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...i don't think he really cares that much.....
It’s real strange how these stories play out. Way back in the year 2000, almost exactly four years ago, the tale of George W Bush’s Big Adventure in the National Guard was a non-starter. I wasn’t much interested in it, and neither were his opponents, including Al Gore, who had served in Vietnam. (And please don’t tell me Gore was just a photographer – whether you’re a cook or a corpsman, there is no safe place in a war zone.) Military experience no longer seemed like an important consideration.
Bush’s service record, and his evasions on the details was ludicrous – a rich, irresponsible kid with a powerful daddy, who was able to jump in front of 500 other Texas boys who also would have given their left nut to get into the National Guard but didn’t have the sort of pull that being a Bush would give you. So he got into the Guard and even that was too much of a strain for the lad, so he just quit showing up.
Laughable, but here’s the rub. Our president, Bill Clinton, who we secularists just adore, had equally laughable machinations on the topic of draft avoidance. The truth is that most people just did not care: the consensus opinion has long been that Vietnam was a bloody mess, a tragic political war, and anybody who missed it, hey, more power to them.
The political effect of 911 was to raise the focus on terrorism and to illuminate the significance of defense.
The political effect of three plus years of the Bush administration has been to raise our focus on war and to illuminate the significance of experience.
“I’m a war president,” Bush told the nation on Sunday, and it’s a theme he repeats almost every time he speaks. But he’s not a war president; he’s a president who has embroiled us in a war, and that’s not the same thing at all.
In 1972, I was in boot camp and had no idea what the future would bring. I had no acceptable choice other than to be there, but truth be told, I had my plans. I had a training specialty that was guaranteed to keep me out of combat as long as my scores were high enough. (And believe me, ain’t nothing like the prospect of being a field medic out in the jungle to make you study your hardest).
Meanwhile Lieutenant Bush was transferring from the Texas National Guard to a special unit in Alabama. This was the Bermuda Triangle Unit, where a young pilot could simply and abruptly disappear without a trace until they suddenly popped out a year later with an acceptance letter from Harvard and a mysterious ability to “work it out with the military.” Which was one cool trick back then, since the military was not prone to “work it out” with anybody.
It’s pretty obvious that even if Bush is telling the truth and he never missed a drill, this is pretty thin experience for a “war president”. See, the man has never, ever had to learn any discipline. No patience. No insight.
Whatever Bush wants, he wants it now. His daddy worked for it. Junior, shit. He wants what he wants. (Politics aside, he will set the conservatives back twenty years.) It’s a life long pattern. The boy just has to win. One, two judges denied, time to fight. A hundred million, a couple trillion trimmed from his tax plans, got to fight.
Well, now, he got his war, which is a battle that any true “war president” would have avoided at all costs. Now he’s got to run off and abandon it, leaving behind a room full of ripped up toys.
I don’t know. Ever had a girlfriend that just could not be satisfied? You felt something, but not enough… just too immature, you say.
Ah, fuck it.
Scene from the home, fifty year hence; “we tried for brain function. We did try. We wanted to improve on the Reagan model… We felt so sorry for that one… He was a kind man. Still got the brain...”
“We did really feel sorry for the new joker, but it was... a lot… different. How much could we really care?” | 
