My thoughts ob the President’s news conference as bizarre and adolescent.

The President gave a rare news conference today.  It may have been the first time I’ve listened to all of one of these events.  It had to do with the capture of Saddam Hussein in a “spider hole” underground in the farm village of Ad Dawr not far from Tikrit.  The President didn’t exactly crow, but did manage to get out some gratuitously crude language to show where his thinking is.

I found the workings of our President’s thoughts rather bizarre and naively adolescent.  He seems to have an oversimplified perception of his job as President and a childish belief and trust in his advisors, making decisions based upon what they bring him without initiating any on his own.  It makes me wonder who’s really in charge here.

How much does this guy, or any of those in the inner circle,  know about the long bloody history of the Arab states?  About the built-in patriarchal nature of Islam?  The traditional tribal and clan fanaticism of the warring desert tribes where its roots were formed?  About the continual rise and fall of brutal bloodthirsty rulers in the region who offset the previous achievements of prior civilizations in the Tigris-Euphrates region?  What was “moral” about the Pharaohs, or the rulers of Babylon?  How many captured slaves built the Tower of Babel?

Why do they think they will have any better luck than the British after WWI?

Is fundamentalist extremism taking over both in the USA and in the Arab world?  Or is it already a fact of life?