A
question for the president
Thomas
Hartnett
As
many of you know, our fearless leader held
a very rare prime-time news conference Tuesday
concerning many issues that have been occurring
in recent weeks. All the reporters asked
questions concerning the 9/11 commission
and Iraq and I couldn't help but notice
that many of the questions referred to the
president having never admitted any responsibility
in the security failure surrounding the
attacks or any mistakes in the Iraq fiasco.
Bush
dodged all of the questions. His answers
were so awkward and painful to watch that
I was hoping someone would burst through
the door and hit me in the face with a shoe
to put me out of my misery. But enough of
his horrific performance, I have a question
I would like the president to answer as
best he can.
"Mr.
President, you ran your campaign on the
promise of integrity and accountability,
yet have never admitted you were wrong.
To borrow from the baseball metaphor, do
you seriously think that you are batting
1.000?"
He
would probably make a comment similar to
the one he made for another reporter, "I
wish I could have seen that question beforehand."
And then he'd say something about grieving.
But I am serious here. This man thinks he
has done a perfect job. He feels Iraq is
going along as planned; that there was nothing
he could do about Sept. 11; deficits are
good; lying about the cost of Medicare bills
is alright; revealing the identity of undercover
CIA agents is acceptable behavior; giving
the finger to the United Nations was good
for the world and stonewalling the 9/11
commission is actually "cooperating
fully with their investigation."
Bush
betrays himself with his favorite line:
"9/11 taught us that we must take threats
seriously, that our oceans will not protect
us." This really means, "I did
not take the threats seriously, I thought
our oceans would protect us." Which
would explain why he continued to chop wood
on his ranch during the longest presidential
vacation in history instead of calling the
airlines and telling them "the following
people should not fly, they might be trying
to hijack an airplane."
Before
I get mad about something that Bush has
done, I like to play a little game. It's
called "If Clinton did it, would I
still be angry?" If I wouldn't, then
I decide not to get mad at Bush because
that would make me a partisan hypocrite,
and I try hard not to be one of those.
Sept.
11 is the failure of our government as a
whole, not just Bush. But don't tell me
that you did everything you could, when
it is obvious that you were completely oblivious
to what was happening and didn't care. It
is not hard to call airlines and tell them
to not sell tickets to these people. I mean
all of them used their real names for Christ's
sake.
Mistakes
are made. What is most important is that
you learn from them. If Bush admitted that
he underestimated the threat, I would have
no problem because everyone did. But one
cannot learn from mistakes if you don't
recognize them as such. And that is perhaps
the most dangerous trait of this administration
and why it has to go.
Thomas
Hartnett is a political science major at
Cal State Long Beach.
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