Suppose you have a family member addicted to alcohol who has finally reached the point where he either stops or dies. You gather family and friends together for one last effort to save his life: the intervention. You discuss the various options, settle on three you think will save the day and head on over to lay down the law.
“George,” you say, “this is it. Your life is a mess. We know you don’t like being told what to do but we’ve come up with some hard choices for you. You can either go on a bender now and drink as much as you want later, or you can limit yourself to a daily quart, or you can taper off over the next few years. Whichever one you choose, you have to go to AA meetings. Now, why don’t you take a nice long drive and think things over. Mind the pedestrians. And before you go, let’s drink to your new life.”
That’s basically what the Iraq Study Group has done with their “Go big, go long or go home” options. Increase the number of troops until the military throws up and passes out, or continue the maintenance violence, or try to cut back over a couple of years. And talk to those self-righteous Iranians and Syrians all the while.
You would think the flaw in a treatment for alcohol abuse that features more drinking would be self-evident, and for most Americans it is. Not for the commentariat, though, who insist on taking it seriously. And not for the great mass of politicians. And certainly not for George Bush, who went cold turkey once in his life and will be damned if he’ll do it again. Because, you know, this time he can handle it.
The ISG was, then, evidently doomed from the start, mostly from the flawed premise but also from the misbegotten hope that a president who thinks his intestines are a superior decision-making tool would pay any attention to a body the name of which sounds like a bunch of nerds getting together in the library on weekends when the real guys are throwing keggers in the dorm. It just doesn’t feel right.
So here we are, with the family intervention having failed and the president running around getting advice on which brand of rotgut he should switch to or whether he should stick with what brung him because mixing your liquor makes you sick. What to do?
The obvious answer is the one that for some reason must these days be spoken of only in whispers: you take the guy, lock him up in a nice sanitorium with rolling, wooded grounds and a four-star kitchen, and you tell your friends he’s enjoying a well-deserved rest at a secluded spa.
In politics, we call this “impeachment.” You run a certain risk impeaching someone like Bush, who would probably not tend toward a Nixonesque introspection or a Clintonesque compartmentalization; dissolving Congress and imposing martial law is more his style. But for anyone serious about salvaging this country, the risk is a necessary one and it ought to be part of the national conversation, not something to be whispered about or, as Nancy Pelosi would have it, taken off the table in advance of any legitimate investigations. The man has, after all, already acknowledged breaking the law.
The drinking analogy is imperfect, but more than one element of it fits. As a country, we’d do well to focus particularly on the 9th step of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12, making amends. Iraq is still paying reparations to Kuwait for the 1991 invasion of that country, and we’ve done a hell of a lot more damage to Iraq than Saddam did to Kuwait. We may have to wait until all the blood drains from the streets, but at some point we’ll have to settle what is already a monstrous debt, the largest part of which isn’t financial and may never be made whole in any of our lifetimes.
But we have to start somewhere, and a good first step might be taking away the president’s keys.
Salut.
[...] Weldon Berger [...]
I think the better metaphor would be the motion picture, Leaving Las Vegas, with the President effectively drinking himself to death on his war at the end of his term. There will be no impeachment; just ask the successor-in-waiting, Vice President Cheney, what he would change if anointed President by the Congress–absolutely nothing. This administration will end just like its misbegotten war, “not with a bang, but with a whimper.” (Apologies to T.S. Eliott.)
I’m afraid the war either won’t end or will end with a bang, or some combination thereof; the possibilities for severe grief are almost unlimited no matter what we ultimately do.
You’re right, impeachment proceedings that don’t include Cheney would be pointless. I guess I think of it as one of those things that go without saying. “And your little dog, too,” whichever of them fits that bill. Cheney worries me with respect to the final days of the administration because with four heart attacks under his finely tailored jacket, I really don’t see him going quietly when his life’s work remains unfinished. But maybe he’ll be satisfied with the damage he’s already done.