Despite President Bush's trademark ineloquence, I thought the intent behind his comment earlier in the week was clear:
''The question is, Who ought to make that decision?'' Bush said in a speech. ''The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm the commander guy.''
It seems obvious this is Bush's way of expressing, albeit a bit clumsily, that in the debate over who should have the authority to dictate military strategy in Iraq, Bush is on the side of the generals in the field making those decisions, not Congress. This is something he's repeated on an almost daily basis for the last three months during the stand off over the Iraq war supplemental, so to infer any other meaning from Bush's statement you'd have to be either really slow on the uptake or willfully misinterpreting what the President was trying to say.
Of course, Bush's comment was phrased in a way that makes for good sport, and cartoonist Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle got in a solid lick on the President here:
Anderson's job is to poke fun, so it's not clear -- nor is it relevant in the context of an editorial cartoon -- whether he took the President's comments in a literal sense or was merely spoofing a Bushism. The result is still funny.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, on the other hand, isn't paid to be funny, so it's much harder to explain or excuse the way he either misinterprets or misconstrues the intent of Bush's statement and then uses it as a set up to make a broader charge that is straight out of the left wing fever swamp:
Okay, I know that most of the president's off-the-wall locutions are dangerous only to the English language. But to the extent that carelessness of speech reflects carelessness of mind, much more is at stake. The Commander Guy's rationale for sending more U.S. troops to fight and die in Iraq is as elusive as his reason for starting the war in the first place.
No one disagrees the President suffers from limited communication skills -- it's one of the main reasons he's been stuck at 35% job approval for months on end and will almost certainly remain there for the rest of his term. But for Robinson to suggest that Bush's penchant to garble words every now and then is symptomatic of a lack of soundness in his thinking or his policy decisions is just silly. Bush's rationale for sending more troops to try and secure Iraq is perfectly legitimate: it was recommended by military personnel and supported by our allies in the Middle East. (Secretary of State Rice said recently there was "no more popular decision by this President in the region than the decision to reinforce in Iraq.")
Eugene Robinson may disagree with the President's rationale or think that it won't work. But the fact Robinson can't recognize it is legitimate and doesn't even attempt to address the rationale or, more importantly, the consequences of pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and letting the country go up in flames leads me to believe that Robinson is the one suffering from a "carelessness of mind."
