President Cynic

He knows the cost (as computed from Bloomberg and AP by Think Progress): “Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001.” AP adds, “All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.” The wars cost approximately $12 billion a month, according to a new Congressional Research Service report.

Add to this the largely unreported (and secret) cost in money and national reputation not to mention the nation's soul of civilian contractors, many operating in combat outside any law, who now outnumber U.S. combat troops in Iraq. Leaks today indicate that the reports from the field due at the end of the week will show no progress, especially in the Iraqi government meeting benchmarks of success. All of which led the New York Times on Sunday to call for the U.S. to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and bring the occupation to an end.

But as the Times editorial noted, and as White House statements confirmed today, President Bush and his Bushcorps has no intention of doing so, and expects to leave this horrific mess to his successor.

In fact, this is the chief Bush strategy now. With more than two-thirds of the American public against this war, and with barely a quarter of the voters giving him a positive approval rating, and with Congressional Republicans running away from him and otherwise powerless to do anything but stop the Democrats from passing any legislation, the only ally Bush has is time--the short time until his terms expires--and he is exploiting it deliberately and cynically.

He knows there is no election that can increase the number of Democrats in Congress to give them a veto-proof and filibuster-proof Senate until he is gone. He can refuse to give Congress information on everything from illegal wiretaps to improper partisan meddling in the firing and hiring of U.S. prosecutors on the flimsiest unsupported grounds, because the processes to compel Bushcorps' cooperation lead through Congress and the courts to the Supreme Court, and won't be resolved until they are long gone from office.

Above all, he can act with impunity--keeping Gonzales as Attorney General, commuting the entire jail sentence of convicted felon Scooter Libby--because until now the long and painful process of impeachment seemed not worth it, as he would face removal from office a matter of months before his term expires.

Bush and his Bushcorps are cynically using this sense of too short a time to defy the American people, to defy and defile the Constitution and international law, and above all to protect themselves. They are banking on another characteristic of short time--the short public attention span--to protect them after they leave office, when their images are no longer on TV every day.

Meanwhile, it takes only a split second to end the lives of soldiers and civilians in Iraq, or to damage their bodies and minds for perhaps a half century life span or more. In the meantime, prisoners will be tortured and suffer incarceration without charges or trial, and millions of Americans and people around the world will suffer the consequences of Bushcorps actions and failures to act. And generations yet unborn will suffer the consequences of failing to act on the Climate Crisis, for every day of climate crisis pollution at today's levels or growing adds to the accumulating effects that will inevitably be visited on the Earth's future, perhaps in a couple of generations, on top of the effects of past pollution we suffer now and for the next generation.

This is the cost of Bushcorps, and of the smiling cynicism holding this country captive.