Today’s Doonesbury has a couple of characters reminiscing about being in the Iraq war in 2004…and they quote George W. Bush.
Is that real? I’ve been working hard to erase the Bush years from my memory, but did we really have a president that simple-minded in office just 5 years ago?
“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.”
“There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”
‘We are better! Kill them! Demoooocraaaaacyyyyy!’
I am so disappointed in Obama. But it helps to remember the idiot in office before him.
I second the disappointed in Obama but it helps to remember the idiot…
Would be nice if subsequent commenters jogged all our memories a bit with some juicy quotes and incidents. All I can remember right now is that very deep abiding shame that came to me whenever Bush appeared.
Bush,W was awful but what REALLY made me so sad ;-( was that he got elected by a MAJORITY [oh, not really, but we still let him get away with it] Yes people such as W have a right to exist and are all over the place, but for us to make him “ruler of the world” is beyond comprehension/tolerance. That, makes me more sad/angry than W himself. I truly lament us, as a whole, that we allowed such to happen. We truly are dumed. Obama is a *ray* of hope, even if he ain’t full sunlight of hope, but he seems to really be someone who at least TRIES to do the
rightcorrect thing, rather than just assert his opinion as therightcorrect thing (believe his words or die) as W did.Re @1:
1) “Mission Accomplished!!”
2) [dare I even mention this?] His immediate response to the planes hitting the WTC (that day in Sept. of 2001). He didn’t even react. But after he heard they hit the Pentagon, He went into hiding and left Cheney in charge. ;-(
Wow, that speech could have as easily been said by the megalomaniac bad guy from a bad action flick.
But nope, it’s the democratically chosen leader of the country with the most fire power in the world. See, this shit is why the rest of the world should be very afraid of the US.
“And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state — my speech to the — nation, whatever you wanna call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years — 4,000 hours over the next — of the rest of your life — of service to America. That’s what I asked. I said 2 — 4,000 hours.” – April 9, 2002
“Many, many families look at me trying to determine whether or not, one, I believed that it [the Iraq war] was necessary, and two, whether or not I’m going to let their son or daughter kind of lie in an empty grave when it comes to the sacrifice they made.” – Jun. 13, 2008
“One of the interesting things about Katrina, as you well know, is many of the people displaced did not own their own homes, that they were renters.” – Mar. 20, 2006
“Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job.” – Sep. 2, 2005
“Much of my presidency was defined by things that you didn’t necessarily want to have happen.” – Apr. 13, 2013
“I refuse to have future Presidents, or this President, deal with a Senate trying to tell me through micromanaging the process how best to secure the homeland.” – Sep. 23, 2002
“I’m the commander — see, I don’t need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” – Aug. 20, 2002
“I don’t expect people to agree with every decision I make. But regardless of whether they do or not, I’m going to continue making the decisions in the way that I think is best for the country. There will be ample time to have the debate about whether or not it’s the right strategy or not. I look forward to the debate.” – Dec. 15, 2003
“What the country needs is a leader who speaks clearly.” – May 3, 2004
“It’s important for people to know that I’m the president of everybody.” – Jan. 14, 2005
I know that there are other US military veterans who frequent this blog. Do any of you read those two paragraphs and cringe at the way that it flouts US Army (I use army because that was my training and indoctrination (way back in 1990)) standards regarding professionalism and international law as it pertains to the military?
not to mention that GWB belonged to a champagne unit of the airforce and was a probable deserter even from that.
Ogvorbis @5
I’m a veteran and I agree with you. Bush was Commander-in-Chief and he reminded me of the old joke: “What’s the difference between the Navy and the Sea Scouts?” “The Sea Scouts have adult supervision.”
The one good thing Dubya did was make Dan Quayle look competent in comparison.
bush, when asked what he considered the best moment thus far in his five years in office:
digby:
stevem@2:
I feel kind of dirty doing this, but in the guy’s defense, he was in a classroom full of kids. Maybe a better leader would’ve handled things differently, but still, I’m not sure how else he could’ve reacted without freaking people out. That scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 always felt a little cheap to me. Cheney was probably left in charge only because he was actually in DC at the time. Given the crisis at the time, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was policy to keep the whereabouts of the POTUS a secret until he was safely on the ground in DC. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong so I never feel compelled to defend the guy again.
Now I’m going to shower.
re @10:
I agree, BUT he could have at least walked out of the classroom and started DOING something. He just shrugged and stayed sitting there. I’m so obsessed by this “non”-behavior cuz it fueled all the conspiracy wackos to think W was “secretly” behind the WTC FUBAR.
