Although I do believe that Bush lives in his own world of unreality on 'issues' - but is firmly on the real world ground of politics, his public statements are surely very carefully parsed by Rove and others.  They are intended statements, and they are targeted at that large number of Americans who don't closely follow current events (at the level of reading alternative views)  and are aroused to support Bush by stomach-level appeals that directly bypass the thinking machinery.  "Bring them on!" surely fits in this category. 

It is the combo-effect of appeals to fear and blatant America-firstism that Rove is so good at crafting.  Current-day 'no-nothingism'.

Orwell has to be viewed as prescient.  Doublethink does reign.

sorry (early AM pacific time):

read 'no-nothingism' as 'know-nothingism'

“there is only one course of action against [terrorists]: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home,”

Perhaps abroad means anywhere but the US, but that's a pretty callous statement right after the bombing of a member nation of the "coalition of the willing."

I hear this repeated to me over and over by real people that I know, so the statement resonates with a portion of the citizenry.

Remember "Bring it on!"?  Lawnorder at DailyKos labels the so-called flypaper theory as using the American troops as terrorist "bait".  Is this the proper use of our military?  How long will the troops have to be "bait", so we will not have to fight them "at home"?  When will we know we have won?

Here's the link from lawnorder:

http://lawnorder.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/6/24/35725/6236

I really wish that the Cafe could have an expalnatory page to teach the less tech-savvy among us how to do links, and that would also give us a practice page to test the instructions.

I know this isn't a profound comment, but this is simply another example of how few bullets the Bush Leaguers have left in their guns. These guys have very limited brainpower and precious little creativity - except, as someone commented above, when it comes to realpolitik. As liars, as spinners, as POLITICIANS, they possess a certain genius. But they display the rigidity of alcoholics when it comes to intelligently adapting their behavior to reality. All they know how to do is keep doing what they've been doing. There is no plan B, just as there was no plan B for the war when it turned out that the Mission wasn't Accomplished.
We are in a car being driven by a drunk. We cannot expect the drunk to suddenly start making sober decisions. There will no doubt be many mnore shocking examples of Bush's inability to change course - or even change his rhetoric. I would not be surprised to see him find an excuise to go nuclear. This is what drunks do when they are behind the wheel - they keep driving til they hit something. I think this is called "hitting bottom" in 12 Step lingo. Too bad the whole country is going to have to hit bottom, too. I guess we deserve it, though. We're the ones who gave him the keys to the car.

I think that one should view the statement in its simplest, most obvious and  most plausible terms -- that if we don't fight "the terrorists" in Iraq, they will come here to do their evil.  Thus the London attack could be spun as a kind of reinforcement of rather than as a contradiction to his statement. The Bush Administration  was never one to be concerned about accuracy (claims that 9/11 had never been linked to Iraq; the joking about WMDs under a table;  the complete conflation of "the terrorists" of the Iraqi resistance and the Al Qaeda threat, even as the Iraqi occupation has act to recruit Al Qaeda supporters to the 'cause' there; the insistence on painting the employment picture as rosy ...).  These sound bytes, of course, reflect that unconcern with actual fact accuracy in favor of agenda accuracy -- a practice hardly unique to the Bush Administration, though they have distilled it to its essence.  From their standpoint it just means that they are 'better at playing the game' in a competitive field, a 'game' that includes suppression of fact truth, having the Democrats throw elections, stealing elections, media lockdowns, and pliant liberal 'craven pseudo-opposition' nattering on about conspiracy thinking, while others, many of them about as progressive as Lord Mansfield, spinning out well promoted truly ludicrous conspiracy theories that get wide play for their Tory Horsesh**.  It's all about privilege for those who have it -- a larger concept of 'fair competition' at least indulgent for themselves.

    In the instant soundbyte the key is simply not to back down in the face of London's attacks, to show resolve, 'no resignations' and so forth.  You don't need to resort to psychobabble at all to understand it, psychobabble that is all the more useful when it comes time to turn against progressives, lumping true accusations (as in Votergate) together with Tory Horsesh**, as in the dismissal in some quarters of the "Osama theory" of 9/11, in favor of any number of well-advertised conspiracy theories.  One must avoid formulating opposition to the power system in venues of the system's preference -- understating the nature of the evils of the powerful (by personalizing them) along with understating the merits of their critics (also by personalizing psychobabble).

