Sunday marks the 8th anniversary of Mission Accomplished Day, or as it might better be known, Mission Accomplished (NOT) Day. Coming on a weekend, there will be even fewer mentions of this in the national media than in previous years, and Keith Olbermann will not be on the air to update the usual close to his telecast when he marks exactly how many days since Bush declared victory (you do the math).
In my favorite antiwar song of this war, "Shock and Awe," Neil Young moaned: "Back in the days of Mission Accomplished/ our chief was landing on the deck/ The sun was setting/ behind a golden photo op." But as Neil added elsewhere: "History is a cruel judge of overconfidence."
Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the media coverage of the event. Even today, nearly eight years later, the often "overconfident" reporting from Baghdad and Kabul sometimes takes your breath away. At least two U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq this week so far, and over 45,000 of our troops remain there today. (For a full accounting of costs of all sorts, go here.) So let's return to the days of Mission Accomplished...
On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today op-ed, "Relax, Celebrate Victory." The same day, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq -- with the now-infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner arrayed behind him.
Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a "hero" and boomed, "He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics." He added: "Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."
PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was "part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan." On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, "The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing."
Bob Schieffer on CBS said: "As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time." His guest, Joe Klein, responded: "Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me." Elisabeth Bumiller in The New York Times hailed Bush's "powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war."
Everyone agreed the Democrats and antiwar critics were now on the run. MIchael Gordon at The New York Times observed, "The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today."
Maureen Dowd in her column declared:
Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.
He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics. Compared to Karl Rove's ''revvin' up your engine'' myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer's movies look like Lizzie McGuire.
This time Maverick didn't just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.
When Bush's jet landed on the aircraft carrier, American casualties stood at 139 killed and 542 wounded. That was over 4,000 U.S. fatalities ago, and hundreds of thousands Iraqis.
Greg Mitchell's two current books, also available as e-books, are "The Age of WikiLeaks" and "Bradley Manning: Truth and Consequences."
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Just yesterday I watched Oliver Stone's movie "W." In the film, there's an actor playing a news anchor who speaks that quote verbatim. I laughed at how silly it sounded -- I thought it was a funny, if over-the-top bit of irony sprung from the fevered imagination of Oliver Stone. I can't believe someone actually said it in all seriousness.
I mean, geeeez-us, Chris!
A month after it happened, it started the was in Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and to "punish" those who had given him safe harbor.
Within 50 days, epecial forces pinned down Bin Laden in Tora Bora and requested reinforcements to put the lid on and take him out, but Bush was already turning his attention to Iraq and could not be bothered. Bin Laden got away.
By 2003 and 2004, Bush was reduced to making statements minimizing Bin Laden's importance and saying he didn't know and didn't care where he was. Meanwhile, Iraq ate up every bit of US military and financial reserves and demanded more.
Jan 20, 2008, Bin Laden still on the loose, hundreds of thousands dead, Iraq, Afghanisan, and the American economy in ruins, Bush swaggered off into the sunset.
Obama sat in the oval office and surveyed the devastation, wondering what he had gotten himself into, and then got to work.
Since then, he has kept at least 136 promises - including the one to get actionable intelligence, enter Pakistan without their approval, and take Bin Laden.
"special," not "epecial."
And 2009, not 2008.
Whose fingers are these, and what happened to mine?
2,923 days since President Bush declared "MIssion Accomplished."
http://foknewschannel.com/
Quiet intelligence, calm determination, calculated risks, and a steel spine needed to give the orders are what brought UBL down.
The braggadocio demonstrated by the right never seems to fit the bill. Give me calm intelligence over the jackassery displayed by the right any day of the week, any day of the year--heck, any day of the millenium.
President Obama has really made his mark this weekend and I hope he continues on in this vein.
Thank -you Mr President. You have gotten the American people justice.
Now go pop some champagne...
Contrast that to the reporters who got the story right. Landy, Strobel, and McClatchy were about the only ones who warned us ahead of time it was all lies. Maybe after the fact, Froomkin and Suskind. No rewards for those guys. No jobs at the New York Times.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2847
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0122-01.htm
http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/04/09/waas_now.html
The Left never lets the truth stand in the way of good propaganda.