Oh, Really?
The first lady, interviewed by Anne Curry on the Today Show, talking about the war in Iraq:
NBC: Do you know the American people are suffering?
Laura Bush: Oh, I know that very much. And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this.
posted by JimK at 1:47 PM
16 Comments:
andrea- not anon
I think Laura meant when she and George have to watch themselves sound like morons on TV
Actually there are fewer "journalists" more vacuous than Anne Curry...and this question is a prime example of just such non-thinking.
Orin, I don't watch TV news much, and don't know who Anne Curry is, but it appears the question was really just a softball opportunity for the first lady to say some heartwarming stuff about the thousands of families who have lost loved ones, and the tens of thousands whose loved ones have been permanently changed by the war.
Instead, we were told that those families should feel sorry for her and her husband, who started this war out of pure desire to go to war, whether there was an enemy to fight or not. No one suffers more than her family, we were told.
JimK
Do not forget, our First Lady told that to all of us, even Pat Tillman's family.
Panel Vows to Pursue Tillman Case
At Hearing, Brother Accuses Military of 'Deliberate and Calculated Lies'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042400181.html
How wrong can you get?
Bush should end everyone's suffering. Bring our troops home NOW!
From Andrea- not anon-
Orin,
you can blame the media all you want- I don't care- they are meaningless. However, having a president as vacuous and uncaring as George Bush is a truly terrible thing.
Andrea
"it appears the question was really just a softball opportunity for the first lady to say some heartwarming stuff about the thousands of families who have lost loved ones, and the tens of thousands whose loved ones have been permanently changed by the war.
Instead, we were told that those families should feel sorry for her and her husband, who started this war out of pure desire to go to war, whether there was an enemy to fight or not. No one suffers more than her family, we were told."
This is an assinine statement by Mr TTF. All the first lady was trying to say is that she empathizes with the suffering of the families.
Still unanswered is why the same people who say we should have just turned our heads as Saddam invaded other countries, murdered his internal political oppostion, funded Palestine suicide bombers and committed genocide on minorities in Iraq using weapons of mass destruction also say the U.S. should intervene in Darfur.
What most soldiers know is that if we were to pull out, everyone, including Americans, would suffer as a result.
Thank you, Anon, for that. This is where I am glad to know that our readers can see with their own eyes and make up their own minds.
JimK
you're perfectly welcome
Jim writes,
Instead, we were told that those families should feel sorry for her and her husband, who started this war out of pure desire to go to war, whether there was an enemy to fight or not.
Wow Jim...you know that for a fact?
I think I have said this before, but I will say it again: I would not have started in Iraq. I would have started in Syria and/or Iran, as they both are main contributors to state-sponsored terrorism. Bush decided that the US would engage the enemy in Iraq. The point is this: with the exception of Israel, the rest of the Middle East is a cesspool of tyranny, despotism, fanaticism and violence. September 11th, 2001 brought home the realization that we could either start "draining" the swamp, or we could expect more deadly attacks in the future.
I vote that we drain the swamp that is so much of the Middle East.
No one suffers more than her family, we were told.
Oh good grief, when will the media stop trying to get public officials to "feel" other people's pain???
Still, I think I understand where this all comes from, just having watched The Queen on DVD. It is indeed a values shift, a shift which HRH was right to disdain, especially as it applied to all the overwrought and quite frankly gruesome mourning over a woman that was little more than a pretty, jet setting playgirl ("the People's Princess"? PLEASE!).
NBC: Do you know the American people are suffering?
And who told Anne Curry this? Perhaps the only female "journalist" more insipid than Anne Curry is Katie Couric...please, where are the Cokie Roberts (a big part of the reason I listen and "subscribe" - yes, I send them money) on television?
Andrea writes,
However, having a president as vacuous and uncaring as George Bush is a truly terrible thing.
Does it matter that Bush actually finished Graduate School, unlike Gore that flitted from Divinity School to Law School to...well, you get the picture.
I take it that you want a President that is "caring" along the lines of a Bill Clinton? Thanks, but I want a tough-minded leader, not a stick-a-finger in the wind to see which way it is all blowing at the moment follower (which is what the Clinton Administration was all about).
Andrea- not anon
Orin, are you joking?? Bush may have finished school -somehow- but he is truly a stupid man. As to being a tough minded leader- he is led around by the nose by Cheney and Rove. I don't have to think otherwise because somehow he was elected president.
