I felt the President meeting the returning soldiers was appropriate. Whether or not this was a contrived photo op or not is something for the talking head commentators to argue over.
That being said... I despise Dowd. She's never been over-burdened with the facts or simple truth in her writing. Regardless of your feelings on Bush as a President or his policies it would be difficult to make the case that he didn't care enough to witness the toll the war has taken on the service members.
Both POTUS are human, and the price ultimately being paid in this war is human. They both have to deal with the fact that they are directly responsible for sending young men and women into battle. They will both handle it differently, in the short and long term.
Very few news writers let themselves be distracted by the truth these days...
Both Jumper and Johnny are both correct in their statements. War is something that either one of them so combat, but has the responsibility of sending them into Harms Way. I hope that Obama makes the right decision in the future.
That being said... I despise Dowd. She's never been over-burdened with the facts or simple truth in her writing. Regardless of your feelings on Bush as a President or his policies it would be difficult to make the case that he didn't care enough to witness the toll the war has taken on the service members.
The CIC should be present for the return of our nation's fallen soldiers; the press should have been left standing at the gate. It was a photo op, plain and simple.
But to reflexively defend the photo op engineered to create news about the president's "sobering reminder" by claiming that the man who got us into Afghanistan in the first place never faced them is just plain bunk.
That's because Maureen Dowd refuses to do her job the correct way. She is ignorant of the facts........
I believe its a lot harder to face the families one on one then to stand among the press corp and salute. Its a sad day when the president uses the fallen heros to have a photo op, it tells you a lot about the ego of the man.
Who cares what Dowd thinks? She is known for what again? Winning an award for her tabloid reporting on the Monica Lewinsky Scandal...that is pretty much it. She is a horse's arse and nothing more. I recall past news stories of former President Bush meeting with greiving families. I believe he also had a "photo op". Folks there is nothing new about the Press being with the President during such occassions. It is for posterity's sake as well as not the sitting President's ego but that which comes with the office. They serve the PUBLIC and it becomes their best interest to be shown to the PUBLIC in those situations. Their Public Relations people and others will ensure the appropriate spin is used because they have to be SEEN as caring. Not just hearing it. We are all like the motto of the State of Missouri...we all say, SHOW ME!!!
President Bush was wrong about a lot of things. I didn't agree with a lot of his policies and decisions. I think Iraq was a mistake, although killing Saddam was a good thing. I also think Saudi Arabia should have been attacked and all of our enemies there killed, since all of the terrorists came from there, but he never asked for my advice. One important thing President Bush understood was how to honor the fallen military heroes the right way, with the respect they and their families deserve. Private meetings with the families, (I believe he met with the family of every soldier, airman, sailor and marine killed in Iraq and Afghanistan), no photo-ops, no shout-outs to people attending a conference with a short side comment, "oh by the way, some soldiers got shot and some got killed at Fort Hood Texas." I'm waiting for President Obama to shout, "What we need is gun control!" If this had happened with miltary firearms, would he plan to disarm the military? Probably! I had hoped President Obama would prove to be a man of honor and integrity, but he is showing that he is a man of opportunity and ego. We nned a man like Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater or Harry Truman in charge. How's that hope and change working for you now?
President G. W. Bush and President Obama are studies in contrast. Bush had Military Service. Obama had none (hardly a qualification for ANY Job not to have experience in that Job). Bush followed the Constitution as it was intended and originated by the Founding Fathers including God, Morality, Self Defense (1st 3 by George Washington), Individualism (Jefferson), Wisdom including Strategy and knowing differences between Right and Wrong, Real and Unreal (Washington, John Adams, James Madison in his later years in office). Obama in his 1st year in office has attempted to go against the Constitution in its original intent on Guns and Family Values and Self-Defense and also has attempted to separate Judeo-Christianity from Public life beyond the original intent of the Constitution.
Afghanistan and Iraq were not "Bush Failures". It was a correct response of G. W. Bush to go into Afghanistan after 9-11, and later Saddam's Iraq was the main propagandist and braggart during the Afghan War and had already accumulated a record of using poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds and thousands of Iranians in their 1980s War with Iran, not to mention paying $25,000 per family of each Suicide Bomber (which in the Middle East was roughly equivalent to making them millionaires here). We also had far superior weapons in our Air Power, Tanks, Guns, etc., and we didn't realize that their real fighters were embedded underground until AFTER we invaded and even after we thought that we had won! It was a new type of Trojan Horse, and I don't think it would have been possible without Russian and Chinese planning because the Russians did something similar in WWII in Stalingrad, and the Russians and Chinese knew that the USA Public had little patience for prolonged Wars from Vietnam.
The lesson was not to have "less Bush" but "more Military Strategy". And that's where things like the Goldwater-Lemay "Bomb Them Back to the Stone Ages" with Air/Naval Bombardment and Special Forces type incursions were needed, not replacing Bush by a man with no Military Service who had been against both Wars from the beginning.
