A Pilgrim’s Digression

I read the following in a Washington Post story this morning:

Bush also acknowledged in the interview that the administration did not anticipate the nature of the resistance in Iraq, and he said that was his greatest mistake in office. “Had we had to do it over again,” he said, “we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day.”

Democrats tried Sunday to exploit that acknowledgment. “The president is now describing his Iraq policy as a catastrophic success,” Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said in Washington. “I, like most Americans, have no idea what that means, but it is long past time for this president to accept personal responsibility for his failures and for his performance.”

And this from an AP news report:

In an interview on NBC-TV’s “Today” show broadcast to coincide with Monday’s start of the Republican National Convention in New York, Bush said retreating from the war on terror “would be a disaster for your children.’”

“You cannot show weakness in this world today because the enemy will exploit that weakness,” he said. “It will embolden them and make the world a more dangerous place.”

When asked “Can we win?” the war on terror, Bush said, “I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the—those who use terror as a tool are—less acceptable in parts of the world.”

What do these gestures towards complex thinking mean? I think they may mean quite a lot to people who like Bush but are frustrated by his stubbornness, people who want simply an acknowledgement that the President is not infallible. Critics can deride these as mere words, as John Edwards has done, but words have symbolic impact. I am surprised and pleased by these words of George Bush. Sorry, John Edwards, but “catastrophic success” does make sense, enough so that I don’t believe George Bush himself came up with the phrase. I would imagine it was coined just for him by Condaleeza Rice or someone else. And late or no, the President is finally taking responsibility for a debacle that has been apparent to everyone else for months. I give President Bush full credit on this.

On the other hand, Bush’s “greatest mistake in office” has cost lives. We still need to decide whether to hold him accountable for that. In Manhattan yesterday, protestors carried approximately a thousand flag-draped coffins through the streets while Cheney opened the Convention across the river at Ellis Island. I don’t normally give protestors any credit whatsoever, but that is a powerful and effective protest, as opposed to mere displays of childish anger, which is more typical of protestors. I also liked the “Billionaires For Bush” who dressed to the nines and played croquet and badminton on the green at Central Park. That is a very clever kind of protest, I think.