Andrea
There seems to be a real difference of opinion between the Bush spouses on how the daily death toll due to the neocon blunder in Iraq is effecting them. Laura reports they are "suffering" while George says he is "joyful."
Dec. 4, 2006
"...the load is not heavy, I guess is the best way to describe it. Look, somebody said to me, prove it. I said, you can't prove it. All I can tell you is I feel it. And it's a remarkable country when millions pray for me and Laura. So therefore I am able to say to people that this is a joyful experience. Not a painful experience."
George W. Bush
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/04/25/firstlady/index.html
Orin said..."I vote that we drain the swamp that is so much of the Middle East."
The US military is now recruiting the "over 35 crowd" so it's a pretty good bet they'll take you so you can learn first hand about "draining the swamp."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0906/p01s02-usmi.html
Some of us have been around long enough to remember we already tried to "drain the swamp" in Vietnam. The tactic lead to the withdrawal Nixon renamed "Peace with Honor."
http://www.watergate.info/nixon/73-01-23_vietnam.shtml
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Laura Bush said "no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this".
How profoundly thoughtless and arrogant of her. She reminds me of my sister's neighbour who said at the funeral of my sister's daughter "I feel worse than you do". Puhleeese - how brain dead do you have to be to make the statement that you feel worse than those who've lost a loved one when you haven't. She's the perfect match for George who's also dumber than a bag of hammers.
Orin, Bush being a "tough minded leader" in no way compensates for his being an idiot - fools rush in where angels fear to tread. When you're making bad decisions one after another people are better off with a cautious weak minded idiot than a determined bold one. The U.S. would have been better off the past several years with a cardboard cutout as a leader instead of Bush - better that nothing gets done than a series of very bad moves.
Andrea writes,
Orin, are you joking?? Bush may have finished school -somehow- but he is truly a stupid man
No, I am not joking…I will readily admit that he got into Yale on the coattails of his family’s name; grad school is another matter. As to the charge of stupid…really now, can’t you come up with something…anything…a little more substantive? I suspect that his lack of a gilded tongue has left far too many with the impression that his lack of oratorical skills somehow equals a lack of any measurable intelligence.
As to being a tough minded leader- he is led around by the nose by Cheney and Rove. I don't have to think otherwise because somehow he was elected president.
Passing on Rove for the time being…I was not going to vote for Bush back in 2000. He struck me as a light weight, lacking experience. Then he selected Cheney (or Cheney pulled a Jedi mind trick , and had Bush “select” Cheney, if one buys into the latest conspiracy talk directed at those dreaded neo-cons), and I knew in an instant that Bush was smart enough to recognize someone more talented than he, with more experience and was humble enough to recruit him though it was clear his VP was his better. It was on the strength of the selection of Cheney alone that I knew Bush would be a better candidate.
I know, I know…such an assessment must make not a few of you gag…big time, but as a voter at that time that is what I went off of in casting my vote.
Warning, “facts” ahead writes,
Orin said..."I vote that we drain the swamp that is so much of the Middle East."
The US military is now recruiting the "over 35 crowd" so it's a pretty good bet they'll take you so you can learn first hand about "draining the swamp."
Thanks for the link…two problems with the idea you propose. First, I am 45 years old…sigh. And second, the Mrs. Would likely not allow me to enlist, and since we are a team I will have to pass for the moment.
Some of us have been around long enough to remember we already tried to "drain the swamp" in Vietnam. The tactic lead to the withdrawal Nixon renamed "Peace with Honor."
Please do not forget what happened after the US left South Vietnam…
165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people
and that is just for starters.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
If there is a single quote that should be forever retired from use, misuse and abuse it surely must be this quote. It has become perhaps the surest sign of a lack of original thought on both the left and the right. Though I will put your George Santayana quote up
against my George Bernard Shaw quote on history,
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
Or this one by Hegel,
What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.
Which is probably why Henry Ford famously stated,
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
And Randi writes,
When you're making bad decisions one after another people are better off with a cautious weak minded idiot than a determined bold one.
Please, having Jimmy Carter as President once was punishment enough for this country, don’t you think? (Though in Carter's defense, I suspect intellectually speaking he is quite bright, but he is a moral retard with regards to wisdom and sound moral judgement, though it took his last book to seal that verdict for the wider public.)
As to comments thoughtlessly made to those who grieve – less is more. Simple condolences that make no pretense to understanding what those who grieve are going thru at that moment in time are best. If one cannot do that, perhaps a hug would be better.
