KODACHROME
Posted on 08/21/2006 3:30:36 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
No doubt, President Bush has one knee on the canvas. What is in doubt is whether he's buying time or simply cannot get back up.
Just look at the serious body blows he has taken lately:
His bold Bush Doctrine of striking down terror before it shatters us is in disarray in Afghanistan, Iraq, even here at home.
His magnificent ambition to plant the seeds of liberty and spread freedom throughout the enslaved world is unraveling.
His sworn obligation to protect Israel, one of America's few authentic allies, at all costs, and never to accept a peace in Lebanon that resurrects the status quo ante is down the drain.
His stern warnings to Syria and its master Iran to keep their filthy hands off Israel are derided.
His pronouncement that the Free World cannot abide a nuclear North Korea is shrugged off.
His warning, through a United Nations resolution, to Iran that it must by the end of this month abandon its nuclear-weapons program is answered by sneers, insults and invective from Tehran, followed by a salvo of serious Iranian rockets to show it means business even if he doesn't.
His enemies from the left in Congress grow bolder and nastier by the day in what they say of him, threatening impeachment if they regain control of the House of Representatives this November.
Opportunists like a second-term senator from Nebraska within his own party are warming up to walk across his face in quest of the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Opinion polls, of dubious veracity themselves, are allowed to go unchallenged, thus becoming their own self-fulfilling prophesies that the president is going down the pipes.
The leftist "mainstream" media have abandoned all pretext of accuracy and objectivity, now daily making up bogus anti-Bush stories, trying to outdo one another in venality. While all that's been going on, what counterpunches has the president landed? None that come to mind.
Something quite alarming is going on, and it's showing increasingly in the president's public appearances.
His body language of late has been ... well ... just awful.
Gone are the televised events in which he leans across a podium, full of energy and believability, sharing his convictions and enthusiasm with responsive audiences.
Is This Our President?
Now, his TV-appearance arrangers have him standing awkwardly alone, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other. In the background sit or stand a few unknowns, all scowling as if in disbelief or suffering acute indigestion.
The president's own visage is scarcely recognizable. Disappeared is the buoyant smile, the twinkling eyes.
His syntax, usually a problem (actually not, since its candid openness was a big plus with most Americans, who speak the same way he does) has been all right. But he now seems unable to articulate anything.
Here is a man who is either grievously sleep-deprived, physically and emotionally drained, or weighted down, in honest despair, by realities that would terrify any mortal.
It Must Be Tempting
Is he on the verge of saying to himself, "To hell with it. I did my best. And all anyone wants from me now is my head on a pike. They can take this job and shove it. I'm heading home to Crawford."?
Or does he know something the rest of us don't know – and probably wouldn't want to know? Does he see apocalypse just over the horizon? Is global nuclear winter nearly upon us, and there's not a blessed thing he can do about it?
Or does he know what has to be done to save this nation, and the rest of civilization? Is it crushing his very soul? Is it like looking straight down the throat of doomsday?
Is he buying time – letting Enemy win all the little battles – so he can furiously regroup, retrain, rearm in order to make the dreadful preemptive move that only can win the ultimate war?
Totally Out of Character
Everything we've come to know about this remarkable, decent man from Texas tells us he has steel inside, not flab, that he is not afraid to do what's right regardless of political consequences. It is impossible to think of him in terms of capitulation to anything.
Yet what is the alternative? Is he about to confide in us, his people, that, like it or not, we are all – including him – going to have to face, and make, a life-or-death decision unprecedented in history?
That's enough to wipe the smile off any man's face.
No one who admires and wishes him well wants to think he is down on one knee, having to take the full count because he has been cruelly beaten, defeated, humiliated, immobilized.
Now Let Us Pray
No one of sane mind wants to believe he is kneeling there, having to take the count up just short of 10 in order to buy every split-second of precious time to get us ready for the indescribable.
Yet, that may well be the lesser of two intolerable possibilities.
This good man, our 43rd president, needs – deserves – the nation's prayers. Even more than did our 16th president.
Abraham Lincoln had to wage a war he hated to save the union he loved. George W. Bush has to agonize about saving civilization.
Those who believe in prayer had better get busy.
Wonderful post!!
That didn't make your comment any less inane. My response, knowing that you were being sarcastic and condescending, was no different than it would have been if I hadn't been so 'perceptive.'
I had to work hard to be polite in response to such a stupid post......
Yeha.....just move along now with all the other lemmings.
REALLY clever and original too, spirit!
(What seminar did you learn THAT one in? HA!!!)
Oh, it's not that hard whenever I'm dealing with someone that only wants to look at part of an issue and believes that to be the only truth.......vs. studying the issue and understanding the reality of the situation in it's ENTIRETY. I know that's probably a hard concept to fathom but I suggest baby steps.
And do have a good day, OK?
(And if at some point in time the subject you are addicted to is the subject of the thread we're on, I'll be happy to engage you in a discussion. But as long as you hijack another thread to beat the President up on, as you BorderBots are wont to do, you won't have me a party to it).
Spoken like a true cut'n run RINO......remember...baby steps, baby steps.
Yeah........I'm a RINO alright. BWAHAHAHAHA!!! (Excuse me while I catch my breath.....)
btw, don't forget to clear your fuzzy headed Reagan-is-a-god memory before we talk again. I deal with historic facts, and your convenient rosy glasses view of Reagan on immigration will NEVER make it in a serious discussion.
Do ping me to an APPROPRIATE thread some day, sweetie, and we'll talk........
Now enough wasting of my time with a one-issue thread hijacker. There are serious people on this forum, and I'm frankly, a little tired of your pseudo-con games........amusing though they may be.
I am more conservative than Ronald Reagan (and obviously you)............which is why I know his actual record, while you are in your fuzzy mythological memory world.
I am also more conservative than George W. Bush, which is why I disagree with him on a number of issues.......including immigration.
Good bye, fuzzy borderbot. You may keep posting to me, your conservative superior, if you will..... on your ONLY topic of conversation........but I will not reply.
There are well educated, intelligent, real conservatives on this board, making your pseudo-con, semi-literate stances a complete waste of my serious, conservative, educated life.
Ta ta......... find a better seminar. The ones you've been to have failed you, 'toots.'
It's also obvious that any sort of rational argument isn't going to open your eyes at this point so I didn't try - and I did manage not to call you "stupid" in the process. But if you want to play that way have at it.
"It's not just Bush who is in trouble. The Nation is in trouble -- in peril"
Just say Civilization, please.
You just made an illogical leap from what I had posted to "everything's fine"..........not to mention the fact that you admitted you were being sarcastic when you said it.
And I didn't call you 'stupid'..........I said your post was stupid...........and it was. But you have admitted that you weren't being serious when you posted it, so what's your gripe?
Now can we stick with what's actually been said? If you can't do that, then there isn't much point in this, is there?
Where do you come up with these things?? Do you just make everything up out of whole cloth?
(See my tagline? It's hardly a 'peace in our time' position to send a son to war so that he can fight terrorism so it doesn't reach our shores in the future, now is it?)
But what part of this post is the truth?
That Bush is fighting to keep his head above water, and as a result our heads above water and that he needs our prayers.
All is not fine.
Since I don't come even close to thinking any of those things, you either grossly misinterpreted what I said, or I didn't communicate clearly enough.
Please post the link to any of the above things that you have accused me of saying.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.