George W. Bush Reads Blogs. No, Really!
By Mona
“When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground,” Bush said, “and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.”
Then our Leader declares:
[Bush] argued that the current debate over the Iraq war and the Bush administration’s anti-terror methods harkens back to debates decades ago in Washington when Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin first talked about launching a communist revolution, when Adolf Hitler began moves to establish an “Aryan superstate” in Germany, and when some argued that Cold War accommodation of the Soviet Union was wiser than competition.
Interesting, that last bit. The hawks who control our foreign policy conversation today didn’t merely argue accommodation vs.competition vis-a-vis the USSR, they advocated hot war (Viet Nam) and completely mischaracterized and — by great magnitudes — overstated the Soviets’ intentions and capacity. These neocons and /or their progeny (sometimes, literally) are the same dangerous paranoids who now promote this Islamofascism = Hitler (and Lenin/Stalin) delusion.
.
But Bush reads blogs. I’m tickled…pink.
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Comment by Drar —
November 1, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
Actually that may have been a shout-out to the ten or so Code Pink protesters who spent three hours outside the Heritage Foundation yelling on a bullhorn and carrying a banner back and forth across Massachusetts Avenue. I work a couple of blocks away and you could hear incoherent ranting through the walls. When I walked to lunch she was yelling something about the D.C. cops, who I’m sure are really big GWB supporters. Way to rally folks to your side, CP!
Comment by kishnevi —
November 1, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
I seriously doubt the Great Decider reads blogs. And if he does, you can be sure that antiwar blogs are not high on his blogroll.
More likely, he knows (=told by his handlers) that MoveOn is a big online antiwar presence, and so he cites them to prove he knows there’s an Internet out there, rather in the way that ten year old boys grab the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, to demonstrate they know there’s something under those bikinis.
Comment by Michelle —
November 1, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
Mona, though you have made many steps out of the Soviet focused world view — more than Condi Rice — you seem to still be dragging behind the rest of the planet.
Comment by Thoreau —
November 1, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
Just in case he is reading blogs, I’ll make my request in the traditional blog manner:
Deer Mr. Preznit,
I can haz Bill of Rights?
KTHXBYE.
LOL
Comment by Michelle —
November 1, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
Yay thoreau!
Comment by Mona —
November 1, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
B-b-b-ut he cited them in his speech!
Comment by Clark —
November 1, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
Does MoveOn.org actually have a blog?
Comment by Thoreau —
November 1, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
Michelle-
im in ur blogs makin ur comments
i can haz due process? lol
Comment by Mona —
November 1, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
Who cares, you nitpicker? Bush’s speech writers think so, so he does. That means the president reads blogs — YEAH!
We Can Communicate.
Comment by Jean —
November 1, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
If American policy on Islamist terror is anything like the American reaction to Bolshevism in the 1917-1925 time period, you are so very screwed.
Honestly, what the fuck? The American (Western) intervention in Russia failed, failed like a failing thing with added fail.
Why would you want to take that as a model?
Comment by Mona —
November 1, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
Uh, well, the Soviets did end up aiming thousands of nuclear missiles at us, and infiltrating our govt with domestic spies before we had even a zygote of a CIA.
Does any reasonable person think the “Islamofascists” can do likewise?
Comment by Jean —
November 1, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
Uh, well, the Soviets did end up aiming thousands of nuclear missiles at us, and infiltrating our govt with domestic spies before we had even a zygote of a CIA.
After you’d invaded Russia. Which is my point. Bush seems to think that the Allies should have gone in hard during the Russian Civil War. Given that the Allied intervention was a complete failure, and was always going to be a failure, isn’t it scary Bush thinks the mistake was not staying the course?
Bush is really daft. And it looks like he’s going to pull the same stuff in Iraq as Churchill et al tried in Russia.
Comment by Mona —
November 1, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
It wasn’t much of an invasion. And in hindsight, we’d have been better off prevailing — but no one took it that seriously, altho Emma Goldman quickly did condemn Lenin and the Revolution there once she saw it up close and personal.
By contrast, there is no Lenin or Stalinist nation-state analog to fear from Muslims.
Comment by Jon H —
November 1, 2007 @ 11:42 pm
The only blog he’d read would be icanhastaxcut.blogspot.com
Comment by Preznit —
November 1, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
PLEEZ TO DON’T KEEL ME?
KTHXBYE.
LOL
heh heh, the old karla faye always cracks me up.
Comment by Kevin Hayden —
November 2, 2007 @ 1:17 am
With his daily codescending lecture to Congressional Dems, I wonder how long they’ll let him Swiftboat them.
I want to hear a response like: “hoowee! The president wants to insult the intelligence of every American by suggesting his political opponents are unaware that Al Qaida’s leaders are dangerous. Yet after years of asking him to take them out, he’s still got our troops thousands of miles away, in Iraq. The problem is he wants to talk and talk and hand out his solution, but he never listens. Seventy percent of America is saying ‘Bring our troops home’ and the best thing he can offer is to say they aren’t serious about terrorists.
How many lemons does he think he can sell us before the junkyard is full? I’m sorry, Mr. President, but if the choice is your way or the highway, we’d rather walk than ride in another clunker without brakes.”
Comment by Jean —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:40 am
Not much of an invasion is easier to say when it is other peoples’ countries, isn’t it?
Comment by Wulf —
November 2, 2007 @ 5:38 am
Now who’s being naive, Kay?
/Michael Corleone
Please see my comments here for clarification. Everyone in Congress who gave even an ounce of support to the invasion of Iraq was well aware that our troops would still be there today and beyond.
Comment by Michelle —
November 3, 2007 @ 9:15 pm
Oh haih Thoreau! thx for commenting on my blog– it was supersecret! k (invisible step back into the comments here)
Sorry, Mona, I gotta jump in. The fall of the Soviet Union had a lot more to do with internal pressures than external. For one, Russification was bitterly fought for years in many of the republics — even to the death. Religious types that I have problems with here in the U.S. (Baptists) wer held in high regard for there years long faith. My friends in Latvia knew when the end was coming — but when I was there — 5 years after independence, noe of them — not a soul — attributed anything to the U.S.
They won their independence the way it should have happened — in the best way — not with a gun, but with sacrifice and perseverance.