The single best thing that Bush could do for the country is to resign and take Cheney with him. Unless he does that, or Congress finally does it duty and impeaches both men, things are not going to get any better on the terrorism front. Getting out of Iraq is a big step, but Bush's resignation is a much bigger one.

In the HTML Formatted mode of the wysiwyg editor you insert a link by highlighting the words you want to be the source of the link and then pressing the link button - the one that looks like a chainlink 5th from the left in the second row at the bottom of the editing window.  This pops up a dialog box in which you can enter the URL.  The easiest way to do that is to go to the desired site (in a separate window) and copy and paste the URL.  The dialog gives you the choice of opening the link in the same window (default) or a new window. After you create a link the linked text will be underlined in the editing window.

You remove a link by highlighting the linked text and then press the break link button immediately to the right of the link button.

A commenter above mentioned that Bush would be fine as long as his base was secure. But how big is that base really?

We had a lot of speculation on that in the runnup to the last election. We know it is not 51%, a lot of people were voting against Kerry or for a War Time President. My conclusion then was that it was about 41%. He tested those levels in May of 2004 and he is testing them now. (And if you don't have Professor Pollkatz in your favorites then shame on you). Pollkatz: Bush Approval in 15 national polls

A lot of people who are quavering under their beds in fear of boy genius Karl and his talking monkey need to wake up and examine some numbers. Absent redistricting shenanigans in Texas Democrats actually picked up House seats last go around. And that was before Bush put his whole party on a one way trip to the Third Rail of American politics.

God I hate defeatism. Particularly when there is no real reason for all the gloom and doom.

What do people think is Bush's problem. Someone I know who is himself dyslexic believes so is Bush. It has been suggested to me that he is a self recovering alcholic who does not read. That he is the most incurious person to serve in the White House. It is just hard to believe that someone makes it to the White House as the total tool of others. Even Reagan had some definite policy views.

The irony of the flypaper theory of Iraq is that it runs counter to our goal of bringing democracy to Iraq. How will Iraq become a democracy if we want it to absorb the worlds terrorists?

Keep asking those questions!

I'm baffled by how we can borrow $300 billion to invade and occupy Iraq and we can't find money to shore up Social Security. 

seed rain: <i>But I did not really break up until the British played the Star Spangled Banner.  </i>

I still get teary when I think about this.  By the royal band playing God Save the Queen immediately followed by our national anthem, they gave the the US and the world a simple and perfect declaration of unreserved support and solidarity by the Brits for us.

Interesting contrast between the British support for the US in 2001 - nearly unanimous support from all sides - and the US reaction to 7/7/05 in the UK. 

The US conservatives have been falling over themselves trying to misdirect the conversation to reinforcing the WOT and Iraq - while Bush repeats his flypaper comments ignoring the horrifying impact of his words on the British people.

Todd,

I think your choice of words is key. The phrase "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" is indeed cant and Bush is the cantor. He is singing the liturgy in the synagogue of the sheeple. The actual logic and meaning of the words are unimportant. The sound of it is reassuring enough for the unthinking flock of true believers.

I think you more or less nail it here, Bryan -- we're taking this quote too seriously. However, I wouldn't call it "faith". Instead, the White House political operation has found that certain sounds emitted by the President test well in focus groups, so it is in their interest to have him continue emitting those sounds. Some people take them as policy pronouncements; others as reflections of character; others as dishonest or ill-thought-out language. But they are really just sounds that have a desirable effect.

We're still fighting the terrorists there and not here as long as "there" is anywhere but the U.S. mainland. Yes, I know, it's stupid, but it's probably as simple as that in the Bushbrain.

I still get teary when I think about this.  By the royal band playing God Save the Queen immediately followed by our national anthem, they gave the the US and the world a simple and perfect declaration of unreserved support and solidarity by the Brits for us.

And that is why Bush's statement of the London (and Madrid) attack as not being an attack on "us" is so repugnant.

