Can’t You Take a Hint?

I guess this, to the Decider in Chief, is just another 102 commas and over 200 hyphens on the way to the glorious surprise ending when Horatio Alger arrives in Baghdad, gives the Iraqis inspirational stories about Ragged Dick and Luck ‘n’ Pluck and they pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

But the good news, comrades, is that the Decider is being conciliatory and is offering an olive branch to Democrats and other critics of the Surge, even magnanimously waiving the usual “You’re with the terr’ists if you disagree with the Decider!” response. Of course, it’s easy to welcome debate if you continually stick your fingers in your ears and loudly sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” offkey.

In a speech to over 200 lawmakers at a Virginia retreat, Bush claimed, as he has all this time, that he’s listened to Democrats (whom he said until election day kept saying No to fighting terr‘ism), his troop commanders in Iraq (the ones that he hasn’t fired for straying from the party line) and, believe it or not, the GOP (like Chuck Hagel, of whom Dick Cheney told Newsweek it was difficult to keep from telling to go fuck himself as per Reagan’s 11th Commandment of never speaking ill about a fellow Republican).

Bush is deliberately conflating hearing with actually listening. If you hear a car alarm going off endlessly, your first instinct is to think, “Will somebody shut that damned thing off?” However, if you’re listening to what it could mean, you’ll check it out to decide whether the alarm is legitimate. But Bush has demonstrated time and again that that’s one of the things that he can’t be bothered Decidin’.

Then again, the suicide car bombs that kill massively large groups of Iraqis, such as the one in Baghdad that killed over 102 and sent another 200+ to the hospital, is also a potent form of debate. These almost monthly car bombings that kill 90-200+ plus people are being mainly orchestrated by Sunni insurgents who are not only lashing out against the Shi’ites who are ethnically cleansing them with a vengeance for Saddam’s crimes against them, they’re also telling us in the most obvious, visceral language possible that they want us out. In fact, over 90% of Sunnis polled by a Maryland university said that they want us out. I’m sure an even higher percentage definitely don’t want us sending in tens of thousands of more troops.

You’d think that blood and flaming car and body parts occupying the air would be the one language that could be understood by a man who’s never once considered, in his 6+ year-long Presidential squattage, diplomacy a valid option. He’s already gone on record today as saying that our involvement in Iraq is “not an open-ended one.” That means that the only person he’s listening to is Dick “Enormous Progress” Cheney, whatever few neocons who still see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow over Baghdad and a whole host of Yes men like Robert Gates and newly-installed generals and admirals who’ve replaced the ones who dared to debate with the Decider.