Suskindest cut

[avram]

Man, every anti-Bush blogger and LJer in the world is gonna be linking to this Ron Suskind piece in tomorrow’s NY Times Magazine:

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that "if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3."

My first thought was that Suskind is a pro-Bush plant, trying to lure Democrats into voting for Bush, ’cause that civil war thing, hey, fun to watch. Especially from a distance. Maybe we can get them to do it in some other country? Anyway, a bit further down, an anecdote:

In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

Comments

[scottbateman.livejournal.com]

Oh....my...God...

[avram]

Should I have a stopwatch out, timing how long before this is a new Bateman cartoon?

[scottbateman.livejournal.com]

Gahhh--I still have to do a cartoon about the draft, and a cartoon about flu shots, and a cartoon about oil prices, and a cartoon about...