Bush's Inaugural (1/18/2005)

On January 20th President Bush will take the oath of office for his second term. The three-day saga of events leading up to his swearing-in and nine formal balls that evening are expected to cost a record high of over $40 million. The money is being raised by the president's private inaugural committee, which is asking corporate and individual donors to contribute as much as $250,000 each.

The theme of the balls is the military. The Pentagon will select active-duty troops and their families to attend the balls. They will serve as props to showcase Bush as the commander in chief. We've seen our troops used like this before. For example, in May of 2003, Bush landed on an aircraft carrier to proclaim that major combat in Iraq was over (unfortunately it wasn't); on Thanksgiving of that year he flew to Iraq for photo ops with troops as background; in one photo he held a turkey (which was fake); in another he served food to the troops.

As the glittering inaugural ball-goers dance Thursday night, our troops in Iraq will be waking up to ever-deadlier reality. Remember how Bush rushed to war. Our brave American soldiers were inadequately equipped and understaffed. Bush had no specific goal for determining when the war was won, no exit plan, and little or no understanding of post-war Iraq. In fact, the original premise of the Iraqi war was entirely fictitious. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; he was not part of the September 11 attacks. Remember the fairy tales Bush spun-that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers and hail us as liberators; terrorism would be eliminated; Iraqi oil would pay for the cost of rebuilding the country. Sadly and painfully, it has taken the deaths of nearly 1400 American troops, more than 9000 horribly injured, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis killed (many of them innocent women and children), and the ever increasing violence and financial cost for Americans to reveal the horror of Bush's pre-emptive war policy.

As the rich, famous, connected people dine on fine food, drink champagne, wear designer clothes and dance at the hoity-toity inaugural balls, our troops eat cold MREs (the acronym for meals ready to eat), lack protective clothing and armored vehicles, and dodge bullets and bombs. Our troops are forced to search scrap heaps to armor their vehicles, yet they are callously told by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that ,"you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish for." In fact, some soldiers, who scrounged spare parts from abandoned vehicles in Kuwait in order to carry out their unit's mission in Iraq, were court martialed and imprisoned for their efforts.

Compare the careful planning and unlimited money being poured into the glitzy inauguration to the sloppy war plans and lack of support for our troops. Retired General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, says in his memoir, American Soldier, that the U.S. Central Command, "had neither the money nor a comprehensive set of policy decisions that would provide for every aspect of reconstruction, civic action and governance." In a bitter irony, our troops don't get the money and planning they need, but the inaugural balls do. Presidential Inaugural Committee chair Jeanne Phillips says she is staging the celebration of "our freedom as Americans here at home and freedom everywhere." She and her cohorts are out of touch with the reality of the war. I'm reminded of the line that the French revolutionaries attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette-"Let them eat cake." Bush's priorities, like those of the French aristocracy in 1792, are terribly wrong. A festive inaugural ball during this wartime dishonors our troops. The inaugural millions would be far better spent providing for the troops' needs.

- Judith Kohler

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