OK, enough for now. “good riddance to bad rubbish (i.e. W)”.
I don’t know if it’s from a real transcript. I would hope it’s a Poe, but I don’t have that much faith in the man (Bush, not Trudeau).
There are times when I look back on the Bush era administration in the US, and a cold chill runs down my spine at the thought that such a man had such power over the single greatest concentration of military might on the planet.
Perhaps the mere fact that his period of office didn’t end in thermonuclear war should be considered to be something of a win.
By comparison, Obama, while admittedly (and to put it very, very mildly) disappointing as a progressive, is a vast improvement, but what should be giving us all sleepless nights is the current Republican line up – it is full to capacity with rapture ready fanatics, staggering ignorant ninnys, violence obsessed warmongers and greedy corporate shills, many of whom make Bush look almost reasonable and erudite by comparison.
I regard the next Republican presidential term with dread.
Aaaah, his favorite word, even more so than freedumb and dimocracy.
Reminds me of when he was supposed to shake someone’s hand on his birthday and almost fell over.
He was obviously drunk.
Usernames @4, Thanks!
Let’s get some more of that.
Please please people, make me glad I don’t live in the U.S. anymore (gotta try to look on the bright side).
I do remember I was about to immigrate back to the U.S. and then Bush got elected, I hesitated and now can no longer leave here.
I also remember being on the inner circles of DNC emails (I was on the French committee for Kerry and friends with his cousin here) the day Kerry supposedly lost and how questioning of that result was repressed. Interesting emails I subsequently lost with the loss of a hard disk. Now it’s only my word based on vague memories against theirs.
Thankfully the dumb ass as disappeared into the walls with the other roaches and we don’t hear much of him anymore.
Not to defend him and all, but I read somewhere about someone in his cabinet talking about how intelligent he was in meetings and such. Does anyone have any idea if there’s any base to that idea? I mean, he did make some pretty dumb decisions in any case, but if he really earned his degree(s?) then he has to have some measure of intelligence. I just don’t get the disconnect with his actual policies.
In short, was he putting on a front and just being an asshole, or is he really dumb and people try to make him look good in retrospect?
methuseus
I would suppose that says more about the intellectual capacity of the cabinet member in question than it does about Bush.
This pretty much proves what I’ve always suspected, which is that for conservatives, the Iraq War was a do-over for Vietnam. They had concocted their own stab-in-the-back legend for that war and had convinced themselves that the only reason for losing was a lack of will power. This time we’d get it right and not let those pansy hippies hamstring our military.
Heckuva job.
My university (I live in scandinavia) had a small group of american students when the 2004 elections where held. Seemed they all voted for Bush, and the reason for doing so struck me as the dumbest of all reasons. It was ‘to give him a chance to solve the mess he had created’. Why? If a president brings your country into a mess the proper response would be to replace him ASAP with someone that is actually, you know, competent!
My take is that Bush wasn’t particularly dumb; he was an average guy with absolutely no intellectual curiosity who took a kind of pride in it.
And this has always been my favorite encapsulation of his presidency:
Get Your War On
This:
broke my brain.
Not exactly up there with “We will fight them on the beaches,” is it?
My brother-in-law, who graduated from high school and went straight to work in a steel mill for thirty years was embarrassed by W’s grammar. I was at his house once when Bush gave a speech on TV and my brother-in-law remarked that he really wished the country’s president sounded like a president instead of the high school dropouts in the mill. I was never more pleased to have this intelligent but uneducated man as my relative.
However, in addition to being disappointed in Obama as a progressive, I’ve been shocked by his continuation and even escalation of the use of drones and targeted killings. These policies have created more enemies than have been killed.
My Fox-News-watching dad got spitting mad about W when he first appeared, in mid-2000. Because he saw a story about how W is a recovering alcoholic (last drank sometime in the 1980s, I think?) and was offended by it. My parents are both fervent believers in the 12 Steps [insert rant here] and the fact that – AFAIK – W kicked the bottle without the 12 Steps means that he isn’t “really” in recovery and has replaced his alcohol addiction with an addiction to something else, and such people are dangerous.
There were a lengthy series of tense conversations on this topic.
Even the libertarians you so despise think Dubya was worse than Obama. Some of us do, anyway.
26 Rex Little, Giant Douchweasel
Here’s a cookie.