Posted on 08/17/2002 5:35:53 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON Oedipus, Shmoedipus.
Why cite a Greek hero when we can cite the president's favorite British hero?
In "Goldmember," Austin Powers has "Earn Daddy's Respect" on his To Do list. So the teary but still groovy spy confronts his prodigal father, played by Michael Caine.
"Got an issue?" Daddy breezily responds. "Here's a tissue."
Tissue issues between the two Bush presidents spilled into public view on Thursday when that most faithful family retainer, Brent Scowcroft, wrote a jaw-dropping op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal headlined "Don't Attack Saddam."
Mr. Scowcroft gave the back of his hand to conservatives' strenuous attempts to link Saddam to 9/11.
Bellicose Bushies have yet to offer a sustained and persuasive rationale for jumping Saddam, beyond yammering about how "evil" he is, as if he had a monopoly on that.
In the Journal, Mr. Scowcroft, one of the team that drew that fateful line in the sand a decade ago, ticked off all the reasons why invading Iraq makes no sense: it would jeopardize, and maybe destroy, our global campaign against terrorism; it would unite the Arab world against us; it would require us to stay there forever; it would force Saddam to use the weapons against us or Israel.
"Scowcroft is now more critical of Bush's foreign policy than Sandy Berger, which is mind-boggling," says Bill Kristol, a Bush I veteran who edits The Weekly Standard.
No one who knows how close Mr. Scowcroft is to former President Bush they wrote a foreign policy memoir so symbiotic they alternated writing paragraphs believes he didn't check with Poppy first. Did 41 allow his old foreign policy valet to send a message to 43 that he could not bear to impart himself?
The father is hypersensitive about meddling and reluctant to give advice. He doesn't want his pride to get in the way of his son's making up his own mind on what's right.
"It's a very strange relationship," a former aide to the father says. "He's so careful about his son's prerogatives that I don't think he would tell him his own views."
But Bush the elder must be fed up with being his son's political punching bag. On everything from taxes to Iraq, the son has tried to use his father's failures in the eyes of conservatives as a reverse playbook.
It must be galling for Bush père to hear conservatives braying that the son has to finish the job in Iraq that the father wimped out on.
His proudest legacy, after all, was painstakingly stitching together a global coalition to stand up for the principle that one country cannot simply invade another without provocation. Now the son may blow off the coalition so he can invade a country without provocation.
Junior could also have made the case that Dad's tax increase, which got him into so much trouble, led to 10 years of prosperity. Instead he has philosophically joined the right-wingers who erroneously think that the tax increase caused a recession.
But W. has spent his life running from his father's long shadow, trying to usurp Dad's preppy moderate Republicanism with good ol' boy conservative Republicanism.
Poppy bequeathed his son, a foreign affairs neophyte, his own trusted Desert Storm team, with Dick Cheney as surrogate father.
But Mr. Cheney brought in Don Rumsfeld, an old rival of Poppy's, and he was joined at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. This group is far more conservative, unilateral, ideological and belligerent than the worldly realists: 41, Scowcroft, Colin Powell and James Baker.
"The father and Scowcroft were about tying the coalition and the New World Order with a neat little bow," a Bush I official said. "Wolfowitz and Perle are: `We're the new sheriff in town. We'll go it alone.' "
The Bush I moderates worry that the Bush II ideologues will use terrorism as an alibi for imperialism. Bush II thinks Bush I is trapped in self-justification.
Mr. Kristol writes in the upcoming Weekly Standard that Mr. Scowcroft and Mr. Powell are "appeasers" who "hate the idea of a morally grounded foreign policy that seeks aggressively and unapologetically to advance American principles around the world."
What does that make the old man? The Chamberlain of Kennebunkport?
Who needs a war plan? We need family therapy.
Yes, they communicate by sending third party comments in the Wall Street Journal. Even when they just spent four days together, a week and a half ago.
