Not my idea - Bill Maher apparently started it - but if the meme fits (and you’ve got to admit it does!), then stick him with it!
You folks no doubt remember “Baghdad Bob” (real name: Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf), Saddam’s press flack, whose Sunni optimism in the spring of 2003 simply floated above reality, as if the US troops driving towards Baghdad didn’t exist. Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher (see above link) gives us a retrospective sampler of his work:
Doesn’t it sound a lot like the surreal optimism of our C-in-C?
Two men, a year and a half apart, both living in a “fantasy world of spin,” in John Kerry’s elegant phrase.
Can’t make it any more clear than that, just why Bush needs to go. At a minimum, leadership needs to have some contact with the real world; otherwise, the leaders take the followers over a cliff.
All punning aside, I think the whole Bush thing can be explained quite easily. This is a man with no curiosity who believes what the people around him tell him. He also believes so strongly in the rightness of his cause that he won’t listen to other viewpoints.
I realized the similiarities between Baghdad Bob and the Bush Admin during the first weeks of the war. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (Baghdad Bob) repeatedly refers to U.S. and U.K. troops as mercenaries and villians. In speeches and press releases, the Bush Administration constantly referred to the Iraqi army and insurgents as thugs and terrorists. I learned that the first step in a propaganda war is to dehumanize your enemy, so you don’t feel so bad when you kill them.
Too easy.