Orin, your quotes that no one learns from history are bunk. Its well acknowledged that the WWII invasion at Normandy was a success because of lessons learned at the failure of Dieppe. In WWI Canadians took the previously impenetrable Vimy Ridge after learning from the history of all the failed previous attempts - they developed modern tactics still used today like the creeping barage to acomplish in days what had been failed to achieve in months of tremendous casualties. After the history of building collapses from earthquakes people have increasingly learned from history to build better and better structures thus preventing the sorts of loss of life that happened in the earliest catastrophes. After many people were infected with HIV from tainted blood supplies people learned from history to test properly for it and to screen blood donors.
The examples of people learning from history abound just as the examples of people failing to learn from history abound. The old saw that people who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it couldn't be more true or relevant. The world can do without your nihilist attitude and quotes.
Orin asked "Please, having Jimmy Carter as President once was punishment enough for this country, don’t you think?".
Good example of exactly what I said - you're better off with someone who doesn't lead than a bold idiotic person who does. With Carter nothing much happened, with Bush one of the great disasters of the century is underway. With Bush rushing into Iraq as an overconfident fool the U.S. is stuck with two disasterous alternatives. Either it can continue its mission to bring peace to Iraq and spend another 10 or 20 years in the existing situation, or it can leave and the country will decend into total civil war that may well drag the rest of the middle east into a major confict and which at the very least will result in severe disruptions to the world oil supply, economy, global stability and security, if not WWIII. Frankly, I'm for the former alternative. The U.S. made the mistake of going in there and making this mess and now you better damn well stay there and clean it up no matter what it takes. You've made your bed, now lie in it.
Orin quoted Henry Ford...History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today
In case everyone doesn't know it, Henry Ford was a publisher of anti-Semitic propaganda. Wikipedia reports:
The Dearborn Independent, also dubbed The Ford International Weekly, was a newspaper published by Henry Ford from 1919 through 1927. It was noted for its sensationalist content, including many anti-Semitic references , and its publication of the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion....Lawsuits regarding the anti-Semitic material caused Ford to fold the paper, the last issue being published in December 1927.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dearborn_Independent
Along with the Protocols, anti-Jewish articles published by The Dearborn Independent were also released in the early 1920s as a set of four bound volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. Vincent Curcio writes of these publications that "they were widely distributed and had great influence, particularly in Nazi Germany, where no less a personage than Adolf Hitler read and admired them. Hitler, fascinated with automobiles, hung Ford's picture on the wall; Ford is the only American mentioned in Hitler's book [Mein Kampf]. Steven Watts writes that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany," and modeling the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the model T...
Ford subsequently became associated with the notorious anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith, who commented, upon meeting Ford in the 1930s, that he "was less anti-Semitic than Ford." Smith remarked that, in 1940, Ford showed "no regret" for the Independent's anti-Semitic views, and "hoped to publish The International Jew again some time." In the same year Ford told The Manchester Guardian that "international Jewish bankers" were responsible for World War II.
In July 1938, prior to the outbreak of war, the German consul at Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, while James D. Mooney, vice-president of overseas operations for General Motors, received a similar medal, the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, First Class.
Distribution of International Jew was halted in 1942, but extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites.
Without excusing Henry Ford's antisemitism, some facts tend to prove that in his private life he was in good term with almost every Jew he happened to know personally. He was very surprised when rabbi Leo Franklin returned the Model T he had offered him. When he started buying antiques he went to a Jewish merchant, and his personal butcher at his mansion was a Jew. He was in excellent term with architect Albert Kahn. His factories employed at least 3000 Jews. A close collaborator of Henry Ford during World War II reported that Henry, at the time being more than 80 years old, was shown a movie of the Nazi concentration camps. He wasn't able to cope with what he saw and had a heart attack."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Dearborn_Independent
Were you being sarcastic when you quoted Ford because it didn't come through to me if you were. If not, I have to point something out to you. You not only quote Ford, Orin, but you emulate him as well. When you tell us you treat your gay neighbors with respect and tolerance while you publicly work to discriminate against them and to deny them the American promise of equal "unalienable" rights for all men, you behave just like Ford did at his most despicable.
Maybe sometime you can explain how you differentiate between "tradition," which the Ford quote calls "bunk" and what you often refer to as "long established societal norms" and "bedrock societal institutions" such as marriage, which you assert must NEVER be changed, except for allowing various races to intermarry.
Thank you Aunt bea, that was powerful.
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