cheek, of course --what kind of gal do you think I am?)
rarely has a president stood more alone at a moment of high crisis than does our president now as he makes his crucial policy decisions on the Iraq War. His political opponents stand triumphant, yet barren of useful guidance. Many -- if not most -- of his fellow party men and women in Washington are rapidly joining his opponents in a desperate effort to save their political skins in 2008. Commentators who urged the president on in 2002-03, having fallen out of love with their ideas, are quick to quibble with and defame the president.
One of his erstwhile friends even complained the other day that he doesn't look troubled enough --not worn out by the office. Which is not only insipid, it's not even true. The man has aged markedly in six years if you care to compare the pictures.
If Washington gossip is right, even many of the president's own advisers in the White House and the key cabinet offices have given up on success. Official Washington, the media and much of the public have fallen under the unconscionable thrall of defeatism. Which is to say that they cannot conceive of a set of policies -- for a nation of 300 million with an annual GDP of more than $12 trillion dollars and all the skills and technologies known to man -- to subdue the city of Baghdad and environs. Do you think Gen. Patton or Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin would have thrown their hands up and say "I give up, there's nothing we can do?"
Thank you. Thank you SO much for saying that. And then a little comparison with the consensus opinion that we should have abandoned Ft. Sumter.
Lincoln was alone in the self-same rooms now occupied by George W. Bush. All his cabinet and all his military advisers had counseled a path Lincoln thought would lead to disaster. He was only a month in office and judged by most of Washington -- including much of his cabinet -- to be a country bumpkin who was out of his league, an accidental president. Alone, and against all advice he made the right decision -- as he would do constantly until victory.
And then --I must be in a weepy mood, because this got me all teary --(which makes twice today --and I never cry. The other time was hearing a replay from a Bush speech earlier this year when that Iraqi Kurdish woman rose to praise Bush and thank America for the freedom of 27 million people.)
Mr. President, you are not alone. The ghost of Old Abe is on your shoulder. God Bless you and Merry Christmas.
