After All, It's President George W. Bush: So "Attention Must Be Paid!"

[babylonsister]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_walter_c_070416_after_all_2c_it_s_pres.htm

After All, It's President George W. Bush: So "Attention Must Be Paid!"

by Walter C. Uhler


Linda: He's not the finest character that ever lived.
But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is
happening to him. So attention must be paid.
He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like
an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be
paid to such a person. You called him crazy-

Biff: I didn't mean…

(A bit later)

Biff: He threw me out of this house, remember that.

Linda: Why did he do that? I never knew why.

Biff: Because I knew he was a fake and he doesn't like
anybody around who knows.

--- Arthur Miller, Death of a Saleman

The "Willy Loman" of American presidents, George W. Bush, recently was out hustling for suckers again, trying to make a sale. Poor, pathetic George. Like Willy, "he's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back - that's an earthquake."

These days, most Americans are not smiling back. Especially when the sale is Bush's "surge" in Iraq - and especially when a suicide bomber can penetrate Baghdad's ultra-secure Green Zone and blow himself (herself?) up inside the Iraqi parliament. As the Los Angeles Times reported on April 13, 2007, the suicide bombing "struck at the heart of Iraq's struggling democracy and the U.S. security plan that is trying to bolster it."

A member of Iraq's parliament, Khalaf al-Ilyan, was even more emphatic: "The plan is 100% a failure. It's a complete flop…The explosion means that instability and lack of security has reached the Green Zone." And, as the director of the Security and Terrorism Studies program at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, Mustafa al-Ani, observed, "The claim that the security plan has sent insurgents scattering into the provinces has proven to be false." Finally, as the Iraq specialist at the Congressional Research Service, Kenneth Katzman concluded: "If you add it all up, I don't see how you conclude the surge is working."

Sensing that the Green Zone suicide bomber would once again demolish yet another of his incessant Pollyannaish sales pitches (e.g., "Mission Accomplished"), Bush "strongly condemned the act and said it was an attack against a 'symbol of democracy.'" But, that very same day, Bush's inane assertion about Iraq's democracy received a sharp rebuke, when "an international panel charged with recommending invitations for an exclusive meeting of the world's democracies" excluded Iraq. <"Club Democracy Says Iraq Isn't Worthy of Invite," Washington Post, April 13, 2007>

Although it's bad enough for Bush to misunderstand "symbols" of democracy, what's worse is his actual manipulation of the American public, in order to incite them to support his evil war. Such behavior suggests he seriously misunderstands real democracy. So, too, does his resort to illegal wiretaps. And so, too, does his refusal to listen to the people, even after they gave his Iraq policy a new "accountability moment" in November 2006

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[Demeter]

1. Bush Is NO Willy Loman

Willy Loman was an object of pity. Bush is an object of loathing.