more with Mission Accomplished
I was meaning to cut and paste an exchange I had online in the Summer of 2004, and make a point out of it, in celebration of the Third Anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”. But, the ezboard jumbled up the chronology, and thus… I cannot find it. So I’ll have to re-create it to a certain degree.
I had posted an article that pointed out that Republican Nominee of 1944 Thomas Dewey (who four years later would spend the summer planning his cabinet appointees and smiling happily at his huge leads in the polls, until Election Night returns came in at which point I think he probably just got himself plastered on vodka after banging his head against the wall several times) was attacking Roosevelt on the war front, article excerpts found here.
So a very hawkish — um — I’ll just say “Neo-Con” retorted with: So you’re going to vote for Dewey, then?
My response was: I still get goosebumps when I hear that speech Roosevelt made in 1943 proclaiming “Major Combat Operation are over. Mission Acoomplished!”
And the telling response: “Major Combat Operations In Africa are over. Mission Accomplished In Africa.
Which is clearly a sham, where the proper response was to laugh, with perhaps a whiff of a wince. Our celebrations of our Allied victory on the African front had to have been about as mooted as the Union celebrations of their victory on the Western Frontier Front (which was where the Union and the Confederacy sent their crazy generals out. Not that there is any correlation between the two wars on this particular score, as Eisenhower was moved on over to the real action.) As per Bush’s short-sighted photo-op: he never did employ it in a campaign commercial.
That line reverberates even today. Note Scott McClellan’s answer to the question of “Would President Bush use that today?” with a “Democrat efforts to contort what Bush said”, suggesting that Bush meant that mission of that particular crew was accomplished. Which is too bad Bush doesn’t do that celebratory fest with every returning unit… perhaps he could do that even for units coming home to base to take a break before going back to their missions in Iraq — “Mission Paused” could be the banner he stands before for those ones.