George Bush, as Bill Maher might sneer, is really doing it all for the children. In the past few days, the President keeps reminding Americans we’re really in Iraq to protect their kids.
He devoted his entire radio address today to a fallen Marine who enlisted because he didn’t want his brother and sister to “live in fear.”
At his press conference Thursday, Bush told NBC’s David Gregory about Al Quaeda in Iraq: “It's better to fight them there than here...They are a threat to your children, David.”
A few minutes later, he explained to New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg that the terror group is “a danger to the American people. It's a danger to your children, Jim.” Rutenberg has none, but the President is known for his far-sightedness.
Somehow all this conjures up a picture of Bush’s nemesis, Saddam Hussein, in 1990 before the American action to get him out of Kuwait, ruffling the hair of a British boy and telling the world that the child, his family and other human shields were “heroes of peace.”
After that TV spectacle, the British Foreign Secretary said “the manipulation of children in that sort of way is contemptible." And so it was.
The line worked well for George the First also: I can recall his announcement of military action against Iraq concluding with the promise that he was doing it "for the children." And who could forget all those babies thrown from incubators in Kuwait?
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