“My fellow American citizens: Someone left the cake out in the rain (And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no!”)
Right, four-and-half years in, after God knows how many deaths on all sides, uncountable suffering and Armageddon style destruction and mayhem, George Bush has finally found a metaphor for his woefully ill-advised, neo-con trick adventure in Iraq.
It had started upbeat, of course, in 2003 – solemn but with the optimism befitting a man who thinks the world is his own born-again, Boys’ Own adventure book:
“My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.”
Then, it turned darker – and things were mostly described by what they were not. With the word ‘Vietnam’ becoming the White House’s personal ‘Voldemort’:
So, when asked, in 2004, by some pet hack if a comparison could be made between Iraq and the War-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, the answer was, of course:
I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy.
Same in 2005:
“This is, in many ways, religious in nature, and I don’t see the parallels.”
Or 2006…:
White House aides argue that the analogies between these two wars, conducted in different parts of the world, facing very different enemies, are mostly false ones.
“Historical parallels of that kind are not very helpful, and I don’t think they happen to be right,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the other day, in a tone she might have used for a Stanford graduate student whose thesis was not holding together. “This is a different set of circumstances, with different stakes for the United States.”
Anyway, That was then and this is now!, as that most irritating of all political clichés go - and now the prez has found his own personal metaphor for the war; something that doesn’t hide behind mere negatives. Something, standing tall and proud:
KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 22 — President Bush defended his ongoing military commitment in Iraq by linking the conflict there to the Vietnam War, arguing Wednesday that withdrawing U.S. troops would lead to widespread death and suffering as it did in Southeast Asia three decades ago.
“One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people, reeducation camps and killing fields,” Bush told a receptive audience at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention.
Ah well, things haven’t changed since this joke was told for the first time, so, for old times’ sake - and because it still is so hilariously and deplorably true:
While suturing a laceration on the hand of a
70-year-old Texas rancher (whose hand had caught in a
gate while working cattle), a doctor and the old man
were talking about George W. Bush being in the White
House. The old Texan said, “Well, ya know, Bush is a
‘post turtle’.”
Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked
him what a post turtle was. The old man said, “When
you’re driving down a country road,and you come across
a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a
post turtle.
The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face,
so he continued to explain, “You know he didn’t get
there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he can’t
get anything done while he’s up there, and you just
want to help the poor dumb thing get down.
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