Bush's Legacy: A Hole in Which Hopes Are Buried

[dajoki]

WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301609.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

A Hole in Which Hopes Are Buried

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

NEW YORK -- President Bush is starting to look beyond his presidency. His focus is on his legacy, which he is sure will vindicate his decision to go to war in Iraq. But his most fitting memorial is likely to be where I was Sunday: the immense gash in Lower Manhattan known as Ground Zero. More than 4 1/2 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the hole has yet to be filled.

Tourists come and look. The selling of souvenirs is prohibited at the site itself, but around the corner, on Vesey Street, peddlers hug the shadows. The proper souvenir to take away from this place, though, is the memory of its immense emptiness. It's a hole filled with broken promises and silly rhetoric, an inverted monument to the Bush administration's unfathomable failure even to capture Osama bin Laden.

Where is this killer? Still in Afghanistan or nearby Pakistan, is the unofficial answer. Certainly not caught, is the official answer. This terrorist, this madman, this mass murderer of clerks and stockbrokers, of deliverymen and cooks, of IT guys and shoeshine men, is still on the loose. Bin Laden was the guy Bush was going to get, dead or alive, or something like that, but he is still at large, mocking us with his occasional tapes and his insufferable freedom. Even Afghanistan, liberated from the Taliban, is receding into chaos. The Taliban, it turns out, never left.

The failure to capture or kill bin Laden is the failure of Bush and his Pentagon team of incompetents -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the former commander of the Afghan and Iraq wars, Tommy Franks. One is still in office, the other is getting rich on the lecture circuit, and neither offers much of an explanation for why the mass killer of Americans still has not been caught. "Wherever he is, if he is, you can be certain he is having one dickens of a time operating his apparatus," Rumsfeld once said. Yes, this is comforting. And tell me also that bin Laden's mail is often late.

[rodeodance]

1. and there are broken promises by Bush in New Orleans/gulf coast.

[dajoki]

4. don't forget...

that he was supposed to be a "uniter", and we all know how that turned out.

[fooj]

2. That's powerful.

Peace.

[agincourt]

3. Great article,

Puts the folly of this anti-presidency in such good perspective, that only a fool won't get it. Best synopsis of this presidencey I've ever heard. A big hole in the ground aided by one of the most superficial administrations to ever occupy the oval office.

[dajoki]

6. one of the most ?

[boobooday]

5. This is Cohen's best work in a long time

Love the Rummy quote: "you can be certain he is having one dickens of a time operating his apparatus."

Sounds like they've cut off his supply of Viagra.

[dajoki]

7. LOL

[MaineYooper]

8. "His proper legacy is a void."

perfectly put.

[jean]

12. That is the standout line for me. also.

[Doctor_J]

9. And, at this point, if OBL were to turn up dead,

the only benefit would be to * as another photo-op. His organization will continue on, thanks in part to the unprovoked attack on Iraq, with the preening, and talk of a "crusade", and the abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban. It is really hard to see how * could have been any more of a miserable failure. Quite literally, nothing has gone right since he moved into Gore's house.

[dajoki]

10. great post!!

[smartfinds]

11. How about counting down?

Well one thing is for certain, there is a movement to just make it past the next couple of years or so:

http://www.theofficialcountdown.com

Take a look.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

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[Catrina]

17. Try a whole world of angry people ~ I'll say one thing for this regime

they succeeded in uniting the world against us ~

We didn't get angry soon enough to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. They have no blood pressure anymore.

Thanks for the good wishes. It won't be luck that takes the power away from Republicans next Fall, it will be their own corruption that will bring them down. How many so far have been indicted, arrested, convicted? And it's only just begun. I'm angry about that also, that it took so long to stop them.

[Catfight]

18. Bush will go down as, "The Great Divider." nt

[dajoki]

24. I'm with you Catrina...

we let it go on way too long. I just pray you're right about next fall.

[HamdenRice]

19. May I be the first to say it? Enjoy your very brief stay

Three posts and you are defending the shrub? Haahaahaa.

[Mr_Spock]

22. Ah-ha!! Freeper got banned

later sally

[newyawker99]

23. Hi smartfinds!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Mr_Spock]

14. Bush's legacy - A-Hole

:D

[bvar22]

16. He has also failed to catch the Anthrax terrorists.

The Anthrax Killers are the ONLY terrorists to attack the US with genuine WMD.

[HamdenRice]

20. Bin Laden hasn't been captured because they don't want to capture him

There would be no more justification for what Rumsfeld called "the long war," the war which will not be won in our lifetimes, and which will justify $400 billion plus defense spending for the forseeable future.

The military had bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora and the administration purposely pulled back to allow him to be ferried out by the Pakistani military.

[DinahMoeHum]

21. ". . .This. . .has become Exhibit A on the inability of government . . ."

...to function..."

(snip)
This hallowed ground, this pitiless pit, has become Exhibit A on the inability of government to function. Plans get announced, news conferences held, breathtaking models shown of buildings reaching for the sky -- and nothing happens. George Pataki, the governor of New York, supposedly fashions himself a presidential candidate, yet he cannot even get this development underway. He is at loggerheads with the site's developer, and so nothing happens. In a city where developers are king -- this is Donald Trump's home town, after all -- you can still go to Ground Zero and see zero. This is 16 acres of Katrina and all it taught us about feeble political leaders.
(snip)

This is what happens when people vote Republican.

:evilfrown:

[dajoki]

25. Yes, "This is what happens when people vote Republican." n/t