brainrow

You can make George W. Bush look talented, but it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work:

I used to be an optimist, but time and experience have cured me of that.

Or so I thought. Recently I learned that there is still a streak of absolute Pollyanna-ish optimism in me. On the day after Election Day, when Bush announced that Donald Rumsfeld was out, for the space of one heartbeat, I dared to hope that this meant a new course in Iraq. Oh, what a fool I was!

Over at TIME magazine, they still believe. Their question, “Can Bush Find an Exit?” is based on a faulty premise — that Bush is looking for an exit.

But Bush has never had to pull off a U-turn like the one he is contemplating now: to give up on his dream of turning Babylon into an oasis of freedom and democracy and instead begin a staged withdrawal from Iraq, rewrite the mission of the 150,000 U.S. troops there as they begin to draw down, and launch a diplomatic Olympics across the Middle East and between Israel and the Palestinians. Even calling all that a reversal is a misnomer; it would be more like a personality transplant.

The TIME writers have already given Bush the personality transplant. Do they really believe he is “contemplating” a change? They must be talking about some other guy.

In Latvia last week, Bush said:

We’ll continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.

Flexible? Bush is as flexible as a tire iron.

If he’s so inflexible, why did Bush show Rummy the door? Not, I think, for his long record of failure in Iraq. No, I think it was for the memo:

Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.

In the end, Rumsfeld’s faith was not sufficiently blind.

Over on the Al Franken Show’s blog, Eric Hananoki asks the uncivil question:

What should we call the Iraq war if we refuse to call it a “civil war”?

E.g. “that thing over there.”

There’s a link where readers can submit their suggestions.

Some of the responses are in a later post. A few of my favorites:

Mark M = Ongoing celebratory gunfire

Alex C = Cross Cultural Exchange of Gunfire

Jim B = CSI – Everywhere

There are also suggestions in the comments of both posts. One commenter suggested “That thing we do.” Before you venture into the comments, be warned: there’s some strong language there.