Dowd: My Private Idaho - New York Times

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Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:54:01 -0700

[Zepps_News] Dowd: My Private Idaho - New York Times

 

 

 

 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/opinion/24dowd.html>

 

My Private Idaho

 

 

 

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: August 24, 2005

 

W. vacationed so hard in Texas he got bushed. He needed a vacation from

his vacation.

 

The most rested president in American history headed West yesterday to

get away from his Western getaway - and the mushrooming Crawford

Woodstock - and spend a couple of days at the Tamarack Resort in the

rural Idaho mountains.

 

" I'm kind of hangin' loose, as they say, " he told reporters.

 

As The Financial Times noted, Mr. Bush is acting positively French in

his love of le loafing, with 339 days at his ranch since he took office

- nearly a year out of his five. Most Americans, on the other hand, take

fewer vacations than anyone else in the developed world (even the

Japanese), averaging only 13 to 16 days off a year.

 

W. didn't go alone, of course. Just as he took his beloved feather

pillow on the road during his 2000 campaign, now he takes his beloved

bike. An Air Force One steward tenderly unloaded W.'s $3,000 Trek Fuel

mountain bike when they landed in Boise.

 

Gas is guzzling toward $3 a gallon. U.S. troop casualties in Iraq are at

their highest levels since the invasion. As Donald Rumsfeld conceded

yesterday, " The lethality, however, is up. " Afghanistan's getting more

dangerous, too. The defense secretary says he's raising troop levels in

both places for coming elections.

 

So our overextended troops must prepare for more forced rotations, while

the president hangs loose.

 

I mean, I like to exercise, but W. is psychopathic about it. He

interviewed one potential Supreme Court nominee, Harvie Wilkinson III,

by asking him how much he exercised. Last winter, Mr. Bush was obsessed

with his love handles, telling people he was determined to get rid of

seven pounds.

 

Shouldn't the president worry more about body armor than body fat?

 

Instead of calling in Karl Rove to ask him if he'd leaked, W. probably

called him in to order him to the gym.

 

The rest of us may be fixated on the depressing tableau in Iraq, where

the U.S. seems to be delivering a fundamentalist Islamic state into the

dirty hands of men like Ahmad Chalabi, who conned the neocons into

pushing for war, and his ally Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who

started two armed uprisings against U.S. troops. It was his militiamen

who ambushed Casey Sheehan's convoy in Sadr City.

 

America has caved on Iraqi women's rights. In fact, the women's rights

activists supported by George and Laura Bush may have to leave Iraq.

 

But, as a former C.I.A. Middle East specialist, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said

on " Meet the Press, " U.S. democracy in 1900 didn't let women vote. If

Iraqi democracy resembled that, " we'd all be thrilled, " he said. " I

mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of

democracy. "

 

Yesterday, the president hailed the constitution establishing an Islamic

republic as " an amazing process, " and said it " honors women's rights,

the rights of minorities. " Could he really think that? Or is he

following the Vietnam model - declaring victory so we can leave?

 

The main point of writing a constitution was to move Sunnis into the

mainstream and make them invested in the process, thereby removing the

basis of the insurgency. But the Shiites and Kurds have frozen out the

Sunnis, enhancing their resentment. So the insurgency is more likely to

be inflamed than extinguished.

 

For political reasons, the president has a history of silence on

America's war dead. But he finally mentioned them on Monday because it

became politically useful to use them as a rationale for war - now that

all the other rationales have gone up in smoke.

 

" We owe them something, " he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though

his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5

billion). " We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. "

 

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy,

now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so

many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle:

the killing keeps justifying itself.

 

Just because the final reason the president came up with for invading

Iraq - to create a democracy with freedom of religion and minority

rights - has been dashed, why stop relaxing? W. is determined to stay

the course on bike trails all over the West.

 

This president has never had to pull all-nighters or work very hard,

because Daddy's friends always gave him a boost when he flamed out. When

was the last time Mr. Bush saw the clock strike midnight? At these

prices, though, I guess he can't afford to burn the midnight oil.

 

 

 

E-mail: liberties

 

Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.

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