Looking at the context of president Bush’s remarks yesterday on the Today Show does not undo the weird gaffe. Here’s the conversation:
LAUER: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you’ll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war of ter–on terror? For example, in the next four years?
Pres. BUSH: I have never said we can win it in four years?
LAUER: No, I’m just saying, can we win it? Do you say that?
Pres. BUSH: I don’t–I don’t think we can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the–those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in part of the world, let’s put it that way. I have a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand is to find them before they hurt us. And that’s necessary. I’m telling you it’s necessary.
The odd thing is that this really does sound like a parody of Kerry. And if Kerry had indeed said that, we would be hearing nothing else for weeks. And indeed, every time I hear the president talk extemporaneously about the war – his interview with Tim Russert last February was a classic – he does seem to have almost no conceptual grasp of what he’s talking about. Back then, he seemed flummoxed by the very concept of a distinction between a war of choice and a war of necessity. Now he seems to be parroting a Council on Foreign Relations confab on the permanence of terrorism. We’re all told that the president knows what he believes about this war and today he corrected himself. But the issues here – how to fight Islamist terror, what constitutes success, the necessary blend of military action, diplomacy, police work, etc. – are not minor. You have to be impressed by this president’s resilence in the war and his aggression. He also deserves enormous credit for shifting U.S. policy toward democratization in that part of the world. But there are times when you have to wonder whether he really understands this issue as deeply as he needs to; and whether that limited grasp has led to some of the calamitous “miscalculations” that even he has now acknowledged.
The Dish 