George Bush’s Iraq Obsession: America Held Hostage

As you read these words George W. Bush is poised to humiliate Senate Republicans yet again — and Senate Republicans, with only a few exceptions, are poised to accept this new humiliation and say, yet again: Yes, boss.

From the minute George Bush planned to let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora by diverting our military to his obsessive hunger for the Iraq war, the conduct of Republicans in the Senate has been one of the most morally shameful abdications of conscience and duty in the history of the American Congress.

On Iraq, George Bush is trapped in his own private Guantanamo, a detainee of his personal and uncontrollable obsession about this war, no matter what the truth, no matter what the cost, no matter what the consequences.

At every single step of the way towards this catastrophe, the Senate Republicans marched in lockstep, at first blinded by their power in controlling the Senate, and then blinded by their fear of standing up to the man most of them know is deadly wrong, about this deadly war.

On Iraq, George Bush’s vision is that America should be held hostage to whatever darkness governs his spirit on this war that should never have been fought.

Democrats never mattered in the war world of George W. Bush. He is the only American president in our history who used war itself as a partisan political weapon rather than an effort behind which our country could rally.

In George Bush’s world of war, he was never the president of the United States, he was the decider, the commander guy, the child who said bring ’em on.

George Bush was the little man in search of total power, treating war not as a higher purpose to win with unity, but as a lower political art form to demean Americans he treats as enemies.

No American President, not even Nixon at his worst, has ever demeaned, defamed and dishonored the office once held by George Washington in this manner.

War was treated by George W. Bush not as a mean to unite the nation, to win the war, but as a means to divide the nation, to win his quest for unlimited power.

George Bush was never the president of the whole American people. He was never the
president of Democrats or independents. He was never even the president of Republicans in the Senate, whose advice he repeatedly ignored, whose counsel he treated with total contempt.

The great sin of the Senate Republicans, the legacy of carnage and national division that they bear primary responsibility for, is that they enabled and empowered this reckless abuse of power and this fanatical and obsessive hunger for unwise war.

When the Republicans had power and control of the Senate, they gloated in their supreme status and preened with their committee chairmanships while they tolerated their endless humiliation, by the president of their party, when his action expressed his contempt for their judgment.

They cheered when Bush attacked Democrats with the lie that they did not support the troops — and all while those very same Democrats were advocating publicly what Republicans were urging the President to do, privately.

They applauded when their leaders used garbage talk about surrender monkeys and surrender dates against Democrats, when many and most of the Republicans were in major agreement with what those Democrats were proposing.

They went to the White House and offered their wise counsel, only to be met with smirks and derision from a president who treated even senior Republicans as his private poodles.

They left the White House meetings with their tails between their legs, and went to the floor of the Senate and said things publicly they did not privately believe, and voted for escalations they deeply believed were wrong, and joined the president at their fundraisers and partisan meetings to speak words they knew were false, to support policies they knew were deadly.

They proceeded to utter timid words, with dainty comments, about how they really did not support the policy before they voted against their conscience and common sense again and again, in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 — and still again in 2007.

Now, faced with carnage and catastrophe on the battlefield, faced with an Iraqi government drenched with corruption and incompetence and allied with militia who kill children while they demonstrate their contempt for American heroes who give their lives, to buy them time, to do what they refuse to do, the Republicans in the Senate are humiliated by their president yet again.

Tony Snow parades to the cameras again this morning, to tell the world that George W. Bush believes we are only at the beginning of the beginning of this latest escalation. This is his answer to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and the other Republicans in the Senate, and the question is, will they continue to allow themselves to be treated as poodles and trusted to toe the partisan line, yet again, for a policy they know is disastrous?

I wrote an op-ed for The Hill newspaper today (June 10) entitled “Reid’s Moment, Lugar’s Duty” in which I argued that bipartisanship is urgently needed, but can only begin when Sen. Lugar and his Republican colleagues stand up, for the first time in the turgid and tragic history of this war, for what they truly believe.

The blood is flowing, the world is watching, and history will judge. But make no mistake: The House Democrats are ready to end this tragedy. The House as an institution is ready. The Senate Democrats are ready. The free world is ready. The American people are ready.

If the Senate Republicans submit yet again to what they know is deadly wrong, they will be standing alone, with George W. Bush, against the entire free world, against their own private conscience, and they will suffer an epic landslide defeat in 2008 and will be convicted forever in the high court of history.