If Murdoc had his way, once the emergency spending bill was sent on to the White House, President Bush would give a speech explaining why he was going to veto it. And it would go something like this:
My fellow Americans,
I hope you won't mind if I ask for a few minutes of your evening to discuss with you a matter of national importance.
Earlier this week, the emergency spending bill was sent up from Congress for my approval. After carefully reviewing the bill, discussing it with senior military and administration leaders, and exploring alternatives, I am officially announcing that I will veto this bill tomorrow morning.
Now, I have only vetoed a single bill that has made it to my desk since I took office in 2001. And I don't veto this one lightly. Congressional Representatives and Senators are elected to their offices by the people of the United States, and the people of the United States are the ones who ultimately run the American government.
But this bill, originally written to fund the efforts of our military overseas and at home in the War on Terror, includes a requirement for a deadline to withdraw American forces from Iraq. And that requirement is simply unacceptable.
I guess if he wants to go lower than 30% approval he can try something like this.
talboito: I guess I don't really see how this would get anyone who currently supports him to stop supporting him. Maybe dairy farmers or sugar beet growers, I guess, since he specifically called out the money for them.
How would this make his approval numbers worse? I think it would give a huge boost to the numbers among those already inclined to support the GOP or the military. I can't think there are many others left that it would put off.
And If our President could deliver such speeches, it would be a different world indeed.
I don't see that there's anything he could do to convince his current supporters that he's a historical disaster. That's what "base" means.
Davebo: The point was that Bush's approval would go DOWN, meaning that he'd have to lose the support of folks who currently support him. I'm wondering which current supporters would stop supporting him because of a speech like this.
Personally, I think a speech along these lines would greatly increase his approval numbers. I'm just wondering why anyone thinks it would make them worse. Sure, a lot of folks wouldn't like it. But they already don't approve.
Bush should fly to Baghdad and veto the bill in front of the Troops. Daring Congress to support them or betray them.
Use the words "Democratic Betrayal of the troops." Often and repeatedly.
Politics ain't beanbag and Bush should stop compromising and call Dems openly betrayers of the troops. Force Dems to choose between the Surrender Caucus of Code Pink and ANSWER and UFPJ and Osama/Ahmadinejad, or the Troops.
I posted this on murdoc's site, but I'll double it here:
Not a bad speech, two problems:
1) There is no way that Bush is ever going to talk about cutting our pork as anything more than a pollitical gesture. If Bush was more serious, he could have vetoed any of the pork-laden republican bills, and ask them to do it over again. Instead, he signed everything. We need to have a better goverment auditing system that is accessible to the public, but I really don't expect it to come out of the congress, senate or white house without heavy public pressure.
2) Many pollitical/military experts beleive that Bush will have to wind down forces in the next 2 years anyway. He will do so under a dilute 'victory' or 'Iraqi failure', with different verbage than the democratic plan (and probably slower), however these individuals beleive that this drawdown is likely to occur in the next 9-15 months. If this is true, the president has to be careful in the words he uses to critize the D's, they may come back to haunt him.
Not a bad idea. He should follow it up with a ceremony honoring selected members of our military who recently distinguished themselves with their bravery in Iraq. Each selected member gets their choice of two of the following:
(a) a medal
(b) one of the pens used by the President to veto the bill
© 15 minutes alone in the latrine with the vetoed bill before it gets sent back to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid
Great idea, Jim, but I'm sure they've already thought of something like this. The war is nothing more than a political prop to these folks anyway.
It would be another "Mission Accomplished" moment I'm sure...
Yeah, I suggest he veto it in front of the troops who have just been sent back to Iraq early. I'm sure he would get an interesting reception.
He'd probably be cheered Andrew. The Troops may not like being sent back to Iraq all the time, but they like surrender and defeat even less.
That's what Nancy and Dems offer. Surrender and defeat.
It's pitiful that Dems can't even choose their own side in a fight. Pitiful indeed.
His approval numbers would go up if he said he was going to stay in Bagdad and lead a few patrols himself. The troops don't get to choose how long or where w the American taxpayers are the ones who sign their checks.e send them. We
"Bush should fly to Baghdad and veto the bill in front of the Troops"
Bush is a little bit shy when it comes to combat zones, but agreed, Rockfard, he should go there, just like he should have gone to Vietnam to fight those evil commies that his ilk proclaimed so loudly to despise, but that we (err, um capitalist industry) now happily do business with.
"He should follow it up with a ceremony honoring selected members of our military who recently distinguished themselves with their bravery in Iraq"
Yeah right, bravery in combat, something Bush knows nothing of, personally.
But hey, for an old fart, he sure looks good in a flight suit.
"..Now, I have only vetoed a single bill that has made it to my desk since I took office in 2001..."
Is not vetoing a single bill supposed to be a badge of honor or something for this President????? Duh.....the guy was handed a Congressional majority comprised of essentially stone Republican zombies and he and they embraced in a sick ideological love fest for the bulk of the two terms. Why would he veto his own crap???
