The excerpt below comes from American Politics Journal, and is by Michael Graham. His subject is Bush’s unusually rapid and extensive deployment of the National Guard to fight his war. In my own thinking, I’m afraid I never got past the astounding hypocrisy of using the same organization to wage a war that he had used to duck one.
But Graham has thought a little harder, and his thesis makes a certain kind of emotional sense — perhaps the only kind of sense that ever issues from Dubya’s self-absorbed mental bubble. Rationalization is the principal task to which most of us set whatever powers of analysis we have, of course. But Bush’s decider seems to be unusually evolved in that respect, even for a president:
I used to be a prize-winning reporter, so hear me out. Before that, I served in the real Air Force, as a commissioned officer in counterintelligence, at the same time George W. Bush was hiding out in the Texas Guard. At that time, the Guard did relatively little unless there was a hurricane or something. They certainly didn’t have to worry about combat.My theory is that Commander Codpiece — insanely addicted to power — is so hung up on the fact that he was a coward back then that he is compensating for it now by forcing today’s Guard to be heroes. That way he can be one retroactively — heroism by association …
I was a forward air controller (FAC) in Vietnam during all of 1968. I controlled a lot of airstrikes, from a lot of squadrons, and among those squadrons were airplanes and pilots from the New York, New Mexico and Colorado Air National Guards. True, Bush, flying the F-106(?), didn't have much to worry about in that regard, but I regret seeing anything denigrating the service of those who did serve.
Posted by: terry in AZ on May 20, 2006 8:12 PM