Chimpie Role Models on LBJ

I really am speechless after Chimpie's address Tuesday night. I think his tactic now is to just bore the shit out of us with the same platitudes. His audience has really shrunk, I think, because they get the gist, you know, ruthless killers, freedom, terror, democracy, blah blah blah. When the drinking games become common, you know your speeches are getting too well worn; in fact, wouldn't it be a hoot to have Bush give his speech in front of an arena of people hoisting bottles of tequila at every designated word or phrase?

Anyway, I just can't bring myself to analyze that text yet again. Here's an easier way to do it. Just compare Chimpie's rhetoric to that of Lyndon Johnson's at a point in the Vietnam war when we only had had 400 young Americans killed.

Here's Bush:

As Iraqis grow confident that the democratic progress they are making is real and permanent, more will join the political process. And as Iraqis see that their military can protect them, more will step forward with vital intelligence to help defeat the enemies of a free Iraq. The combination of political and military reform will lay a solid foundation for a free and stable Iraq.

Here's LBJ:

Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves-only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

In Vietnam it took 58,000 American lives and between 2 and 3 million Vietnamese. So far in Iraq we have 1740 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead. Vietnam spanned a decade. We're only into our third year in Iraq. In both cases we had been fed terrible lies about the reasons for war, its progress, and our actual goals. LBJ finally decided not to run for office again when he realized that the cat was out of the bag, but Nixon managed to keep it going long enough for the death numbers to double. Chimpie shows no shift in his perceptions, so you'd all best settle back and let the bodies pile up until even the braindead recognize how badly they have been led. And, sadly, history shows us that that is usually a long, long and costly time.

This is what you get when chickenshit chickenhawks get the war mania. A sociopath like Bush isn't even capable of empathy with those who are truly suffering because of his hubris, but he's learned to mouth the words over and over and to ignore anything to the contrary. He's yet to attend a military funeral, but he never shies from standing up the very men and women he is willing to sacrifice as props for his robotic recitations of the same old words.