"I've got a Vietnam analogy for you: In the decade following our withdrawal from Vietnam in the early 1970s, over ONE MILLION civilians were killed by Communist forces in the region. Some of these killings were retaliation for choosing to stand with America during the war. Some of these killings were politically motivated. But many of the murders were committed simply because killing is how the enemy we fought in Vietnam interacts with the rest of the world; death and destruction are the language they use to communicate with those who do not convert to their cause....."
So what's the point???? We won't leave Iraq until at least a million have been killed......The grim reaper is keeping count....? Also, most sentient Americans know that we killed in excess of one million Vietnamese - and far from all of them commie bastards. Should one infer that killing is also how we interact with the rest of the world?
Oh why do I bother.....the bottom line regardin this proposed speach is that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time......but the rightwing base can be fooled all of the time by their idol.
So, at the end of the day, I'd say that this speach would have limited appeal. The fringe comprised of the hold out rightwing radicals (like you) would got all hot and excited and the majority of the country would see it as more of the same and continue to pull the levers under the label "Dem".
I posted this on Murdoc's site too, but just in case....
Good speech but too long. And too vague. I'll try:
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I must veto this bill. We must win this occupation, we must not give up.
I will speak plainly. The Defense Department experts say that the iraqi armed forces can be ready to stand on their own in five to fifteen years. We must support them until then. I will do so. The next President after me will, and the President after him, and if necessary the President after that. We will not fail.
To win, we need further resources. First, we must have at leat twenty billion dollars a year for reconstruction, for at least the next five years. This is not an unreasonable request. It will cost less per year to rebuild iraq than it will cost us to keep the army in iraq for a month. And since it will be american companies that rebuild iraq most of the money will come right back to the USA and create american jobs.
To win, we need at least a hundred fifty thousand more soldiers. Not just for iraq. We must be ready to fight elsewhere on a moment's notice, and we can't afford to have most of our army tied up occupying iraq and resting and training to go back to iraq. We need to double the size of our fighting force. That will require a draft. And it will require money.
We must reverse our tax cuts, and add whatever taxes it takes to win the war. We cannot win this war on borrowed money. That leaves us open to blackmail by our creditors. We must pay for it ourselves. Social Security is bankrupt. We must take the Social Security money and use it to pay for the war, while the war lasts.
There is no substitute for victory. We can win in five to fifteen years. We will need a draft and we will need taxes, but with resolve and sacrifice we will win this war. No retreat. No surrender. Victory. I will veto any bill that demands a surrender on my watch.
Again, this war can be won. It will take less than thirty billion dollars a month for five to fifteen years. We will sacrifice on average fewer than a hundred soldiers a month. We will kill fewer than a hundred thousand iraqis a year. And we will win this war.
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If Bush would only talk straight about it, if he would only tell us the truth, that we need a draft and taxes for five to fifteen years, the public would rise up and support him. Instead he's tried to do it on the cheap with too few men and too few dollars and tax cuts. They don't believe he's serious. Tell us the truth and we'll do our part.
I have something to post along these lines myself in a short time, but the world is just too much with me at the moment. (My semicolon is self-punctuating.) Briefly, I think it's marvelous that the anti-Bush folks are convinced that a speech like this would be a political liability for the administration, and that the Democrat conviction to let the Devil off the hook is what the American peeps really really really want. (After all, G.H.W. thought so, and look what it did for his career.) But everything depends upon whether the G.W. administration sees and takes advantage of the opportunity. And if they don't we'll pretty much know the real quality of the choice we made in the 2004 primary season.
I'm also rather astonished that "the media" seems to think it can attack Bush for firing a half-dozen people who serve at his pleasure, but don't bother to note the possibility of Dianne Feinstein's corruption (let alone William Jefferson's) (h/t: Instapundit). They can easily accomplish the first stage of the strategy, which is to convince people that they're convinced that only the sins of the Republicans matter. But once the disagreement with that conclusion starts to reach critical mass it may be tough to bale fast enough to keep the ship afloat.
But I kid...
Wait a sec...did someone say "most sentient Americans know that we killed in excess of one million Vietnamese"?!?
That's perhaps the most astounding thing I've ever heard. Perhaps. I've heard a lot of astounding things, I guess...
Right avedis. And Reid's promise to withdraw funding if Bush vetoes the surrender deadline won't have consequences?
Let's review:
Iran has nukes or will have them shortly. Killing our guys in Iraq (to the cheers or defense of Dems). Taking more hostages. Pakistan falling into the Taliban/Al Qaeda's grasp.
And Reid wants to cut off all money to troops fighting in the field?
Dems are unable to control their nutcase left and it's driving everything. That's even more unpopular than casualties in Iraq.
