Anybody who thought this was going to be an "easy war," please raise your hand.
By now, the horror and scandal have exceeded the expectations of even the harshest critics of the invasion - mine, for instance - and I numbly play Count the Quagmires along with the rest of the media and general public. The latest one has burst into national awareness with a piercing "what's next, for God's sake?"
Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans. All of them bear the mark of W. And now, incredibly, we learn of a gulag of wounded and emotionally shattered returning veterans, as forgotten and abandoned as nursing home residents in the Crescent City. Support our troops!
But what we're witnessing under George Bush is not what I would call incompetent leadership, any more than we witnessed, in an earlier, happier phase of his administration - the mission-accomplished phase - "leadership." What we have instead is the guileless void of an administration that has not even tried to lead, but rather, from the get-go has concentrated on manipulating national symbols and traditions to give the American public the appearance of leadership.