Posted on 05/02/2003 10:42:07 PM PDT by Jewels1091
WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- For the nine Democratic presidential candidates, watching President George W. Bush fly onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in his jet pilot suit, and hugging all those certified war heroes, must have been like the Iraqi command when the bombs of "shock and awe" began to redraw the map of downtown Baghdad.
There before them is what they face next year: a 56-year-old man, tanned and fit, able to take a hard carrier hook landing without using the barf bag; in the words of one of the pilots, a "stud;" declaring victory on the decks of a sunlit aircraft carrier at sea with thousands of young American servicemen roaring their applause.
Ronald Reagan's Hollywood team could not have done better. This is a war president! He has defeated the Taliban, removed Saddam Hussein, bluffed back the Russians, Chinese and French and now warns the world that if you challenge the United States, one of these giant carriers with more warplanes than most countries can dream of will roll up next to your border and change your regime.
This is a sitting president who is going to challenge everything the tentative, politically correct 1990s stood for. He is running on a return of the America to the 1950s, the glory days: big cars, cheap gas, a powerful military whose generals are proconsuls from Baghdad to Kabul, and family values.
Even though he sat out Vietnam flying in the Texas Air National Guard, he has marshaled the giant constituency of the U.S. military, tapping the patriotism that burned after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and catering to the conservative values of the regular forces.
His campaign, like a fast-moving armored column in the desert, will be a hard target to hit. To attack his war is to attack the young men and women who fought the war and won it. The cheers on the deck of the Abe Lincoln were genuine and the Democrats who watched it know that.
Even if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq or real connections to al-Qaida established, the hated Saddam regime is gone and there are enough welcoming and happy people in Iraq to certify this little war. Bush Thursday was careful not to link the war to the first Gulf War, the one so many people think his father didn't finish. He linked it to the war on terror. This allows him to roll forward like that armored column, glossing over the future of Iraq, glossing over all the tangled issues of whether it can be governed or even reconstructed.
By declaring Iraq but a battle in the war on terror that is still under way, Bush neutralizes a Democratic complaint that his wars are no guarantor of safety from terrorist attack. The war, he says endlessly, could be endless, and an endless war faces no accounting. It is always a work in progress.
Presidents always have the advantage of an incumbent, but nothing matches the U.S. armed forces for drama and color. The nine Democrats conduct their first debate Saturday evening at 9 p.m. EDT in South Carolina. They were unable to persuade any national channel to carry the debate live, and ABC finally agreed to tape it. The first national TV broadcast of it will air at 1:30 a.m.
Bush was able to produce the sound stage of a giant carrier and its 5,000 young Americans as a backdrop for what perhaps was his first campaign speech. Millions of people worldwide watched him land on the carrier deck.
It is a theme Americans will see again and again in the next months. This is the president of the war on terror. The Republican Party will hold its convention in New York in early September, literally a stone's throw from Ground Zero. The heroes of that day, the police and firemen, will be there. The heroes of the war in Afghanistan will be there and the heroes of the Battle of Iraq.
Though politics in a republic is an uncertain practice, right now, George W. Bush must look very formidable.
Bingo! The death knell for sure.
And the adulation could all have been his if only he'd been honorable and a patriot.
Even if Clinton had a chance to do a war president, he would have been so obsessed with focus polls that he would be in a couple of on-going quagmires (in Afghan and Iraq) by now.
I hate to even speculate how many casualties America military racked up by now, if he was overseeing operations in Afghan and Iraq.
Ask them if they really want to take a chance of having a democrat at the helm in the event of another attack or another Iraq.
They always talk about an October suprise, well, I'm hoping for a September surprise. Right before the convention I hope we capture either Saddam or Bin Laden. I want him drug through the streets of NY with a rope around his neck, straight to the convention center :o)
Yep , in several ways:
Novak's Insider Report, Dems throw in towel on Senate majority in 2004
I do take issue with this, however.
"Even though he sat out Vietnam flying in the Texas Air National Guard..."
While my husband served in Viet Nam, the fine folks in the National Guard and the Reserves served our country, as well.
Contrast that to the one who said he loathed the military...
Loved it, watched it all!!!!
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Here are the rats talking points, so be ready:
1. He could have gone by helicopter.
2. The carrier was in sight of shore but was manouvered to get sea horizon in the pics
3. The carrier was diverted from its planned course to allow the jet landing
4. The carrier went to an area of sea that was calm so bush didn't get sea sick landing
All I can say is TOUGH S**T .....he did it beacuse he can.
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