July 27, 2005
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E. L. Doctorow: The Unfeeling President
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But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
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Comments (7)
I once went out with E.L.'s daughter. He didn't like me.
Then obviously he is a man of great discernment and character.
doctorow is the man!
An interesting and timely excerpt.
I bet his daughter was hot.
well pointed...
The idea that President Bush knew of the intelligence failure is utter nonsense, everyone believed it--everyone. And your opinion of the war is, I think, pre-mature. I sympathize with your take on the lost lives, for every life is precious and one must think long and hard before putting one in danger. On the other hand, I can not understand your take on political liability--yes, it's less than ideal, even seedy, to withdraw press coverage like that, but would you rather the liability be realized and the soldiers put in further jeopardy?
Your point that the Iraq war has licensed terrorism MAY be true, but it seems to me that fighting the terrorists was going to spread their cause no matter how we fought them and that this fact is no reason not to fight the terrorists.
Firstly, I didn't write this, though I agree with most of it.
Secondly, the issues you raise:
Bush himself may have been as clueless as you say, kept that way by his scheming Veep and so forth, but I doubt it. It's very clear that intel was fabricated out of almost nothing, and that there was no failure of intelligence, but simply a series of lies by the leadership.
The Iraq war has licensed terrorism. It's simply true, and was entirely predicted.
And I believe, as E. L. Doctorow does, that Bush has no conscience in these matters. That's the point of his essay, and I agree with it. A man with a conscience, particularly one who claims Jesus Christ as his main political inspiration, would have turned states' evidence on himself by this point.
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