Forward to the next screw-up

As of this writing, it seems likely that President Bush will send a “surge” of 15,000-30,000 more U.S. troops into Iraq — despite the unanimous objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the recent proposals from the Iraq Study Group (also known as “Daddy’s Last Warning”). At this point, pretty much everyone but Bush, Cheney and Fox News addicts realize the only thing a “surge” will accomplish is to put even more young Americans through the Iraqi meat grinder for nothing.

The striking thing is that no one seems too surprised by Bush’s newest folly. Then again, why should they be? This isn’t exactly the first time Dubya has ignored “reality-based” advice and followed his own weird star, straight into one screw-up after another. Botching everything he touches has been a touchstone of Dubya’s whole life, so it’s a mystery why anyone thought being president would change things. There’s a common term for guys like Bush: He’s a fuck-up.

Look at the arc of Dubya’s life as an heir to privilege, and you see the pattern. This is a guy who has sported a smirking sense of entitlement since youth — perennially full of himself, even as those around him marveled at how little he seemed to know, or even cared to know.

As former Texas governor Ann Richards once said about Bush Sr., Dubya “woke up on third base and thought he had hit a triple.” He’s strolled through life, screwing things up wherever he’s gone, confident that his wealth and family name will repair the damage. The difference now is that he doesn’t acknowledge the damage he causes anymore.

From felonious pranks and binge drinking in college, to his cushy post-grad National Guard position, Dubya’s daddy protected him and fed his delusions of adequacy. By the time he went AWOL from the Guard for months, he simply took it for granted that he could screw up all he wanted and get away with it. And when the Texas party animal wound up busted for DUI, Daddy came to the rescue again.

When Dubya entered the “business years,” his pattern of “one screw-up after another” hit high gear. When his first oil company went belly-up, another outfit saw the value of a powerful family’s heir in the company and made him chairman and CEO. That company — surprise — also failed. Next, Harken Energy saved his skin, gave him company shares, but was careful enough to make him a director with no day-to-day management responsibilities. Dubya spent part of his time there engaging in insider trading, according to SEC documents — the kind of thing Martha Stewart went to jail for. At the time of the SEC investigation, however … OK, I’ll let you guess what happened. Hint: his father was president at the time.

Bush’s career in politics, from Texas to Washington, has merely been another string of cushy jobs, bankrolled by super-rich pals. At every step of the way, he sided with his big buck buddies, while blithely assuming he was God’s chosen. We’ve all seen the presidential years, marked by one screw-up after another, a list too familiar and too long to repeat here. The point is that the man in the West Wing is a sorry excuse for a responsible, competent person, and it’s an injustice, and a national shame, that he could get as far as he did.

Anyone who doubts life’s capacity for grave unfairness need only read the daily paper’s obituaries of soldiers killed in Bush’s mismanaged wars, and contrast those men with their “leader.”

It’s striking how many of these young Americans are described by friends and family as dedicated, serious and conscientious. Army Capt. John Dennison, for instance, was a 24-year-old West Point grad whose history teacher described as someone “who always knew the right thing to do … He had a presence about him.” Dennison was killed by small-arms fire in Iraq.

Army Sgt. 1st Class William Brown’s good friend described him as “good to the core … always standing up for what was right and following through with his plans.” Brown, who had done a tour of duty in Iraq, was killed by a roadside bomb during his second tour in Afghanistan.

Then there’s Marine Lance Cpl. Timothy Brown, 21, who regularly took time while in Iraq to write his mother, who is dying of liver cancer. He was killed by a roadside bomb in the deadly Anbar province.

The life stories of the American war dead could go on for days, and I’m convinced at least 90 percent of those men and women — whose caskets Bush wanted hidden, in contrast to how the war dead were honored in the past — would be revealed as more interesting, smarter and more competent than the deluded fool who sent them to their death. And now President Fuck-up, as cluelessly confident as ever, wants to pour more of our young men and women onto the Iraqi fire he started. And he has another two years left to screw things up even worse. It’s scary.

This article appears in Dec 27, 2006 – Jan 2, 2007.