I had to destroy America to save it

The Prince Jackass last evening gave his valedictory in a speech that I note the press barely mentions in its morning coverage of the news of the day. Monkey Boy last night defended what he did during the last eight insufferable years, eight years which nearly wrecked the United States. (In fact, on reflection, it is not clear yet that he didn't wreck the country; only time will tell if we ever recover from this unmitigated disaster of a presidency.)

The Great American Clown observed that we might not have agreed with his decisions, but we all could agree he had to make tough decisions. I guess the next part of the syllogism he proposed would be that most of us believe he made tough decisions quite badly. But he didn't mention that.

Our National Buffoon regretted some of his decisions, but he didn't tell us which ones he regretted. I wonder if trampling on the Constitution was one of them? I wonder if his not inconsiderable part in wrecking the economy through wasteful spending on a misguided Iraqi adventure, the deregulation of the mortgage industry, or the evaporation of our national wealth through his give away programs to the rich might be things he regrets? (Viz., tax cuts for the rich, Iraqi billions of dollars of missing cash debacle, Katrina faux-recovery program, banks that decline to state what happened to the money emergent scandal.)

Gosh. Who knows what George Bush considers his mistakes.

But guess what: in the Prince Jackass's mind, all's well that ends well: we haven't had an attack on our national soil since 9/11. Now mind you, the nation is well into its third century and the only other attacks we have had on our national soil were the War of 1812 and the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Never mind that 9/11 actually did occur on his watch after he ignored the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing that explicitly stated bin Ladin's intention to destroy the World Trade Center by using planes as missiles. Never mind that no president in the period of American hegemony and technological dominance suffered the U.S. to be attacked. In other words, never mind that the Chimp of Crawford just dropped the ball and allowed 9/11 to occur in the first place.

So what is George Bush's greatest accomplishment? After completely missing the ball on 9/11, he accomplished what almost every president does all of the time: keep the most powerful country in the world safe from a foreign attack on its soil. Wow. What a spectacular and uncommon accomplishment: destroying the Constitution to save it, trammeling civil liberties to protect them, impugning America's reputation to promote it.

What a jackass. His argument about the "success" of his presidency essentially boils down to, "I had to destroy America to save it."

Ahhh, but now comes the great relief: quietly or not, he goes in four days into that good night. At this moment of national catharsis, we all again may take comfort in Gerald Ford's observation when Ford assumed the presidency after Nixon's resignation, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."