Why Won't Dubya Apologize?
Botched 9/11 info, two botched wars, a gutted economy, global scorn.
Why can't W be a man?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
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There comes a time. There comes a time in every raw dumb imperfect
beleaguered human's life when s/he has to face the music and pay the
piper and fess up to his or her crimes and misdemeanors and blatant
careening flubs and heartless gaffes and whoa where the hell was my
brain that time sorry sorry sorry.
We all do it. We all smack our palms to our foreheads and trip on our
own ideological shoelaces, and we are exasperating and thoughtlessly
cruel without knowing it, running roughshod over our noble or ignoble
intentions on a daily basis because, well, we are just wired this way.
Just ask Mel "Spurtin' Blood" Gibson -- I mean, how much more wrong
can you get?
But then comes the hard part: We apologize. Profusely and maybe even a
bit meekly, we ask for forgiveness or at least offer an olive branch
and recognize our shared messy humanness as the thing that
differentiates us from the saccharine sexless drone people of the
world -- like, you know, Laura Bush. Shudder.
But then there's Dubya. He is, apparently, immune. He is perfect and
flawless and without the slightest taint of guilt or error, and,
despite looking like a bowl of Jell-O salad in a universe of divine
tiramisu, he is, apparently, an angel of purity and light. It's true.
For here is Dubya, mumbling his way through another shockingly
insulting news conference just recently, screwing up both his face and
his intelligence data (again) and still a-huntin' for nonexistent WMDs
in Libyan turkey farms (?) as reporter after reporter asks him, point
blank, why he won't simply come clean.
They ask him, repeatedly, why he cannot find a single mistake in any
policy his slithery admin has unleashed upon the nation, much less
confess to any rampant missteps and botched decisions and oily
ulterior motives and blatant screw-ups regarding 9/11 and Saddam and
WMDs and his fetish for warmongering and for rewriting intelligence
data to suit his corporate needs, all while taking more vacations than
any president in history.
His answer? Nope. Nossiree, no mistakes were made. In fact, we as a
nation are more on track than ever and hey lookit my shiny new boots
okey doke thanks fer comin' gotta run. Plants wilted, children cried,
even semicomatose cats couldn't help but wince at Bush's weird
deflections and alcoholism-grade denials. What a surreal and sad
country we swim in.
Why won't Bush admit he got 9/11 at least partially wrong? Why won't
he acknowledge, at the very least -- as even longtime egomaniacal
terrorism wonk Richard Clarke had the calm cojones to do -- that the
U.S. ain't perfect and the government could've done much (much, much)
better and hey we're flawed and we're learning and sorry, everyone,
for the bloodbath and the malevolence and the rampant ongoing death
and the 100 dead U.S. soldiers in the past month alone?
It is not too much to ask. It is not wildly out of the question. Sure,
everyone knows all politicians across the planet -- and U.S.
Republican politicians in particular -- are genetically engineered to
loathe truth, programmed from birth to shun responsibility and reject
blame and screech at honest fact like Lynne Cheney denies her
bodice-ripping lesbian fantasies.
But surely even politicians have limits. And surely one of his
puppeteers must've told Dubya that, often, a politician's ratings
actually rise when he admits to human error and faulty ideology.
Richard Clarke's astounding contrition slapped the nation with the
shocking proof that it can be done, gracefully and with potent
honesty. Hell, even former FBI Director Louis Freeh admitted his
bureau made mistakes and did the best it could, given the flawed info
it had.
Maybe it's faux-macho Texas pride. Maybe it's dumb-guy humiliation,
that feeling that if Bush admits to just one of his policy defects,
it's a slippery slope toward admitting he hasn't had much of a clue as
to what's going on in his administration since pronouncing our
country's name as "'Murka" in his swearing-in ceremony.
Or maybe it's all about God. Maybe it's because Dubya still genuinely
believes he's divinely inspired, that he's truly doing the Lord's work
by sanctimoniously blowing the living crap out of ragtag nations and
allowing American GIs to die for his administration's hollow and
increasingly indefensible political stratagems, and to admit personal
error is to admit error in his overall pseudo-religious worldview.
In other words: I am God's chosen one. I cannot possibly be wrong,
because God cannot possibly be wrong. Dubya, have you met Mr. Gibson?
'Course, it doesn't stop with Bush. Who could help but recoil in
savage colonic pain as a freeze-dried and well-crusted John Ashcroft
plopped his pious, dance-free butt down at the 9/11 hearings and
proceeded to spend three hours pointing his scraggy finger at the
Clinton administration? Way to go, Johnny. Way to shoulder that
intellectual acumen. Make this country proud, honey.
