Bush vents fury at Congress demand for troop withdrawal
Bush has never faced a Senate that he did not control before, and the rubber stamp quality of that Senate before the November mid term elections has led him to believe - erroneously - that the American people share his views regarding the importance of an American victory in Iraq, and that they will share his sense of outrage at any attempt to stop him carrying out this mission.
It is surely that which leads him to threaten to veto any legislation which attempts to put a timetable on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and his insistence - against the evidence of every available poll - that the public will punish the Democrats for curtailing him.
But even considering the fact that he has always got his own way up until this point, his outburst last night was astonishing in it's petulance.
He went on to deride Democratic lawmakers for including a deadline for troop withdrawals and "pork" projects in an Iraq spending bill, declaring that "the American people will know who to hold responsible" if funding for the war stalls. Well, of course they will. It will be the man who wields the veto against the democratically elected Senate and House of Representatives wishes.Once again, Mr Bush repeated his threat to veto any bill that linked a deadline to the $122bn of new funding he has requested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - even though without it, the White House maintains, money for the two wars will run out next month.
To impose "a specific and random date of withdrawal" would be "disastrous," the President said, and play into the hands of America's enemies in Iraq.
"They'd simply have to mark their calendars, and spend the months ahead plotting how to use their new safe haven once we were to leave," he said.
Politicians, he insisted, should not be setting "arbitrary timelines for our military commanders in a war zone 6,000 miles away."
Nancy Pelosi was quick to remind Bush that he faces a new political reality:
"Calm down with the threats. There is a new Congress in town," Pelosi said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours."But of course, this is a man who, when he talks of non-partisan politics actually means Democrats doing as he wishes. A man who has ruled for six years as if he possesses the power of a monarch is going to find the adjustment to two party politics a jolt to the system to say the least. And, judging from last night's performance, it's a jolt to the system that seems destined to bring out the worst in this President.
There have always been rumours about his temper behind closed doors and the nearest we ever got to witnessing it in public was during the debate with Kerry, which most pundits agreed showed Bush angry at having to listen to any form of criticism of himself or of his performance. Now that his authority is being openly challenged, he is starting to behave quite irrationally; threatening to veto an Iraq spending bill but hoping that the blame will be heaped on to the shoulders of the people who are doing what the majority of Americans want.
As Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate put it: "Why doesn't he get real with what's going on with the world? We're not holding up funding in Iraq and he knows that. Why doesn't he deal with the real issues facing the American people?"But, of course, this is also a problem of the President's own making. The Baker report offered him a way out of Iraq and he, supported by William Kristol and other foreign policy "experts", decided that this was a path he was not going to take and decided on the highly unpopular avenue of escalation. I think I described him at the time as desperate gambler doubling down on his bet.
It was always a desperate risk that he could carry public opinion down that route when public support for the war was already, at that time, leaking like a sieve.
“The president’s response just drove many people on the fence to our side,” Senator Durbin said. “The idea of sending more soldiers into this was exactly the opposite of what the American people were looking for.”
But then, this President has always confused his legacy with the greater good of the nation as a whole, seeing the two as in some way related, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The damage done by this President to America's reputation abroad is almost incalculable. One of the few things I hope I can provide to an American audience is some sort of perspective from across the pond. And Americans friends I know who come even to Britain, which is an ally of the US in the War on Terror, are often shocked at the visceral feelings that Bush generates amongst British citizens.
Bush has, on almost too many subjects to mention - Kyoto, ABM missile Treaty, Geneva Conventions, Guantanamo Bay and many, many others - literally told the world to, "Go hang". He has always ruled oblivious to the opinions of others, becoming an almost classic example of the wrongful sense of entitlement felt by people who have gained power or wealth through inheritance rather than through any individual talent that they might possess. It is his ugliest quality.
He is now about to treat the American people in the same way that he has treated the rest of the planet for the past six years. The difference is that the American people have a power at the ballot box that the rest of the planet have no access to. They have made their views crystal clear at that ballot box, but Bush still thinks he knows best and that the American people will back him in this dispute.
They won't. They have already said so. But a man who stopped listening to opposing viewpoints six years ago has forgotten that there is even such a thing as a valid opinion that is not his own.
This train is about to come off the tracks...
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