BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I

Subject: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: The Pooka
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 01:59 PM

It's the No-No of practicing amateur psychology (well, sort of) from a distance, of course. But still, interesting. Plausible. I agree with the distinctions made.

Bush's Motivation For War? His Dad
by Ellen Goodman
October 4 2002

Of all the words used in the run-up-to-war rhetoric, what stays in my mind is the time the president got personal. At a Houston fund-raiser, he described Saddam Hussein as "a guy that tried to kill my dad."

It wasn't the first time he'd mentioned the assassination attempt. At the United Nations, he'd said that the Iraqi leader had tried to kill "a former American president." But this time, it was the son talking about his "dad."

I won't read a family vendetta into one straight-from-the-gut phrase. But I think there is something in this son's ardent desire to lead the country in war that has to do with the father and the son, with the greatest generation and the baby-boom generation. With a son who sees himself picking up the baton, and defining this war as his destiny.

George Bush the Elder fought in World War II. George Bush the Younger joined the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. As an adult, Dubya was often described as a good ol' boy or a frat boy. As a candidate, he was likable and lite. As a president he was elected with a minority of votes and a butterfly ballot.

Sept. 11, 2001, was the most sober day in his life - as it was in ours. The United States was attacked on George W. Bush's watch. Life doesn't get much more serious, much more grown-up than that. If there was ever a moment when the responsibility and the burden shifted onto his shoulders - shoulders that had often shrugged - it was that day.

I hadn't voted for him, but I rooted for him. When Bush spoke to the nation after the attacks, I prayed that he was up to the job. And he was.

Now when I reread the speech, a few sentences jump out at me. "We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment," he said. "Our nation - our generation - will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future."

"Our mission." "Our generation." The father flew 58 combat missions over the Pacific as a young man. The boomer son found his mission - and his moment - in the war on terrorism.

Last year, George W. Bush's mission was ours - one and the same. The personal was universal. The attack on al Qaeda and the war against the Taliban were fought on deep moral principles. We were attacked, and we acted in self-defense.

I was never entirely comfortable with the language of the presidential missionary. I didn't like the talk of "evildoers," though I believed that terrorists were evil. It evoked an apocalyptic view of a world in which God and Satan were contending for the world and the godly people were justified in doing anything to Satan's people. That seemed like the vocabulary of terrorists, not Americans.

But it was a just war, and the world was with us.

Then the evildoer Osama bin Laden morphed into Saddam Hussein. The enemy evolved from an international band of terrorists who attacked us into a nation that could, wants to, someday maybe will, attack us.

The moral argument also switched from self-defense to pre-emptive war to preventive war - which is difficult to separate from simple aggression.

In his radio speech last Saturday, the president said flatly, "We refuse to live in this future of fear." Without proof of an imminent threat, fear is now the justification for war. And if this president thinks his mission is eliminating a "future of fear," where does that end?

In the switch from Osama to Saddam, from self-defense to "prevention," "our war" is becoming his war. This is where I become wary of a son with a mission.

Listening, I hear a man who believes that he is finally facing the test passed by his elders: the test of war. And while I detest the pejorative "chicken hawk," I can't help noting how many of the pro-warriors in the administration, those who believe that war is not hell but the solution, never fought in one.

Saddam is the guy who "tried to kill my dad." He is without doubt a brutal, maybe mad, man. But the question isn't about our dads. It's about our sons and daughters.

Is this a just war? A necessary one? Would you send your sons and daughters into Iraq today, and without allies?

The case has yet to be made.

Ellen Goodman is a syndicated writer in Boston.
Copyright 2002, Hartford Courant

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 03:10 PM

I'm with Ellen Goodman on this one. Bush huffed and puffed so much that he thought he could bluff Congress, the United Nations, out allies and the American people.

Then something very interesting happened. One heck of a lot of folks quietly let their representatives in Washington know that they'd like a little evidence. Hmmmmmmm?

Then came a mad scarmble to make a case against Saddam, but not with new evidence, but a rewording of everything that has been known about him and Iraq coupled with a lot of high priced guessing. Mix in a multimillion dollar PR campaign paid for by *my* tax dollars and that's about all you have.

And, yes, we're still waiting for the goods...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: Mudlark
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 05:22 PM

Thanks for posting this...Goodman has voiced all my inchoate thoughts exactly. Rhetoric, bombast, overstatement...eliminating a future of fear my Aunt Fannie. Humans have always lived with fear. In this complex, interconnected world, where allies turn into enemies, and vice versa, where money talks, but not so loud that the ordinary populace has a clue as to what's really going on, where greed and ego rule, and humans can be blinded by calculated button-pushing, it is a travesty to mouth such foolishness.

This man drives me crazy!   

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 05:32 PM

Goodman and Molly Ivins always hit the nail right on the head. Thanks!

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: DougR
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 05:40 PM

Goodman and Ivens. Yep, they are a pair alright.

Pooka: posting a column by Ellen Goodman, or Molly Ivens only proves to me that you read the newspaper. They have a right to an opinion, but it's only opinion. Believe it if you like (and obviously you do)reject it if you like (which I do of course).

I could post columns by George Will, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, his brother David (I think), Ann Coulter, Bill Crystal, etc. etc., and they would be received by liberals the same way as the liberal writers you support are received by conservatives.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: The Pooka
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 05:57 PM

DougR - sure, I know that. I just post 'em as food for thought. Recently I DID post an excellent conservative one, re liberal intellectual elitism. You know; you posted to the thread, didn't you? - "Does Dissent=Intelligence?" // I hold forth (at great length:) re my own views; so why not put up somebody else's, better-written, sometimes? // You post George Will any time; he's the best (and, not coincidentally, most infuriating) conservative commentator working today. See his brilliant column today, leaving nary a feather upon the plucked carcasses of New Jersey Democrats and Supreme Court.

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 06:03 PM

O.K. DougR, stop theatening to post a qoute by Rush Limbaugh, and just do it. If you think that Rush is on track... then show me your stuff, and stop threatening to delegitimize decent human beings with phantom reasoning... I am daring you DougR!!! DAZZLE ME WITH YOUR PARAGON OF WISDOM! ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: DougR
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 06:35 PM

A waste of time and space posting something from Limbaugh. Or as they say, why take up bandspace?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 06:54 PM

Put'er there... Pal! %)

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: NicoleC
Date: 04 Oct 02 - 08:10 PM

Limbaugh -- a waste of time and space -- yep, those two phrase go together :)

There are conservative thinkers I respect. Rush is not one of them; he's a hate-monger and an entertainer, not a deep thinker.

Anyway, re: Goodman's piece -- I agree with the sentiment, but I would be wary of reading too much into the words used in a speech. Dubya, after all, doesn't write those things.

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: 12-stringer
Date: 05 Oct 02 - 12:16 AM

Write 'em? He can barely read 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Ellen Goodman on Bush II & Bush I
From: mg
Date: 05 Oct 02 - 12:54 AM

I repeat. Anyone who flew airplanes in the National Guard certainly signed up for the risk of war..either that one or a future one. I don't care what someone did during the war, short of treason or abusing veterans upon their return; I likewise have no tolerance whatsoever for women or men like this one who fail to understand, much less respect, the contributions servicemen and women in the National Guard or the Reserves have made. And of course anyone with half a brain knows that it is not a totally secure situation to be in. And she needn't repeat that nonsense about the greatest generation vs. the baby boomers. The baby boom men answered the call enough so that 1 out of 3 were in uniform. Likewise very many women. Knock it off idiots.

mg