May Day Political Thoughts

As you may have heard, today marks the fourth anniversary of George Bush standing in front of the Mission Accomplished banner and proclaiming that major military operations have ended. Here we go again, with the phone calls and emails from politicians and pundits who want to know what I think about the subject. You see, as a middle-income wage earner with a mild fondness for political news, I get bombarded with questions from influential people who want to know what I think about the political landscape in general and the Iraq War in particular. So I'll lay out my thoughts in this blog. Readers: You have my permission to quote me, but please quote me exactly in context and give me credit.

Is Bush the worst American president ever?

Yes. Worse than Chester A. Arthur, who was a doughy pig-beast.

Is the war in Iraq won or lost?

I don't like to think of the war in Iraq as won or lost. I like to think that our mission there has been a total failure.

When should we leave Iraq?

This may surprise you, but we shouldn't leave just yet. I am 90% sure that when we do leave, the in-fighting will escalate to such a degree that military intervention will be necessary within 5-8 months of our departure. Such intervention requires our leaders to be, in short, competent. Our current leader, George W. Bush, is not competent. In fact, he is incompetent. We should stay the course, keeping our troops and Iraqi civilians in harm's way for a little over a year, and then we should pull our troops out. At that point, we'll have a different president, Republican or Democrat, who is not George W. Bush. That person can then work with an international coalition to deal with the post-invasion mess in a sane way.

Who will be our next president?

Rudy Giuliani, who has experience not only as a mayor, but as America's Mayor. He also looks like the love child of Ivan Lendl and Simon Bar Sinister.