George Bush: The Saad Eddin Ibrahim of the United States

After reading a recent Washington Post article, my once genuine contempt for our great leader has turned into profound admiration. He is not the idiot I imagined, it turns out. Rather, he is the underdog champion of a great cause -- world democracy. And he has been facing down some great powers within his own administration.

In June, he attended a democracy conference in Prague. President Bush seemed frustrated by a lack of support within his own administration for his idealistic aims. Just as the CIA bungled up the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, he had his own government to blame for the failures characterizing his stated goal of "ending tyranny in our world."

Can you imagine such a ridiculous cop-out? Would the stockbrokers keep a CEO who blamed middle management or assembly-line workers for the company's poor performance? As a piece in the CSM suggests, "Why not treat ineffective presidents like CEOs: Fire them."

The parade of Bushian absurdity did not stop there. He even spoke his own struggle -- which he does not seem to understand is part and parcel of holding office in a government based on checks and balances. He compared himself to famous dissidents, such as the Egyptian human rights giant, Saad Eddin Ibrahim. Though Ibrahim served prison terms for his activism, Bush can relate. Do you have any idea how many boring ass banquets and meetings he has had to attend? Right, the arrogance of such analogy is appalling:

As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. "You're not the only dissident," Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them."

So, US support of the Egyptian leader is the result of a massive brainwashing operation conducted by President Mubarak. Maybe he channeled Nile TV, sent copies of Al-Ahram and free cans of foul mdemas to every government employee.