Bubble Boy - The Sequel

As might be expected, the man in the bubble either doesn’t get it, or doesn’t want to get it.

Or perhaps, the (p)resident, once again, is just showing his natural disdain for democracy by interpreting the November elections as, “people wanting a change of direction,” in Iraq, as opposed to wanting out of Iraq.

Michael Abramowitz of the “Washington Post” notes that “President Bush has been busy listing how his policies [in Iraq] will not be changing. There will be no timetable for removing American troops, no high-level dialogue with Iran and Syria, and no slackening of support for the widely criticized government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.”

And what’s more, Bush doesn’t want less troops, he wants more.

Of course.

But things are different as the scribe noted in “Bush at War: Total Repudiation.”

Junior’s had his toys taken away from him, but he just doesn’t know it yet.

Stenny Hoyer, the new Democratic majority leader in the House had this to say in the same piece: “There hasn’t been a change from the president. The president may be trapped in his own policy, sensing, ‘If I don’t succeed, it will be a huge blot on my record, and so therefore I have no choice but to try to succeed’.”

Thank you Stenny Hoyer (he’s the ‘silver fox’-looking character in the picture), whoever you have been, for a short, sweet and easy-to-understand analysis of what’s going on.

Now we must have a conversation with Senate Majority leader Harry Reid that, no, it’s not okay to fund a “temporary surge” in troops as the (p)resident wishes.

There’s no such thing and if we’ve (re)learned anything from this ghastly affair, it’s that war is much easier to start than stop, and that violence spirals.

Talking a little more sense is the “Post’s" David Ignatius. He’s the one who doesn’t look like a Zakaria in the little banner with talking heads at left (and up a little).

We defer to Ignatius because he doesn’t live Iraq through other peoples’ eyes the way the scribe, for reasons of family, finance, and fear, does. He was there in August when the, “army had launched an aggressive campaign to regain control of Baghdad’s toughest neighborhoods. We rumbled through Doura and Amiriyah in a little convoy of armored Humvees, and, sure enough, the show of American force seemed to be working – for a while. The insurgents and death squads slipped away. But as soon as U.S. forces moved on to pacify other areas., they came back. A new surge of U.S. troops in Baghdad could repeat this cycle on a larger scale, but to what end?”

the scribe is not a military scientist, so you can weigh for yourself some of Ignatius’ ideas about what a new U.S. strategy might look like.

If you’re looking for some military scientists, here’s another “Post” piece on Pentagon reticence to send more meat over to Iraq for grinding.

They disagree with the (p)resident, who ostensibly holds authority over them, but remember who has the guns in the end. That is probably why Bush pledges not only more troops, but a bigger military bought with more of your health care and education money.

That might bring them around.

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