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Lorenzo's
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. . . about Chaos,
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Bush's political use of war images is shameless
(Paul Krugman, International Herald Tribune, May 7, 2003)
George Bush's "Top Gun" act aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln - c'mon, guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit - was as scary as it was funny. . . . Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed that the dramatic tail-hook landing was necessary because the carrier was too far out at sea to use a helicopter. In fact the ship was so close to shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration officials "acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline." . . . If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel. . . . But U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing. Nobody pointed out that Bush was breaking an important tradition. And nobody seemed bothered that Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience. . . . Luckily for Bush, the frustrating search for Osama bin Laden somehow morphed into a good old-fashioned war, the kind where you seize the enemy's capital and get to declare victory after a cheering crowd pulls down the tyrant's statue. (It wasn't much of a crowd, and American soldiers actually brought down the statue, but it looked great on TV.) . . . Well, Bush got to pose in his flight suit. And given the absence of awkward questions, his handlers surely feel empowered to make even more brazen use of the national security issue in future. . . . And who will ask why, if the administration is so proud of its response to Sept. 11, it has gone to such lengths to prevent a thorough, independent inquiry into what actually happened? . . . There was a time when patriotic Americans from both parties would have denounced any president who tried to take political advantage of his role as commander in chief. But that, it seems, was another country.

posted by Lorenzo 10:29 AM