EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been corrected from its original printed form. For more information on the correction, please see the note at the end of the story.
President Bush told an audience on Tuesday that if he were to sign the joint House and Senate bill defining a date to begin the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq, then the result there would be a “cauldron of chaos.”
As opposed, of course, to the dish of mere dissatisfaction, the urn of quiet uneasiness, the vase of faint vexation or the pot of plain perturbation that now exists.
The President’s statement is but the latest example of what is quite arguably his and his vice president’s worst attribute as leaders – their persistent and self-deluding tendency to see things as how they wish them to be and not as they are. Only now, years too late, does their artful inability to join the American people in their delusions writhe in its last throes. No longer do Americans share in their fantasies, save the few dead-enders still holding out in the White House and in the gated, God-fearing enclaves across our great nation.
Things are, as a matter of wide acceptance, well beyond “cauldron of chaos,” having long ago graduated to far more severe similes. Hurricanes of hubris have spun off tornadoes of tumult, causing whirlwinds of death and destruction that are still swirling the sands of our nation-sized democracy project. Iraqis today clearly pine for the early days of our premeditated and unprovoked war when their nation was simply a “cauldron of chaos.”
Ah, life was simpler back then.
Todd Huffman, M.D.
Springfield resident
CORRECTION:
Because of an editor’s error, a letter to the editor in Wednesday’s paper (“President Bush’s statements display ‘worst attribute’ of his administration,” ODE May 3, 2007) misprinted a statement in Todd Huffman’s letter. The sentence “As opposed, of course, to the dish of mere satisfaction,” should have said, “…to the dish of mere dissatisfaction.” In addition, Huffman is a resident of Eugene, not Springfield.
The Emerald regrets the error.