This is a fairly well-known story at this point, but it's still pretty crazy when I think about it. Mickey Herskowitz was a Bush family friend & biographer who conducted a series of interviews with Bush in 1999 for a planned autobiography:
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."
I remember that one of his first reactions after 9/11 was to proclaim, "I'm a War President!," a sentiment which he repeated in an interview with Tim Russert in '04. It's really mind-boggling to juxtapose this guy's ego & simplistic view of what makes a "great leader" against the cost & suffering that resulted from Iraq. It's also kind of ridiculous to think that there are people who still think he and his party are all about "supporting the troops," and that we all have to sign onto this flunkie son of privelege's "quest for greatness" without dissent, or we are somehow against the troops.
Screw everyone who supported this war, and who called me a traitor for opposing it. I know it's been said a thousand times, but this war was bullshit; it was the biggest smoke & mirrors job on the American people since Vietnam.
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."
I remember that one of his first reactions after 9/11 was to proclaim, "I'm a War President!," a sentiment which he repeated in an interview with Tim Russert in '04. It's really mind-boggling to juxtapose this guy's ego & simplistic view of what makes a "great leader" against the cost & suffering that resulted from Iraq. It's also kind of ridiculous to think that there are people who still think he and his party are all about "supporting the troops," and that we all have to sign onto this flunkie son of privelege's "quest for greatness" without dissent, or we are somehow against the troops.
Screw everyone who supported this war, and who called me a traitor for opposing it. I know it's been said a thousand times, but this war was bullshit; it was the biggest smoke & mirrors job on the American people since Vietnam.
