i found this particular excerpt outrageous enough to warrant opening a thread regarding it in the WA Forum.
From a half-hour interview [registration required] between the NY Times and President Bush:
So you admit that your government fudged up, you acknowledge a “miscalculation” occurred. (Perhaps you even realize, but you do not verbalize, that thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians - grandmothers, babies, women - lost their lives due to your “miscalculation”). But you refuse to reflect on what measures were inaccurately implemented, the inept policies that led to the current scenario ? Why should such questions be “left to historians”? What the heck are historians going to do - sit in their dusty libraries, sift through volumes, push their glasses up their nose? Of what use is it to have historians proclaim judgements long after you and i are all dead - what a freaking moron is this President. i mean - the time to reflect on when misjudgements occur, is the present. That is why ‘presidents’ are called ‘leaders’ of their countries - they are supposed to LEAD by example. Leading is accepting responsibility, taking into account the current situation and making adjustments accordingly. Why did he not explain his misjudgements vis-a-vis the occupation in a forthright manner? Why is he deflecting the responsibility upon the shoulders of historians ? You are the president of the world’s most powerful nation. You do not possess the luxury of denying responsibility and culpability. Historians are not your umbrella to hide behind.
My point, incase someone is wondering, is that - it’s not the task of a historian to fix a president’s misjudgements and misguided policies. The president is supposed to act like a “President” - you lead the nation, you don’t hide behind academics hoping that, fifty years from now, when the full gravity of your idiocy becomes manifest, you will already be dead so it doesn’t matter. If he had been willing to discuss what went wrong, he would at least have earned some points in my book for honesty. Act like a man, not like a coward.
