Justified Criticism?

[Adam's Apple]

Another example of the failure of the GOP to have an effective pr campaign to contest the liberal press. Need to read entire article, not just the paragraphs posted.

GWOT Is It?
By Jed Babbin, The American Spectator
8/22/2005

Today is Day 1 of the President's 5-day campaign to counter growing public opposition to the war in Iraq. Public confidence in Mr. Bush's conduct of the war has sunk so low, he needs to undertake more than a five-day campaign with a built-in withdrawal date. Just as this war will outlast his presidency, so must the momentum toward victory he creates by his leadership. In this, the President is failing. Regardless of the political consequences, he must reassert the leadership he has shown before.

Almost four years ago President Bush said we were in a "global war on terror," which -- in the inevitable Pentagon acronym -- became the "GWOT." Mr. Bush was transformed, even in the hostile media, into a wartime president, a role he seemed to relish.

But since his reelection, Mr. Bush hasn't acted like a wartime president and the "GWOT" has been reduced in the public's mind to fighting terrorist insurgents in Iraq. If it's just Iraq, it's not a global war. If it's only to be fought -- in Mr. Bush's formulation until the Iraqis "stand up" and we "stand down" -- then it is not a war that will affect the lives of those Americans who aren't serving in the military or have a family member or friend who is. The President should credit Americans more than that. They understand, just as the President does, that the goal of the Islamic terrorist states is to destroy our way of life. He takes for granted our continued understanding and support when he should, instead, be buttressing it every day against the unremitting anti-war onslaught.

Every wartime president must perform tasks his peacetime counterparts need not. A president must, while listening to his military advisers, be the final decision maker on war planning. Mr. Bush is performing this task unevenly. His resolve seems to wax and wane. In this war, much more than those that came before it, war plans must achieve publicly demonstrable results. Americans are willing to make sacrifices if they understand what is bought with their blood and treasure. But this war, which is being fought openly in Iraq and Afghanistan and covertly elsewhere, has been reduced to the same sort of routine daily horror that Vietnam became. Iraq, from what the public can see, is all pain and no gain.

Wartime presidents must lead their people. In this, Mr. Bush has fallen flat. It's not enough to say we must complete the mission. It's not nearly enough to repeat the truism that our soldiers are performing bravely, with skill and humaneness not seen before in history. As important as those facts are, they pale in comparison to what we aren't told: What is the mission? Who are our enemies, and where are they? How are we going to attack and defeat them? What, specifically, are they trying to do and how are we going to stop them? We know none of those things from the President. (HUH?)To say what he says again and again -- without saying much else --leaves wartime opinion-making to Vladimir Putin, Russell Feingold, Chuck Hagel and Cindy Sheehan.

for full article: http://www.americanprowler.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8625

 

[dilloduck]

Another example of the failure of the GOP to have an effective pr campaign to contest the liberal press. Need to read entire article, not just the paragraphs posted.

GWOT Is It?
By Jed Babbin, The American Spectator
8/22/2005

Today is Day 1 of the President's 5-day campaign to counter growing public opposition to the war in Iraq. Public confidence in Mr. Bush's conduct of the war has sunk so low, he needs to undertake more than a five-day campaign with a built-in withdrawal date. Just as this war will outlast his presidency, so must the momentum toward victory he creates by his leadership. In this, the President is failing. Regardless of the political consequences, he must reassert the leadership he has shown before.

Almost four years ago President Bush said we were in a "global war on terror," which -- in the inevitable Pentagon acronym -- became the "GWOT." Mr. Bush was transformed, even in the hostile media, into a wartime president, a role he seemed to relish.

But since his reelection, Mr. Bush hasn't acted like a wartime president and the "GWOT" has been reduced in the public's mind to fighting terrorist insurgents in Iraq. If it's just Iraq, it's not a global war. If it's only to be fought -- in Mr. Bush's formulation until the Iraqis "stand up" and we "stand down" -- then it is not a war that will affect the lives of those Americans who aren't serving in the military or have a family member or friend who is. The President should credit Americans more than that. They understand, just as the President does, that the goal of the Islamic terrorist states is to destroy our way of life. He takes for granted our continued understanding and support when he should, instead, be buttressing it every day against the unremitting anti-war onslaught.

