Bush's Baghdad visit seen as backfired PR stunt

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/worldviews/

Read down - 2nd article.

"A stunt it may have been, but what those who deride it as such fail to understand is that PR stunts are what drive so much of politics in the West. They are what can win elections." That's how The Arab News accurately summed up Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad's airport last week to be photographed serving Thanksgiving turkey to American soldiers.

Elsewhere in the Saudi Arabian daily's pages, op-ed commentator Amr Mohammed Al-Faisal's appraisal of Bush's unexpected "little farce" was more trenchant. The American president, he wrote, "had slunk in under heavy secrecy lest some enterprising Iraqi insurgents lob some donkey-borne rockets freedom's way and thereby spoil the photo-op. this shabby little sketch was meant to raise the morale of U.S. troops in Iraq . . . then their morale must really have hit rock bottom."

Instead of the confidence and resolve about the U.S. military's presence in Iraq that the trip's White House organizers wanted it to symbolize, Egypt's Al-Ahram said, the event "gave the world, the Americans and Iraqis an impression totally contrary to what was seeking . . . a commander-in-chief to his military forces who are stuck in an impasse." (Quoted by AFP/Sydney Morning Herald)

Likewise, for The Arab News's Al-Faisal, Bush's appearance signaled that "the Americans are really in serious trouble." If that's the case, he surmised, and if the United States eventually does cut its losses and pull out, then Iraq, "having had its physical and political infrastructures destroyed by the Americans, will . . . be left in a state of total chaos, with civil war as a natural outcome. Civil wars could then drag us all into a series of regional wars for years to come."

[begeegs]

1. Everything

That Bush does is somehow political. From going and meeting 1st mate Blair (despite getting about 130,000 protestors), to not meeting any caskets coming from Iraq.

Do we actually think that he gives a f*** about any of the troops or was it to get his brother out of the news - or both?

[grannylib]

2. Oh but the rest of the world, and the Democrats, all HATE Bush, we can't

take any of this seriously, these are FOREIGN journalists...not our bought-and-paid-for wrong-wing spinners here at home...
Only a traitor to America would think that our brave Commander in Thief would be so callous as to pull a publicity stunt like this!

"A stunt it may have been, but what those who deride it as such fail to understand is that PR stunts are what drive so much of politics in the West. They are what can win elections." Apparently the rest of the world is clued in to what we here on DU know - it's all about superficial, feel-good crap here; there is so little substance to our politics.
How the hell else could a not-too-bright, B-movie actor become president, just by spouting lines like "There you go again" and "America is back, standing tall"



:puke: