Bush lets CIA stab him in the back—so what else is new?

The disastrous leaks coming from the CIA itself about the CIA’s secret prisons for Al Qaeda prisoners in European countries was discussed at Powerline. I wrote them an e-mail about it:

You ask, very reasonably:

So the CIA established policies that it knew would be controversial and would damage American interests if revealed, and then leaked the existence of those policies to the Washington Post for the purpose of damaging the Bush administration. And now the administration is trying to defend the CIA. Why, I wonder? … isn’t it obvious that pretty much the entire leadership of the CIA is behind the agency’s war against President Bush? And if that’s the case, why does the administration believe that it can successfully defend an agency that would rather expose its own secrets to embarrass the administration, than defend itself?[emphasis added.]

Of course, this is what Bush ALWAYS does. As I’ve been saying for five years, he gives liberals who hate him a backrub, they stab him in the back, and then he gives them another backrub. He LOVES being betrayed by liberals and America-haters. He LOVES having his father give an award to Edward Kennedy, who then immediately turns around and attacks Bush in terms reserved for an enemy. He LOVES rehabilitating Clinton by making him a goodwill ambassador for the U.S., and then see Clinton trash his administration from abroad. He LOVES having his pal the president of Mexico carry on a war against the U.S. by fomenting illegal immigration into this country. He LOVES making nice to the Saudis, even as the Saudis disseminate anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish propaganda in U.S. mosques.

Why does Bush do this? My own answer will seem extreme and unacceptable to you, so I won’t spell it out. Instead, in the hope that you will answer the question yourself, I’ll give you some more clues. This Bush, who placidly lets leftists and enemies of the United States attack him and the United States, is the same Bush who had his wife call his conservative supporters “sexists” for opposing his unqualified Supreme Court nominee; he’s the Bush who stood next to the president of Mexico and described patriotic Americans as “vigilantes”; he’s the Bush who went to Africa and said that America is driven today by the same racism that it had during the age of slavery; he’s the Bush who in 2000 said that the only reason people might oppose the prospect of America turning into a Spanish-speaking country was “resentment”; he’s the Bush who just two weeks ago awarded our nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Muhammad Ali, who (among other anti-American acts and statements over the course of his life), refused to serve in the U.S. armed forces because, as he put it at the time, “We don’t take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.”

Are you beginning to have a notion as to why Bush does all this? Or are you going to leave it as an unanswered rhetorical question, like Rush Limbaugh who for years has kept saying about every left-leaning move by Bush and every Bush failure to stand up to the left: “I don’t understand, I just don’t understand, I don’t know why he does this.” Never once does Rush go beyond his endless puzzlement over Bush’s behavior and try to answer his question as to why Bush does the things he does.

Here’s hoping that you will try to answer yours.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 06, 2005 08:44 PM | Send