Because the alternative is Nancy Pelosi submitting in her head scarf in Syria, and turning the US military into an unarmed NGO ready and willing to be taken hostage at a moments notice (i.e. the Royal Navy).
Americans are not French (though Dems certainly are). Bush ought to point that out, and make Dems pay a price for threats to abandon the troops in the field while fighting by withdrawing funding.
"That's perhaps the most astounding thing I've ever heard. Perhaps. I've heard a lot of astounding things, I guess..."
Then you should see an ear doctor because you don't hear too well or there's something wrong with the processing function...........actually, it is generally accepted that we killed about 3 million S.E. Asians 1960 - 1975 if you include Cambodians and Laotians. You can easily Google this info from numerous sources. It is also part of the Congressional Record resulting from post wat hearings.
You do know that we dropped many more tons of ordnance on S.E. then we did in all of WW2, right? And that there was little, if any, attempt to distinguish civilians from combatants?
BTW, J Thomas has it right. If you people really believe that we are locked in a life and death struggle with Islam that can only be resolved through extended armed conflict then, for God's sake, call up a draft, raise some taxes and let's get serious about saving our skins. Let's start making some sacrifices so we can get this done right. And let's put the price right out there on the table.
Otherwise, it is hard to take Bush - or you people - seriously.
some of the people some of the time................
Although it's inferential rather than direct evidence if you go to This Wikipedia site on the Demographics of Vietnam and scroll down to the population statistics graph, you'll find that the population growth rate for Vietnam has been stable since 1961. There was a very slight uptick in the trend from 1983 to 1993, after which it appears to have settled back to its former rate of around 1.3 to 1.4 %. Population from 1961 to 1975 grew from about 34 million to about 48 million. This site on Vietnam War casualties lists several sources. The range of estimates for Vietnamese civilian deaths for both the North and South is from about 360K to 580K, although I'm sure there's no definitive number given the difficulty of making such estimates. But assuming there's some degree of reality to the estimates, even if we attribute every single civilian death in both North and South to the US the numbers suggest that Avedis' "generally accepted" just plain isn't.
Of course this may be another learning experience for us, illustrating the phenomenon of "post-normal science" where truth is less dependent on empirical evidence than on manufacturing a creatively intriguing impression. (Fake but true.) Well, it makes us "think"; and what more could one ask of science?
Avedis, I'm not being snarky.
Look -- when WWII started we lost the philippines and our Corregidor fortress in short order. A lot of our planes were destroyed on the ground. Corregidor was supposed to be impregnible -- it wasn't. We lost almost all the troops there, we lost all the money we spent building up the place, and the filipinos suffered pretty heavily under japanese occupation. But we went ahead and won the war.
We would have been better off to defend the philippines well enough. The war in the pacific would have been a lot shorter if we could have done that.
If we couldn't or didn't actually defend the philippines, we would have been better off not to put so much effort into that defense, and lose it all.
And if the logistics etc had worked to let us reinforce Corregidor, and at great expense we kept sending in just enough new troops and supplies to put off defeat, that would have been even worse than the way it happened.
If we're going to win in iraq, let's do what it takes. Or if it's untenable let's get out and pick our battles better. This business of running a war by US politics is worthless.
The iraqis wanted elections, and we put it off. Then when they were sick of our occupation we did a sovereignty "handover" to Allawi, and officially we were no longer running an occupation, we were helping Allawi. When they were getting ready for elections, they did it on Bush's schedule and the elections didn't go all that well. When they were trying for a constitution they did that on Bush's schedule too and it didn't go all that well. The USA isn't unified behind the war and Bush keeps running it for short-term political gain.
We need some indication that there's actually a plan, and not just whatever sounds good this month.
We have lots of expert opinion about what's needed. For the iraqi armed forces to stand on their own will take 5 to 15 years. Training them mostly to do the high-casualty jobs so the US public sees fewer US casualties is not going to get us a stand-alone iraqi army.
We can win this but we won't win it by hanging in there for another six months and then another six months hoping something good happens. We have to actually be ready to do what it takes.
If we're ready to provide all the troops we need for 15 years, and give them all the supplies we need, and also do reconstruction, it might not take that long. We might win in 5 years. But we aren't going to do that by coming up with a new PR gimmick every six months. Get it straight what commitment we're talking about, and collect the taxes it takes to pay for it. We can get the public behind that even now, if they know what's needed. But the US public isn't up for More Of The Same.
We can win. Or we can lose like we lost the philippines, and still win the war. The worst choice is to run an expensive stalemate for years while we argue about it and never do what it takes to win but just keep draining ourselves so we're weaker on all other fronts.
Demosophist,
Did you include Laotian and Cambodian deaths?
Reading what he said, I think Avedis did.
Sources for casualties
avedis:
America could end the struggle with Islam in an hour or less. Maybe it should, and sooner or later it will. The only question is how many people in the civilised part of the world have to die first to make the ones who don't die feel better about it.