Dubya Troubles

If W wanted to establish a large enduring US military presence in the ME in order to "influence" the WOT, the OIL markets, and growing anti-Israeli demography for the next few decades, he could well have said so in 2002/3 and a majority of Americans would have supported him still.

On top of that, W could have easily used the "humanitarian" rationale to justify the attack (as Hitchens argued) to gather more support.

On top of that, W could have united the 'nations' (ala 1991) under the "defying the UN" ruse (which he did to an extent, though getting France, Russia, China in on the enterprise would've required sharing the spoils)

But those reasons weren't "sexy" enough.

W had to reach for the "mushroom cloud/WMD" lie.

Why?

Because humanitarian, economic, and world order/rule of law reasons would not have provided sufficient rationales and "fear factors" to cow the American people (and thier Congressional representatives) into acquiescing to the largest (and often illegal/unconstitutional) power grab since FDR and HST.

And now W is reaping what was sown, for when you oversell a product (policy) you can be certain that "buyer's remorse" is soon to follow (but it did help get W re-elected which was a large part of the political calculation)

So now, in political desperation, W has to run out the clock while simultaneously establishing the "stabbed-in-the-back" predicate. ("we would've won had it not been for"... the Democrats, the Media, etc. ala VietNam revisionists)

And W is well on his way to successfully dragging his feet, for he only has to get to January 2008 (when the primaries begin) and then the Iraq policy becomes "frozen" until Inauguration Day 2009.

I've seen this movie before and the ending (and sequels) suck. (doesn't anyone in the Government, or the Media, ever open a History book?)

All of which makes Peggy Drexler's quote from July 2007 even more disturbing...

"Let's be honest, if this war had been as tidy and bloodless as advertised, would anyone still be concerned about the fact that we attacked a failing country that was no threat to us on the pretext of WMD that our leaders knew full well didn't exist?"

Ulysses S. Grant wrote that he believed that nations have souls, and that the Civil War was penance for the US invasion of Mexico. If he was right, as I believe he was, can you imagine what 'divine retribution' the United States has coming to it now?

stephenhsmith
27Aug2007