Are You Kidding Me?

There have been few professional comedians able to state the most outrageously stupid, ironic or just plain funny with a completely straight face. Jack Benny and Henny Youngman were masters; more recent masters have been Bob Newhart, and Cedric the Entertainer does pretty well. But a new challenger has emerged – George W. Bush. The President of the United States came before the cameras to veto the Iraq War Funding legislation passed by Congress and stated the following, with as much of a straight face as he can muster:

The bill is unacceptable because it “substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgments of our military commanders,” the president said in a nationally televised address to explain why he was vetoing a bill that would also provide $100 billion in emergency spending for the war.

He was sure to have them rolling in the aisles with such buffoonery. After all, was it not the politician George W. Bush who substituted his own opinions for those of the seasoned military brass when he decided to launch the invasion of Iraq without sufficient personnel, equipment or planning? And didn't the politician Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s hand picked Secretary of Defense [actually Cheney picked him; Georgie had to go along or get a spanking] who substituted his opinion for the expertise of the entire senior military ranks by deciding to launch “Shock & Awe” without a clue as to how to manage the aftermath of the invasion?

Bush and Cheney, who collectively have “zero” military battlefield experience, stepped in like self styled movie directors with delusions of Peckinpaugh or Scorsese and launched a military adventure that has caused countless scenes of death and destruction. They dispensed with any knowledgeable General who uttered a discouraging word of expertise or common sense. The mess they created is for the “stagehands” to clean up when the two of them are through playing. They must assume, as when the two of them play video games in the White House rec room, that the destruction and devastation are not “real,” and that the blood and deaths will disappear when they hit the "restart" button for a new game.

So when the news came that Bush actually used the line about “politicians substituting their opinions” as his excuse for a veto of legislation that tried to thoughtfully require some rational restrictions and some accountability regarding the blank check Congress has previously given Bush to fund the Iraq quagmire, my first response was: “You’re putting me on. Are you kidding me?” I was waiting for the punch line or for the media in the room to burst out laughing.

Unfortunately, the “joke” is on me and the rest of the American people. Bush apparently was dead serious when he coughed up that classic tidbit of irony. The statement was not only absurd, but it was also one that George W. Bush actually believes enough to declare with a straight face. When we realize that the President of the United States is so out of touch with reality and that the lives of more than 130,000 US troops [not including the nearly 3500 already dead] and countless Iraqi civilians are in serious jeopardy because of that dislocation our laughter stops cold.