I can see President Bush and his dad on the golf course, chatting about the weather. Dad Bush says to himself "Gee, I wish I could tell him what I think. Nope, can't do it, wouldn't be prudent. Who can I get to tell him? Bar? No, she could never tell him the truth. Jenna? No, she won't ever say anything mean to him. Laura? No, she doesn't like to hurt his feelings. . I know, I'll get Brent to write an article in the Wall Street Journal!"
Is this the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard the press imply? It sure is for me!
Instead of writing a substantive criticism of either Scowcroft's fears or Rice's imperatives, Dowd sends up this pseudointellectual garbage. For some time she's been writing this psychosexual analysis of Bush the Younger as if it has any validity to it.
Add to this fact the probability that she's getting hammered by some media bigwig and you can start putting things together. Her writing is clever but it is also substandard. Someone is getting something for putting her columns in print.
The great thing is that many liberals actually read her column like they read Doonesbury: for what they believe to be deep intellectual analysis hidden by cutting satire.
Which should tell you something about most liberals.
Someone posted on here an assertion that Dowd's paychecks were sure larger than ours. That's true.
But all that proves is that you can be well paid and shovel shit at the same time.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
You people haven't seen catty yet!
Meow!
Be Seeing You,
Chris
But all that proves is that you can be well paid and shovel shit at the same time.
LOL! Nomination for Quote of the Day, RJayneJ (although you might have to clean it up a bit). Ha!
semper disgusted!
For all the media tries to paint Bush as a moron, don't forget how he used the media in the campaign:
A TV commercial would appear in a backwater outlet with some outrageous accusation or gimmick (remember the 'RATS' spot?)
Locals would be up in arms, and within a day the spot would be airing wall-to-wall on the network news.
Bush would spend about $300 for airtime (on a cable station) and end up with full network airing, and the RATS looked like sniveling idiots for complaining about it.
The Bush 43 organization is reknown for not leaking, pre- and post- 911.
I believe that in recent weeks the 'leaks' have been carefully orchestrated to confuse the enemy while we move our chips around the board.
I don't know when, but I expect a brilliant finish to Saddam, once and for all.
That is quite a pleasant thought.
MAUREEN BECOMES ELECTRA :
Junior Gets a Spanking (Maureen Dowd, 8/18/02, NY Times)
Oedipus, Shmoedipus.
Why cite a Greek hero when we can cite the president's favorite British hero?
In "Goldmember," Austin Powers has "Earn Daddy's Respect" on his To Do list. So the teary but still groovy spy confronts his prodigal father, played by Michael Caine.
"Got an issue?" Daddy breezily responds. "Here's a tissue."
Tissue issues between the two Bush presidents spilled into public view on Thursday when that most faithful family retainer, Brent Scowcroft, wrote a jaw-dropping op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal headlined "Don't Attack Saddam."
Mr. Scowcroft gave the back of his hand to conservatives' strenuous attempts to link Saddam to 9/11.
Bellicose Bushies have yet to offer a sustained and persuasive rationale for jumping Saddam, beyond yammering about how "evil" he is, as if he had a monopoly on that.
Second, in all fairness to the General, one would have thought that Ms Dowd would have found the second paragraph of Mr. Scowcroft's column to be germane :
It is beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein is a menace. He terrorizes and brutalizes his own people. He has launched war on two of his neighbors. He devotes enormous effort to rebuilding his military forces and equipping them with weapons of mass destruction. We will all be better off when he is gone.
That said, we need to think through this issue very carefully.
If Ms Dowd does not care that Saddam is a menace and does not think he should be dealt with then let her make her case. She should not be allowed to on the one hand say that the argument in favor of war has not been made and on the other hand try to refute that very argument through the twisted use of an essay that concedes that the argument is in fact valid.
Ms Dowd needs to put down the snacks, banish from her mind the sado-masochistic sexual fantasies starring George W., and put a little work into her columns. She's become an embarrassment to the Times.
Thanks for the ping, Pokey!
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