President George W. Bush was at his disingenuous best yesterday, speaking before a supportive crowd at a Fairfax, Va., American Legion post, blaming Democrats and claiming for himself the ultimate right to set all policy — even those prerogatives given by the Founders to Congress.
The speech was full of a lot of spin — rosy pictures of progress in Iraq and all that. But what made the news — and it was the only news in the speech, really — was his direct attackon the Democratic leadership for, in his words, “substitut(ing) the judgment of politicians in Washington for the judgment of our commanders on the ground.”
The president, of course, was using the speech to push his agenda — a prolonged war that is stretching the military beyond its limits, while doing little to quell the smoldering civil war in Iraq.
The funding issue is a bit of a red herring, of course. The president could very well sign the Congressional bill, but that would require him to acknowledge that Congress is a co-equal branch of government and that the system of governance we live under is designed to encourage compromise.
Instead, we get this:
Now, the Democrats who pass these bills know that I’ll veto them, and they know that this veto will be sustained. Yet they continue to pursue the legislation. And as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field.
The focus is on “Congress’s failure,” which he says will lead to reduced training, equipment shortages and the like — all things that the military has been living with thanks to Donald Rumsfeld (remember “you go to war with the army you have”?), Dick Cheney and our petulant president.
Then, what do you expect from a president who has based his entire term on the reckless and arrogant disregard for anything other than partisanship and spin?
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Hank Kalet 