Rove: Iraq is Lose-Lose for Next President
AP
Iraq “likely not to be the dominate issue”
“Bush’s Brain” thinks politics will force the issue of Iraq to be toned down next year.
He would.
Karl Rove on Iraq and the 2008 presidential campaign
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival on July 8, 2007, Republican political strategist Karl Rove predicted the next president would have two tough choices:
I think it’s [Iraq] also likely to be less of an issue because, if you are a Democrat, you do not want to be in a place where on January 21st, 2009, if a Democrat gets elected president, the Democratic president faces the likelihood–there will be U.S. troops in Iraq–and so you want the issue to be toned down because you don’t want to be in a place where on January 21, if you are a Democrat and you get elected you face one of two options:
You bring them [U.S. military personnel] home precipitously, and everybody, virtually everybody agrees the country [Iraq] descends into chaos and that’s on your watch, or that you keep them there in a reasonable configuration, redeployed, and in which case a large part of your party is angry with you.
Rove also compared Iraq to Korea, and the dilemma facing the next president to that of Eisenhower:
So I think this is sorta like Korea in 1952, and 53, where Eisenhower made a comment which led people to believe that that he was for change: “I’ll go to Korea”, but in essence kept in place the policies of Truman after the election.
While he maybe correct in his prediction, Bush’s terrible choices as Commander-in-Chief have left the next president in a bind, creating a lose-lose situation for both a Democratic or Republican president:
And for Republicans I think again, similarly they’d like to be able to talk about taxes, spending, values, national security but in a broader context, national security but in a broad context–(garbled)–Iraq, but I’ll tell you this, it is going to be a barn burner of a race.
Rove seems oblivious to the notion that he had anything to with nightmare scenarios he describes for the next president, stating the political issues like facts from an encyclopedia without thought on the real people in Iraq being burned, raped, maimed, blinded, tortured and murdered by an unnecessary war.
All wars are crimes.
In the buildup to the Iraq conflict, did Bush or Rove think about the Iraqi women who would be raped due to the U.S. decision to invade? History tells us it happens in every war, so they must have known.
Iraqi child casualty
What about the dismemberments? Surely the fact that young American men would be dismembered was prevalent in their minds when making the military and political decisions to invade.
Photos of Iraqi dismemberment were traded by U.S. forces for porn
What about the orphans? How many orphans did the Bush administration estimate they would create?
U.S. soldier caught in ambush
Karl Rove and President Bush
Politics can have an inward view of the world in which the ends justify the means. Think of all the personal attacks and character assassination by Republicans in the last election. Can you name one Democrat instigating one?
Like traveling across the country in the vacuum of a large car instead of outside atop a motorcycle in the open air, a purely political perspective on the world creates a numb, unaware, dangerous mind.
While Karl Rove may truly believe in the policy standpoints of the Republican party and work the political strings to bring those policies to fruition, in the end, very few Republican ideals came to pass under the Bush Administration. Even Republicans say George W. Bush isn’t a conservative (which he ran on in the 2000 election). Government grew more under the Bush administration than any other. The nonintervention policy that helped Bush get elected was thrown out like bathwater after 9/11 (along with hundreds of babies). Civil liberties also continue to erode. But the wealthy did get their tax cuts, so that’s something.
Achieving power without principle lacks nobility.
Karl Rove certainly helped President Bush ascend to power, but ultimately it was an empty victory, a legacy defined by loss and fear, secrets and incompetence. Indeed it has been the saddest presidency to date.
The Iraq debacle has ensured the hubris and inanity of U.S. foreign policy extend well beyond the Bush years, further dragging down America’s standing in the world like a descending anchor. The legacy of choices made by the Bush administration will be remembered like the mindset of a schoolyard bully with a club: obtuse, overconfident, and fearful.
With words of a claptrap, Rove is one of many still wielding the club of Iraq, holding the world hostage for yet another presidential cycle.
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