I can't imagine Bush, like another war-leader, suffering for his
soldiers, imagining their terrors with a reality sprung from
experience. Bush has the reverse problem: he has no idea, and I'd be
surprised if he could imagine the suffering that US troops are being
caused on daily basis. Most people can't. Some people can empathise,
some presidents have visited the wounded. I cannot recall people
commenting on Bush's empathy, or visiting the sick and wounded,
although he's been presented with the relatives, which is really not
the same thing. Like Putin or Yeltsin - both of whom have had strange
interactions with people presented to them - Bush seems to be a bubble
person. Why else would he do this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/washington/03libby.html?ex=1341115200&en=44a2fa970498d6f2&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
On 7/2/07, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The Washington Post - which seems to be trumping the NY Times all over he
> place on coverage of the Executives in Washington - has an interesting one
> today:
>
> The Imperiled Presidency Inside the Bunker
> A President Besieged and Isolated, Yet at Ease
> Bush, Grasping for Answers and Fixated on Iraq, Remains Resolute
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101
> 356.html?hpid=topnews (!!)
>
> I am particularly drawn to this 'found' moment of 'touch' with a wounded
> soldier to whom he is introduced after a speech to students at a school in
> Harlem:
> .. King, the GOP congressman, introduced him backstage to a soldier injured
> in one eye. Bush teared up and asked the young man to take off his dark
> glasses so he could see the wound, King recalled. "Human instinct is when
> someone has a serious injury to look the other way," King said. "He actually
> asked him to take them off. He actually touched the eye a little. It was
> almost as if he felt he had to confront it."
>
> Interesting to imagine what Bush is really 'confronting' here with the
> touch. A 'literal' moment rather than a 'rhetorical' one? I find the whole
> interaction loaded with implication, though it might have quickly
> disappeared from the President's personal consciousness. His experience of
> Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome will happen after he leaves Office, if then.
> However, I suspect this moment is already making it's way into an opera
> score yet to be written.
>
> In this article, for further weird flavor, Kissinger is also quoted as
> saying the President has not asked him to pray with him (as Nixon did when
> his regime was collapsing from Watergate et al).
>
> I am afraid we are a long way from the opera or any other form that might
> cope with this one.
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
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Roman Proverb
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