Posted on 08/26/2005 8:36:39 AM PDT by quidnunc
There is a memorable photograph of John Fitzgerald Kennedy taken on Feb. 13, 1961, less than a month after he became president. He is on the telephone, pressing his hand to his forehead. His eyes are closed, his brow furrowed, his expression pained.
He has just learned that Patrice Lumumba, the premier of the Congo, had been assassinated shortly before Mr. Kennedy's inauguration. Mr. Kennedy is devastated — and the picture shows it.
One wonders how George W. Bush would have reacted. As the war in Iraq spun out of control, as the mother of a dead American soldier held a vigil near Mr. Bush's ranch in Texas, this president expressed no remorse or regret.
No self-doubt. No self-criticism. No self-examination.
It is quite remarkable, really. The roadside bombs are becoming more deadly, the constitutional talks are crawling, Iran is flooding the country with jihadists, and the American-trained Iraqi soldiers and policemen are inept. Yet from Mr. Bush, who proclaimed the war over more than two years ago, there is no admission or acknowledgement of a policy gone awry. He simply insists, as he did again on Monday, that staying the course in Iraq will make America safer.
Then he returns to his vacation. He likes his holidays, Mr. Bush does. In fact, he has taken more time off in his first five years than any of his recent predecessors did in eight. While a distraught Cindy Sheehan stood outside his door, demanding an apology for sending her son to his death, the president cleared brush and rode his mountain bike. "It's also important for me to go on with my life," he said, "to keep a balanced life."
Fine. As president, Mr. Bush must maintain a certain distance. As historian Edmund Morris, the biographer of Theodore Roosevelt argues, Ms. Sheehan "cannot expect a commander-in-chief to emote on demand. … A president has to protect himself from emotional predators, or he'd be sucked dry within a week of taking office."
But that's not what we're talking about here. The question isn't whether Mr. Bush should "emote," proving that he feels Ms. Sheehan's pain, but whether he can empathize, understanding the anguish of sacrifice seen as unnecessary.
Empathy has never been Mr. Bush's strength. He sent scores of murderers to their deaths in Texas — during his six years as governor the state had the busiest death row in America — and he claimed he never lost a night's sleep. On one occasion, he is said to have mocked a woman's pathetic plea for clemency.
Mr. Bush is tough, self-disciplined and focused, which is desirable in a president. He is also stubborn, self-assured and impulsive, which is not. His character and comportment explain why the United States is in Iraq today, and why Iraq is going terribly wrong.
When Mr. Bush made the case for invading Iraq, he made several arguments: that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; that there was a link between Iraq and Sept. 11; that the Americans would be greeted as liberators; that America had enough troops to do the job; that there was a plan for renewal and reconstruction.
It was on this basis that Americans largely supported the war. They believed their president and thought he could manage it.
We know that Mr. Bush was not up to this. He accepted bad intelligence. He rejected contrarian arguments. He ignored the warnings of his father and Colin Powell and isolated or discredited critics such as adviser Richard Clarke or diplomat Joseph Wilson. He did not marshal overwhelming force. He did not have a plan for the peace.
Had Mr. Bush asked the right questions, as Mr. Kennedy did in challenging the hawks during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he might have avoided this mess. But, untutored and inexperienced as he is, Mr. Bush didn't know how. He accepted arguments from the experts uncritically.
If democracy does come to the Middle East because of a renewed Iraq, it may be that the invasion will be seen as a good thing; as former Chinese premier Chou En-lai once said of the success of the French Revolution, it is too early to say. But it isn't too early to say that the post-war period was badly planned and badly executed, and Mr. Bush is to blame. For what he didn't do or say or ask, there is a cost. Life presents a bill, and Ms. Sheehan and others are paying it.
A year ago, during the presidential election, Mr. Bush persuaded Americans that he knew better on Iraq. Now, as his popularity plunges, they no longer believe or trust him, and the poor man hasn't the humility to realize it.
Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
E-mail: andrew_cohen@carleton.ca.
I'd be willing to bet that this self-proclaimed expert on the Presdent's inner life was one of those defending Clinton's "right to a private life" when it was proven, despite his lies to the contrary, that he was having sex with young women in the Oval Office.
Most likely because he was jonesing for painkillers
According to liberals, this is how they would caption this photo:
"Karl, have you ever been up in one of these planes? Everything looks so small. I don't know why everyone says the roads are so crowded...cars are just so darn small. From up here you could have 20 cars where only one fit before. And the trees are so small too..."
Or-
"Karl, you just don't understand. People are so stupid, stupider than I am, that they will vote for me no matter what...hey, you know what? I can make great faces that reflect back from this airplane window..."
Evaluating what liberals will think about something is as challenging as eating at McDonalds. You know exactly what it is going to taste like, and you know it will taste only slightly better than excrement.
very well put.
" The Ivory tower they reside in is made of snow,..."
How kind.
What a nice person you are.
I would have said, "manure."
Or because he knew there was a camera in the room.
He would have held a celebratory barbecue - as any American should when a brutal Communist thug bites the dust. ;)
Or (c) Marilyn turned him down the night before.
Canadian history is being disowned and rewritten by liberals and socialists (see the Heritage Minute series that is run on the CBC), and this professor does the same for the USA.
This guy has no idea of what it means to be a leader and commander. Leaders don't have the luxury of being able to show their emotions and must make very hard "no-win" decisions. This doesn't mean they have no feelings. General US Grant was the epitome of the stoic, emotionless General leading troops on the battlefield. On the first day of the battle of the Wilderness the Union suffered tremendous casualties and made no gains against Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Upon meeting with his Lt. Generals that evening, Grant emotionlessly told them that the attack would resume at dawn that morning. Many of the Generals present objected, pointing out what they thought was the needless loss of live during the day's battle. Grant said the question was not open to discussion and curtly dismissed the Generals and his staff. After everyone (but his chief of staff) had left, Grant went to his tent and spend the next several hours crying like a baby. Leaders don't have the luxury of showing emotion to others like you and I.
I've seen Bush deliver a speech moments after meeting with parents of soldiers killed, and his voice is cracking, he clearly has trouble getting through it.
He doesn't put his emotions on display, but if you're paying attention they are there and they are real.
They are also not very relevant. I don't elect a president to emote, I elect one who will carry out the policies I believe in. I have watched in horror as for decades we have stood by impotently in the face of muslim attacks on Americans. I don't want a president who will blow up an aspirin factory before moving on to more interesting subjects, I don't want a president who will cut and run after getting his eye blackened as we did after Somalia and, for that matter, Lebanon. I want someone who will make a plan to drain the swamp that produces the monsters we must confront, and to stay the course until its done.
That takes the kind of courage that Kennedy most clearly did not have, nor have many presidents since him. Courage isn't something you can emote for the camera, its something that you do every day when everything and everyone tells you to give it up.
This article is dishonest, and I can only conclude that its writer is dishonest as well.
Marilyn turned someone down?
"Let's see, who's next in my little black book?"
Yes, but it wouldn't fit the rest of the phrase...:-)
In writing about Kennedy'compassion for the Communist terrorist Patrice Lumumba, Cohen omitted his reaction to another assassination.
I wonder what was on President Kennedy’s mind when he learned about the assassination of our ally, President Ngo Dihn Diem in S. Vietnam in a coup that was carried out with the full complicity of the Kennedy brothers?
These leftists are not only devoid of mind, but they are devoid of conscience.
They will pay for their lies. If not here, in eternity.
Has this happened without any of us knowing about it?
Patrice Lumumba and his Mau Mau murderers were one of the worst murderous, racist band of savages that ever existed.
Well, the orders for newspaper journalists and so forth to come out and write critical pieces came out the other day, and knucklehead Cohen is just a mind-numbed robot following orders.
Thanks for posting both articles there, Quid.
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