'War President' Is a Lost Cause

By: John Farmer

Who says George W. Bush failed to make any post-Iraq war plans? Of course he did. You think he's dumb or something?

From the very beginning, our President knew exactly what he'd do once the war was over - he'd launch an all-courts, cross-country fund-raising campaign to fuel his re-election effort. And he's been as good as his word.

It began with his landing, warrior-style (no throwing up allowed here), on the carrier Abraham Lincoln to declare, formally, that the fighting in Iraq was over. Done. Finished. Kaput. Break out the champagne.

Leaving the carrier, our President took a victory lap around the country, stopping here and there to raise the odd $200,000 to $500,000 at soirees for the rich, the super-rich and the ultra-super-rich. That bothers you, you say?

You're troubled that our President could be out sucking up to fat cats in country club settings while poor American kids are getting their butts shot off in Iraq trying to find weapons of mass destruction that Bush said are there in abundance but that no one can find?

Well, get over it. Think of his fund-raising effort as... well, a kind of modern war bond drive. He's a wartime President, isn't he, like FDR? He's got it coming. You doubt that, do you? What are you - some kind of commie symp America hater? Get with it, creep. I'll bet you're probably not even a member of the National Rifle Association, are you? You probably think the Heritage Foundation is a genealogical society. I'll bet you've even got an FBI file.

It's time you got with the new America, the George Bush, John Ashcroft, Don Rumsfeld America. That's the America of secret courts, suspension of habeas corpus, denial of attorney representation, military tribunals, detention without charge and, the essence of real Americanism, tax cuts for the rich.

I know just what you'll say - that Bush's tax policies are saddling our children and grandchildren with the greatest debt burden history has ever known. It's true, but what of it? What makes you think our kids and grandchildren won't find a way to handle it? You think they're not up to the challenge? Then what are we educating them for? Odds are they'll find a gimmick just like we did - something like, say, like, supply-side tax cuts.

You can argue that they won't work, that they simply finance the present with debts piled up on the future, but, hey, we've conned the Wall Street Journal and Steve Forbes with that scam for years. We've even got those dummies believing big debts don't matter. (One wonders how those guys, like Forbes, stay in business - most assuredly not by running up big debts, I'll wager.)

Meantime, Bush has to protect the future by looking out for the interests of the people who are the salt of the earth, the backbone of the country. I mean the investor class. And how does Bush know that these are the people who count most? He got it from the horse's mouth - or some other part of the horse. He got it from Tom DeLay. Where did DeLay get it? From Ken Lay of Enron. Where else? Who do you think these guys talk to - Al Sharpton?

I know, I know - the next thing you'll throw up is that the President and his keen-eyed strategists are cutting programs for the poor. And it's true. We would like to cut back on the Head Start school program, even though it has been a unique success, and on housing aid for urban America and all that environmental crap.

A little reduction in home heating aid for the poor wouldn't hurt either. (They don't vote for us, you know.) The earned income tax credit for the needy is a little suspect, and let's face it, a tax cut for the working poor wouldn't give them all that much in any case. Hell, this is wartime. Somebody's got to sacrifice.

But the lowest liberal blow of all is the gripe that we're trying to do homeland security on the cheap. How else do you think we can afford tax cuts for corporations and the rich? What would happen if those real Americans took their wealth abroad, say to the same countries they've already shipped our jobs to?

To close on a serious note, one looking at Bush's America from a disinterested point of view confronts two strains of opinion: One, the President really believes what he's doing is best for the country (an appalling thought); and, second, he's too dense to understand the damage his policies are doing.

Either way, it's a lose-lose choice.