Backdrop speaks volumes on Mission Accomplished anniversary
By Libby
I've been liking Capt. Ed's work a lot lately but he strayed off the mark in this post. I'm afraid his loyalism is showing. Not everyone attributed the Mission Accomplished banner to Bush. We get that he didn't ask to have it put up but it's just silly to think he didn't choose to speak in front of that backdrop specifically to send that message to Americans.
The whole event was political theater at its finest. The arrival on the fighter jet, the president all decked out in his flight suit. The delivery of the message from the deck of an aircraft carrier. He could have much more easily delivered that speech from the rose garden. But that might have reminded us that the troops weren't welcomed with sweets and flowers. The insurgency was just organizing then, hence his warning about work left to do, but the implication was clearly that it was all over but the rebuilding. Rebuilding. that four years later has dismally failed to be accomplished.
Ed also defends Bush's unequivocal declaration that major combat operations were completed by suggesting that everything that happened after wasn't major.
I've been liking Capt. Ed's work a lot lately but he strayed off the mark in this post. I'm afraid his loyalism is showing. Not everyone attributed the Mission Accomplished banner to Bush. We get that he didn't ask to have it put up but it's just silly to think he didn't choose to speak in front of that backdrop specifically to send that message to Americans.
The whole event was political theater at its finest. The arrival on the fighter jet, the president all decked out in his flight suit. The delivery of the message from the deck of an aircraft carrier. He could have much more easily delivered that speech from the rose garden. But that might have reminded us that the troops weren't welcomed with sweets and flowers. The insurgency was just organizing then, hence his warning about work left to do, but the implication was clearly that it was all over but the rebuilding. Rebuilding. that four years later has dismally failed to be accomplished.
Ed also defends Bush's unequivocal declaration that major combat operations were completed by suggesting that everything that happened after wasn't major.
And that much has been true. We have not had major military operations in the same sense as the invasion. We have been engaged in police actions intended on securing portions of cities against attacks, not major military maneuvers such as the opening days of the conflict. Those police actions are still deadly, but they represent the traditional role of stabilization for an allied government.What stabilization would that be? Iraq couldn't be more fragile and was Fallujah really just a police action? Was Tal Afar a small offensive? For that matter is the so-called surge a minor military operation? If Ed wants to debate within a framework of intellectual honesty, I think he had better check his own spin before he criticizes the people who connected the dots as the president intended them to do at the time. We heard what he said, and we knew what he meant.
Labels: anniversary, bloggers, Bush, Iraq, spin
posted by Libby Spencer at 7:40 PM
4 Comments:
It's funny to see the neocons jump around the word "occupation". They wanna say "he was right, mission accomplished, we won the war.. and since then the occupation has been terribly executed" - but they can't, "occupation" is a talking point no no.
Yeah, Falluja was just a police action. Well, actually the whole damn "war" is just a police action since war was never declared. Correct?
Just like Viet Nam, only different.
I seem to remember that there was an attempt at that point to eliminate combat pay which suggests the administration's conclusion that combat was at an end. Perhaps I remember wrongly, but perhaps not.
Anyway for a sea captain he's as far from the ocean as he is from objectivity as a writer - in this instance anyway.
Anon - it is interesting how they manage to avoid admitting it's an occupation of a sovereign country.
Prague - That's true. It's not Bush ever actually declared war officially so under that criteria I suppose they could spin it as a police action.
Fogg - now that you mention it, I have a dim recollection of the combat issue myself. As for ED, I run hot and cold on him. He can often be an astute and fairly neutral observer, but he reverted to his early days as Bush apologist on this post.
Post a Comment
<< Home