Who, furthermore, could not help but let out a groan of pathos as
Condi Rice, friendless and alone and looking weirdly, increasingly
mechanical and limp and completely drained of all feminine fire,
dutifully lied her ***** off and regurgitated policy and stood by her
man?
Look. The ability to offer up honest apology is a gift. To apologize
shows intelligence. It shows humanity. It is soft and honest and real,
and to admit fallibility is entirely human and increasingly rare --
and, obviously, it is everything a hypocritical politician is not.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is, after all, too much to ask. After all,
we as a nation have become jaded beyond words and have come to expect
this level of appalling denial from our leaders, come to understand
this as the overriding maxim of our time: We can never admit our
country might, just might, be wrong.
There is simply no room for apology in American politics. There is no
room for showing strength of character by admitting that our shiny
all-American armor is, in fact, full of cracks and rust holes and is
actually made by exhausted 10-year-old girls in a Malaysian sweatshop.
This is the BushCo way: To apologize is to show weakness. To say you
might've made some mistakes whilst tromping blindly down the warpath,
well, that sort of humility doesn't sit well with the hawks and the
corporate profiteers. There is only the push toward bigger, toward
stronger, toward nastier and angrier and more troops and more weaponry
and more draconian Patriot Acts and more enraged anti-U.S.
fundamentalists and more dead soldiers in Iraq.
And there is, tragically, only more numb, shell-shocked citizens and
weeping families of the dead, all begging for someone, somewhere, to
offer up just a single note of apology, of contrition, of hope and
common recognition of the sad tragicomic circus in which we all
perform.
This is all anyone is really asking for from our leaders, finally.
Just a glimmer of our shared messiness, a common understanding of our
collective awe, a single hint of that most tragically rare of current
commodities: humanity.
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| User: "TonyZ2001" |
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| Title: Re: Why won't Bush apologize? |
24 Apr 2004 06:22:47 AM |
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Zak
wrote:
two botched wars, a gutted economy, >global scorn.
LOL!!!
Two countries in which Terrorist training camps have been obliterated, and the
only reason that both countries have not been totally passified, is because of
our sensitivity of offending Islam.
The American economy is booming, get a clue already.
As for the "global scorn", by whom? A bunch of second rate nations?
LOL!!!
Tony
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| User: "Ex" |
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| Title: Re: Why won't Bush apologize? |
25 Apr 2004 08:02:12 AM |
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"TonyZ2001" <tonyz2001@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040424072247.21890.00000178@mb-m23.aol.com...
Zak
wrote:
two botched wars, a gutted economy, >global scorn.
LOL!!!
Two countries in which Terrorist training camps have been obliterated, and
the
only reason that both countries have not been totally passified, is
because of
our sensitivity of offending Islam.
Two countries?? Afghanistan had them BEFORE the U.S. invaded .... Iraq had
them move in and set up AFTER the U.S. invaded.
And the only way the U.S. is offending Islam is by being in Iraq. Get in ...
Get the job done ... Get out. The problem is getting out. Without the
continued U.S. presence, Iraq would likely spiral into a civil war.
Apparently Wolfowitz ( a complete idiot ) told Congress before the Iraq
invasion there was no threat of ethnic violence in Iraq.
And what about Afghanistan ... about what?? Seems these poor bastards have
been completely forgotten. This is the place where the 'The Man' who plotted
and financed 9-11 continues to live and play ... why? Where's the money and
effort to apprehend this man?? He's directly involved in 9-11 and gleefully
admits it yet Bush decides that Saddamn needs to have his peepee whacked
more ...
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.659 / Virus Database: 423 - Release Date: 4/15/04
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| User: "Grantland" |
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| Title: Re: Why won't Bush apologize? |
24 Apr 2004 08:30:59 AM |
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(TonyZ2001) wrote:
Zak
wrote:
two botched wars, a gutted economy, >global scorn.
<snipped, the Ugly American>
Oops! Nothing left.
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| User: "Zak" |
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| Title: Re: Why won't Bush apologize? |
24 Apr 2004 10:27:22 AM |
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On 24 Apr 2004 11:22:47 GMT, (TonyZ2001) wrote:
..
The American economy is booming, get a clue already.
Booming? Hahahahah boy are you mislead. Your country is fucking near
broke there pantyboy, don't believe what your CNN propoganda assholes
are telling you.
As for the "global scorn", by whom? A bunch of second rate nations?
By anyone that has half a brain, certainly leaves you out.
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