Iraq as Metaphor

Yer GOP bandwagon...

I guess there's not really any way to diplomatically refer to the almost unfathomable horror of Mesopotamia as merely a "metaphor" when so much blood has been shed...but I'll indulge myself nonetheless.

With the confirmation that last night was a definitive thumbs-down to all things Team Shrub, there was little else the boy-chimperor could do aside from adopt a big old shit eating grin...and piously call for "bipartisanship" in the same way a scoundrel makes "patriotism" a final refuge. Hmmm...if you ask me, it was an awfully quick turnaround from last week's message of "a vote for the Democrats is a surrender to Al Qaeda's slave harem." And I'm sure that, at least for the next few days, the "see a bridge, don't just burn it, but blast it to smithereens" rhetoric that defined this election cycle will be dismissed by the GOOP'ers as mere "hardball" tactics...hell, I wonder if I should predict who will say "politics ain't beanbag" and when...

But I also see a different, ahem, metaphor at play (just to get back on track here): watching Team Bush for the last four weeks on the campaign, when it became apparent that things were rapidly falling apart, was/is not at all unlike watching the same over the last three years while an entire country fell apart...or, coming closer to home, like watching the same while the Gulf Coast reeled from the twin punches of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, or while the levees breached and flooded New Orleans.

A common thread through ALL of these events has been a bizarre, grin/smirk-pasted-upon-their-face insistence by those at the top that things were fine, in spite of overwhelming evidence that things were anything BUT ok. In times past, I've referred to this as "cheerleading, not leading" (or words to that effect)...which might be fine for "the old college try," but is at best a disaster when it comes to matters of local, regional, or even global importance. Neither will it suit a political party come election time...which is why Karl Rove always managed to pull something out of his ass in previous cycles, like 2002's war resolution, or 2004's gay bashing...funny though, that tack didn't work so well this round.

So, for 2006, really all they had was "who you gonna believe...Team Bush or your lyin' eyes?" while they continued to insist--in spite of reality slapping them upside the head day after day after day--that, no, things are actually just fine. (perhaps I should say, "In spite of reality slapping the public upside the head day after day..." instead).

Iraq is a disaster, a virtual how-to on how NOT to invade a country...sort of the anti-Sun Tzu. The domestic side of the coin is hardly better: anemic economic performance, cronyism/corruption on an epic scale, the stumblebum reaction to the Gulf Coast disasters, the devil-may-care attitudes towards the hypocrisy manifested by Mark Foley, Ted Haggard...and the political apparatus that enabled them. Yet, through it all, we had Team Bush playing cheerleader, even to the point of Shrub himself leading a "Just say no" mantra as the campaign reached its final days.

Well, now we're left to wonder what's left...in times past, Shrub would be preparing to pull the rug out from under some of his investors at this point, while requesting a few more favors from his daddy's friends. But this time, it ain't Harken Energy...