As far back as I can remember - and as I mentioned below - I've found the week of Thanksgiving frustrating for the political junkie in me. Everybody's on holiday, government shuts down, people go home to their families and essentially hibernate.
So maybe it was just the election results this year, or my new career, but I found it easier than ever to tune out. All the debates in Washington about Pelosi/Hoyer/Murtha/Harman/Hastings etc. had the feel of inside baseball (no one really knows these people out in the real world, and until Pelosi takes charge, it's a lot of bald speculation about what could happen), and with the President looking stunningly ineffectual in Asia ("Please, Mr. South Korea, will you start actually enforcing searches of North Korea's shipments...?"), a definite nap seemed in order. (And, unfortunately, I think RedStar got lost in the shuffle - and her thoughts on Labor issues in New Orleans are important.)
Don't get me wrong, I had a nice time relaxing and traveling. But nap time appears to be over. While New York gets roiled with a big local mess, on the world stage, Iraq has reached disaster mode.
I'm sort of fascinated at how things have fallen apart so fast - I mean, we were debating the more troops/less troops conundrum over Thanksgiving dinner, and now that discussion seems largely moot. The question of what Iraq has become seems much more settled in the past 24 hours alone - this is a Civil War we can't stop, and I don't think we even have a good idea whose side we're on. I suspect by the time Bush meets with Maliki in Jordan - if the meeting actually occurs, and note that it's happening in Jordan, and not Baghdad - whatever they decide may well be beside the point. And because this White House thinks mostly about its own hide and personal politics, how convenient that Mr. "Send A Lot More Troops" (a/k/a John McCain) will now be twisting in the wind as it becomes clear that more troops can't possibly fix this. Why do I sense the hand that will push Jeb Bush into the election maelstrom of 2008?
Two other political entities seem to also be severely affected by this turn of events - James Baker and The Commission That Will Solve Everything For Us All, which now has the political cover to suggest almost anything, including major withdrawals without probably a lot of objection - if they could agree on something; and the new Democratic Congress, which keeps turning up aces while playing a dicey hand. It's not that Democrats have the big solution in Iraq - indeed, our dinner conversation seemed to make clear there isn't unanimity or a good idea to be had - it's that, with things falling apart so clearly, they won't really need one. The Administration that got us into this mess - the one that flails around without Don Rumsfeld or a clear idea of what to do next - will be the one holding the bag of ideas having to come up with what to do now. And those of us who oppose war get the grim satisfaction of knowing we were right, the most meaningless sense of victory in the face of such needless destruction and death.
Please, I beg this country, not another Bush in the Whitehouse. One was plenty, 2 was way too many-but 3?
Posted by: Jennifer | November 29, 2006 at 11:08 AM