Regional Solutions: Liveblogging iii Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Well, I'm glad we have this regional section of the speech, but I agree with Mike Signer that it is four years too late.  And the tone of lecturing the region that it needs to understand its own interests seems unlikely to succeed.

Now we're trying again to reclaim the democracy-building, freedom-spreading tone.  Sigh.

Overall, I have to say that this speech was oddly insular -- some parts of it would be confusing for a lay person to follow I think.  The laying out the argument section was followed by a short rhetorical section on "freedom in the greater Middle East," followed by another defensive "we can't up and leave" section.

Did he just say that??? "There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship?"  Does no one in the White House remember that this president held his own "victory" celebration on the deck of a navy ship?

Comments

[Mark Lindeman]

"Did he just say that??? 'There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship?'"

I won't speak for Lucy, but when I heard that, I thought for a moment that I must actually have lost consciousness.

In the next moment, I thought it was someone's half-assed idea of a non-apology apology.

But then I had to conclude that it was just an autistic allusion to World War II. That moment was the worst.

As far as I can tell, +21,500 troops makes no particular military sense, so it's hard not to attribute the 'surgelet' to cynical politics. If the president and his staff can't even get the cynical politics right... jeebus.

(I do think that Bush believes in a happy ending. If so, that must be nice for him. I would love to find a reason to share the faith.)