I’m starting to become convinced that, like countless comic book supervillains who gain universe-changing power only to stupidly blow it in the end, Jeb Bush is self-sabotaging and doesn’t really want this gig that his dad and older brother had.
Jeb Bush vigorously defended some of the defining foreign policies and national security strategies implemented by his brother George W. Bush as president on Thursday, casting in a positive light elements of the Iraq War, a conflict that haunted much of his tenure.
He notably used wording similar to the “Mission Accomplished” banner that hung behind the 43rd president as he gave a speech on an aircraft carrier in 2003. The speech was one of the biggest embarrassments of his administration, since the war went on for years after that.
“I’ve been critical and I think people have every right to be critical of decisions that were made,” Bush said Thursday. “In 2009, Iraq was fragile but secure. It was mission was accomplished in the way that there was security there and it was because of the heroic efforts of the men and women in the Untied States military that it was so.”
In a question and answer session hosted by Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security held on a college campus here, the Republican presidential hopeful said the removal of Saddam Hussein from power “turned out to be a pretty good deal,” and he praised the 2007 troop surge his brother pushed as “an extraordinarily effective” strategy.
On the debate over interrogation techniques, another issue that dogged his brother, Bush would not say for certain whether he would preserve the executive order President Obama signed banning enhanced interrogation. “I do think in general that torture is not appropriate,” he said.
“I’m cautious about making commitments without having all the facts,” he said. Bush defended the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which Obama has struggled to try to close throughout his presidency. “This is not a torture chamber,” he said, adding that he had seen it firsthand.
Bush went further than just lauding the the policy merits of the Iraq troop surge. He also commended his brother for not caving to the intense political opposition he faced at the time. “He had the courage to do something that is completely against the political grain,” he said.
I’d say Jeb couldn’t possibly be this utterly moronic, but it makes sense if deep down that he sees what history did to his dad and especially his big bro and that he feels like he’s being forced into this disaster, the poor little hothouse flower that he is.
I mean right now he’s supposed to be the crown prince with people tossing hundreds of millions of dollars at him to run and win, and instead he’s getting his ass handed to him in the polls by two failed CEOs with bad hair and a neurosurgeon who incessantly compares everything to slavery.
I think he seriously wants out, so he’s mailing it in.
Either that, or Jeb’s so incompetent that the people who made his idiot brother president for eight years still can’t find a way to get this guy in the W column, which is entirely possible.