« Romney Shows Guts | Main | Why McCain Will Never Be President »
September 07, 2006
Bush's Speech
Well, what do you know? The White House can play rough and shrewd. The speech today was slow at the beginning, and was delivered at an odd time, but it's quite possibly the best political play of Bush's presidency, and good policy.
The Hamdi decision, and its limitation of executive power, left Bush with little choice but to pursue this sort of legislation. The Democrats, who have been advocating such a course of action, are now presented with a choice. Do they support this legislation and potentially alienate the angry left, many of whom do not believe the war on terror is legitimate?
Or do they block the legislation, and lose the ground they've managed to gain on national security issues? This legislation traps them between the Bush-hating constituency they've been quietly pandering to and the majority of voters who understand the difference between disagreement and hatred.
The second part of the legislation, which asks Congress to define what constitutes fair treatment of detainees, is the fun part. At present, we're fighting under outmoded laws of combat - our enemy breaks the Geneva convention with impunity while we strive to follow it. I'm not saying we should abandon our principles and start tortuing those we suspect of being terrorists, or commit war crimes. We should, however, acknowledge the reality of this new enemy and the tactics they use.
One of the most frustrating things about the Bush administration is their unwillingness to take the offensive against the Democrats. Today, some ground was gained and it should be interesting to watch the debate.
UPDATE - Ace and JeffG have good posts on the increasingly unserious Andrew Sullivan's outrage at the president's speech.
Posted by slublog at September 7, 2006 12:08 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.slublog.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2566
Comments
Bush tends to go on the offensive in Sept. before an election,and after the Dems are solidly out on their limb. Then he proceeds to saw the limb off and watch as they scramble to hang on. I find it amusing that anyone would be surprised that Bush would do this again. It works.
Posted by: Stormy70 at September 7, 2006 03:30 PM