During his speech last night, George W. Bush looked like a scared little boy, didn't he?
When I was a boy, if there was a scuff-up on the playground, our teachers tried to impart the lesson that it took the "bigger person" to admit he was wrong.
It was a lesson reinforced in Sunday school. We were taught to admit and to ask forgiveness for our transgressions. Without that first step, there could be no healing.
It was lesson reinforced on television. Ward Cleaver, on Leave it to Beaver, was a father who was the first to admit he had made a mistake. True, 1950s televised patriarchy had its authoritarian dimensions, but it also broadcast occasional moments of moral decency.
Somehow young George Bush missed all of those standard schoolboy lessons. That character flaw has followed him well into adulthood. He made a catastrophic error in invading Iraq, and then a whole series of errors thereafter, and now he is simply not man enough to swallow his pride and admit his failures.
Last night his entire speech was about saving face--his own. He has no plan for Iraq. He has no exit strategy for the United States. When Condoleezza Rice intones that it will take ten years or so to stabilize Iraq, she is admitting: they have no clue whatsoever what comes next. They have no theory of human behavior that can project ten years henceforth. They have no military strategy. They have no idea how this on-the-ground drama will unfold. All they know is that the next president will have to clean up this mess and take responsibility for it. Bush doesn't care. He'll be making money. He'll be giving speeches blaming his successor for not staying the course.
In the meantime, more young men and women will die. It's utterly despicable. George W. Bush should have worked out this character flaw of his long ago--on the playground, in Sunday school, or by watching Leave it to Beaver--but now as a nation we're forced to expend sixteen more months worth of blood and tears to prop up his petty ego.
In my day, we were taught that we'd burn in hell for such sins.
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