I will never forget the day that the Royal Band played the Star Spangled Banner, it brought tears to my eyes too.  And now we have our president, in a very tepid response, not acknowledging our solidarity with our British brothers and sisters when they are attacked.  "They" are "we"...

In 1970, CBS TV journalist John Laurence did a long documentary piece on a company of US infantrymen deployed in southwestern Vietnam near the Cambodian border, called "A Month with Charlie Company". By that time US troops had largely turned against the war, but among the soldiers Laurence found who still supported the mission, several felt they were fighting Communists in Asia so they wouldn't have to fight them in the US. "Better to fight 'em here than to fight 'em in San Diego, I guess," said one of these soldiers.

This idea, which was the interventionist right-wing anticommunist talking point at the time, obviously reflects an entirely hallucinatory worldview. It's an open question whether it was more hallucinatory than the current incarnation: on the one hand, Islamist terrorists actually do want to, and have shown themselves capable of, attacking the mainland US, which would have been senseless and/or impossible for the Viet Cong or for whatever version of "worldwide communism" you want to choose as the relevant analog. On the other hand, Communism was in fact a worldwide ideology which was driving a number of sometimes expansionist nuclear-armed states, so you could actually sort of coherently envision "communism" posing an existential threat to "us" in a way that Islamic terrorism never could.

But what's important is that there are a large number of people who will always have somewhat cartoonish and reified visions of what motivates other people, non-Americans and other actors on the world stage; and it's the responsibility of leaders to frame the world in ways that don't absurdly misrepresent it for those people. What's so depressing about hearing that GI in 1970, or hearing Bush today, talking about "fighting them over there before we have to fight them over here" is to hear the deliberate misleading of unsophisticated people by leaders who ought to know better. It's so manipulative, deceitful, and arrogant, and it's exacerbated by the fact that the leaders in both cases don't even know what they're doing - they can't argue the ends justify the means, because the ends themselves in both Vietnam and Iraq are hopefless failures. Yecch.

Honestly. If anyone wants to know the fundamental reason Dems are a minority party now all one has to do is read the opening sentence of this post, and if that isn't enough then skip to the last sentence for an exclamation point.

"...reveals a penchant for the fantastical....beyond simple mendacity...hallucinatory....perverse, illogical...compelling fusion of fervent belief (in a delusional system) and utter cynicism...George Orwell..."doublethink.”"

Good grief. I really would like for the US to have a viable Democratic party again someday.

Clearly Bush believes we are in a war of cultures; the culture of western secular liberal democracy vs the culture of despotism and religious fanatacism. He believes establishing freedom and democracy in the ME will, over time, eliminate the breeding grounds for terrorists.

Could it be that he was saying the war isn't over? That they are still out there and we still have to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home, as they just did in England? That more attacks are almost certainly coming, and they'll get worse if we don't prosecute the war? Could he be continuing his theme that the war is going to take decades?

Might it be that he is defending his GWOT policy in light of the attacks in England?

Yes...yes, I think that might be the point of his statement. In fact it is SO OBVIOUS that that is what he's saying, one is left to wonder why it is so difficult for a professor at Columbia to understand.

One can argue whether he's right or wrong. Turning that policy argument into "fantastical", "perverse", "hallucinatory", "illogical", "delusional", "cynicism" and "mendacity" - and for gratuitous adolescent vulgarity that he is saying "fuck you" - is not exactly an intelligent argument though. It is hate speech, and this sort of talk more than anything else is why Dems are now in the minority in every single branch of the federal government.

This is what happens when you put a man whose sole claim to brilliance is direct-mail political marketing that questions the sexuality of his opponent in charge of the political and policy apparatus of an entire country.

These guys really do not care about the substance of anything they say.  They have Frank Luntz figure out which arguments and phrases test well given a specific issue, and then every time that issue is raised Bush repeats those arguments and phrases on cue.

I loved Professor Gitlin's post, but to try to apply logical or factual analysis to anything this administration says is pointless.  It's only purpose is to draw unquestioning support and/or to silence criticism.  The bigger question is why the media and the public are either so ingnorant or blind that they cannot see beyond such transparent rhetoric.