Hurray! Bold New Horizons With George W.

Speaking of natural catastrophes, President Bush's recent statement proclaiming a 'time horizon' for withdrawal from Iraq is about as vague and abstract and meaningless a political notion as anything I've heard. The newspaper describes it as a concession, but really, it is disingenuous to describe it as anything more than a bubble of rhetoric, devoid of real substance.

The thing with a horizon is that no matter how long you walk towards it, you're never going to get there. Bush is either practicing to deceive again--and doing it badly--or he believes in a flat Earth.

Actually, the latter idea is frighteningly plausible.

Perhaps it is one more example of a clever manipulation of emotions on the part of the lamest-duck president I've ever encountered. He isn't necessarily lying outright; he just wants to sound like he's promising something without actually committing to anything specific. It's the problem of a political system designed to win elections, not engage in a true debate over the best course for the country.

The idea of horizons is romantic, and plays on the 'over-the-rainbow', Westward Ho! sort of mindset. The problem with that is it doesn't actually DO anything, and while I have spent years wishing Bush would do less, this irks me. It's just a bad metaphor, and that offends me as a writer. Plus, it smacks of that sort of grand, epic mentality that produced "Axis of Evil", and we know how well that worked out.