Every wartime president must perform tasks his peacetime counterparts need not. A president must, while listening to his military advisers, be the final decision maker on war planning. Mr. Bush is performing this task unevenly. His resolve seems to wax and wane. In this war, much more than those that came before it, war plans must achieve publicly demonstrable results. Americans are willing to make sacrifices if they understand what is bought with their blood and treasure. But this war, which is being fought openly in Iraq and Afghanistan and covertly elsewhere, has been reduced to the same sort of routine daily horror that Vietnam became. Iraq, from what the public can see, is all pain and no gain.

Wartime presidents must lead their people. In this, Mr. Bush has fallen flat. It's not enough to say we must complete the mission. It's not nearly enough to repeat the truism that our soldiers are performing bravely, with skill and humaneness not seen before in history. As important as those facts are, they pale in comparison to what we aren't told: What is the mission? Who are our enemies, and where are they? How are we going to attack and defeat them? What, specifically, are they trying to do and how are we going to stop them? We know none of those things from the President. (HUH?)To say what he says again and again -- without saying much else --leaves wartime opinion-making to Vladimir Putin, Russell Feingold, Chuck Hagel and Cindy Sheehan.

for full article: http://www.americanprowler.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8625

I keep waiting for Bush to make it very clear what would happen in Iraq if the US yanked all our troops now. Surely Americans are not going to support the immediate withdrawal of out troops when it most likely will lead to an immediate civil war and massacre. If the peaceniks DO support this action I sure would like to hear them voice thier desire to have a massacre in Iraq. It may change thier little Kumbaya facade.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Because their reasons for the war are clear to them and because people voted without question to return Bush to office in 2004, people in the Bush Administration probably assume that a majority of Americans think like they do on the war, so they can just let the libs' propaganda campaign run its course. If they will take a look at the polls, they will find this is not true. People's minds change every day. The libs' anti-war campaign is going unchallenged, and, as a result, the anti-war protestors and movements are gearing up for what they think will be another "defeat from the jaws of victory" coup for them.

 

[Abbey Normal]

I agree. I pointed this out in another thread recently. Bush needs to speak to the public at a minimum about the good we are accomplishing in Iraq. Letting the liberal MSM tell their side of the story unchecked is not a good idea.

I would also like to see a tornado come through Crawford and avoid Bush's ranch, but blow Cindy Sheehan back to whatever hole she crawled out of. Can we engineer that?

 

[dilloduck]

Damn the polls--they are based on bullshit questions. You can't tell me that the admin doesn't look at em and tries to respond accordingly whether they want to admit it or not. If the media wants to play the poll game then commission a poll but ask the questions differently such as

1. Do you want to leave Iraq and disgrace our dead soldiers ?
2 Are you willing to accept responsibility for the massacre of thousands of
Iraqis similar to what happened the first time the US withdrew from Iraq
3 Would you favor committing much more troops in order to secure Iraqi
borders and achieving an overwheming victory.
4. Are you willing to give the Iraqis enough time to come up with a
constitution so when an Iraqi fights an insurgent he knows what the hell
he is ACTUALLY fighting for.

WTF?? Doesn't the GOP know how to play this one???

 

[no1tovote4]

For his entire Presidency Bush has had this problem with every issue. He needs to constanty inform the citizens of his plans and the benefit that will be seen from his plans. The people in the US know that they are the government, they need to be informed and feel that they have a say in what is going on regardless of the reality.

Bush spends less time than any president in current history telling people why his policies will benefit them. This creates an opening for his opposition to define his positions for him and thus creates a false negative approval rating. Keeping people in the dark in the information age is not the best of politics, it is absolutely a position of weakness for him and has continued to hound him throughout both terms of office that he has been President.

 

[dilloduck]

For his entire Presidency Bush has had this problem with every issue. He needs to constanty inform the citizens of his plans and the benefit that will be seen from his plans. The people in the US know that they are the government, they need to be informed and feel that they have a say in what is going on regardless of the reality.

Bush spends less time than any president in current history telling people why his policies will benefit them. This creates an opening for his opposition to define his positions for him and thus creates a false negative approval rating. Keeping people in the dark in the information age is not the best of politics, it is absolutely a position of weakness for him and has continued to hound him throughout both terms of office that he has been President.

Like father-like son :duh3:

 

[Adam's Apple]

Why Bush lets the liberal press go unchecked is beyond my understanding. The liberal/socialist press would like nothing better than for the WOT to fail, and it's clear they will keep chipping away, trying to weaken support for the war in America. Too bad this is not an election year. Then we would get the good, common sense, contesting of the libs' propaganda that we got during the 2004 campaign. Someone please tell Bush you can't just refute the opposition's claims during an election year; the way politics is played today, it has to be done EVERY DAY.