In order to continue to battle the terrorists, Bush must win the election in November. Unfortunately, if Bush were to ramp up war footing against some terrorist regime like the totalitarian genocidal butcher of Khartoum, he'd be lambasted of making war for political gain.
As for Congressional approval, while helpful, Bush is the commander in chief and the Islamic Republic of the Sudan is a terrorist state. Therefore, the resolution that enabled Bush to fight the terrorists will suffice. Moreover, if an al-Qaida connection exists, their own declaration of war against us, which they consummated with their attacks on New York, make Bush a wartime president.
But Bush's winning political strategy is to lie as low as possible while campaigning as fervently as necessary to hold at least 269 electoral votes. Kerry needs 270 to win; 269 faithful electors will suffice for Bush. Right now, Bush has an almost imperceptibly narrow lead in the key state of Florida (about 4,000 votes, give or take 190,000). Bush cannot afford politically to take even the slightest action until November that might arouse the fervent editorializing of the nonpartisan press, lead to accusations of using the military for political gain (however false), tick off the enemy propagandists in Hollywood, or run the risk of perceived failure however obvious the success to unbiased eyes, lest President Kerry subjugate this great nation to the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
The Army, meanwhile, is engaged in a seemingly endless series of mop-up operations in Iraq against almost every terrorist group in the entire Arab world. We are winning this war, although the history books will declare it a "miserable failure for the United States," for the purveyors of enemy propaganda have so decreed it. And we will win--if Bush survives the election.
And herein lies the problem: an openly but not admittedly hostile media, a large contingent of seditious enemy propagandists, and even a few traitors among the ranks of Americans will spin any good news from a military so overwhelmingly that the American people--or at least a key handful of political independents in a few electorally essential states--will believe that Bush has been militarily defeated. And if Kerry becomes President, a terrorist victory might be more than just a figment of media imaginations.
The title phrase is often used, but the whole poem is worth a read for those who don't know it. It definitely captures certain truths.
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
