The first proposition is that the President can and will exercise his power to ignore the will of the People. Whatever motives these mad men believe they are acting upon, they are certainly not being at all rational. This insistence to exercise the power to escalate the War in Iraq, in spite of the clear voice of the People in the recent election, is more than childish, it is a clear sign (on the part of Bush and Cheney) of ego intoxication and megalomania. You watch their faces when they utter their words of defiance, and you can see their belief that they know better.
This leaves us with the questions of whether they are even capable of knowing better, or even whether, under our form of government, they have the right to act upon this belief.
The second proposition is that force of arms can achieve the stated goal of stabilizing Iraq and stopping Iran from developing the bomb. This made by men who have never served in the Armed Services, much less in combat, and who think that foreign policy is something of a game in which there are winners and losers. They don't want to go down in history as losers, and so they are willing to put at risk the rest of the world for their personal ego satisfaction. Again, clear madness considering the consequences and likelihood of their being wrong.
The third proposition is that the consequences of American withdrawal from Iraq and from the region will be more devastating than an escalation of War in that same region. This is so illogical that this thought too must be attributed to madness. First off, there are a lot of other players in the world, and in the region, who are well motivated to damp things down and keep them within limits. If anything, the American presence in Iraq keeps the rational regional Islamic governments from acting in the way that keeps Iran in line, and is true to their nature. Our presence also lets Russia and China sit on the sidelines taking advantage, well all the while we do something they would have to do if we were not there.
This proposition is nothing more than an updated version of the domino theory from the Vietnam War, which assumed that if we let Vietnam become communist, the region would become communist. We lost the war, Vietnam did become communist and the region went its own non-communist way without our help.
Cheney and Bush went into Iraq believing they could control a situation by the application of force of arms, and the last four years have proved beyond any doubt that this egotistical belief was not even close to the truth. Now these same men want to continue to insist that it is possible to escalate the regional war, to perhaps include Syria and Iran, and that this can be controlled as well. This is clearly insane. For these men to publicly assert or imply such an irrational thought shows that the greatest danger to America sits in the White House, and is not out there somewhere else in the world.
Now it is possible there is some other hidden agenda being acted upon, which if brought out in the open might be more rational appearing, but even if we imagine that there is something to be gained for the Oil Powers, the Lords of Finance or even for Israel that justifies Americans continuing to be killed and maimed in Iraq, it is certainly not for our benefit, which makes these two men, if not mad, then completely treasonous, which itself is a kind of insanity.
A final implied proposition is that for Iran to possess nuclear weapons is more dangerous than escalating the War. The History of the Cold War showed us the falsity of this idea. First, the Russians as we now know, and had every reason to know at the time, did not even come near to possessing the military capacities we imagined them having. Second, Iran will not be nuking anyone, as they are surrounded by other nuclear powers and could be driven into a new stone age in an instant. The Iranian President is very clever at making noise, but making noise and carrying out an insane nuclear attack on Israel or any other regional power is beyond their capability. They can't win, they can only lose, so why do our leaders want to act as if the possession, of a couple of nuclear weapons that might not actually work, is justification for widening the War into a regional conflict, whose consequences for America and the rest of the world will be far more devastating. Again, a clear sign of madness.
It seems as if Bush and Cheney, and those who support their views, believe they can force America into a state of War on a scale never before seen. They seem to want us to be tied up in this extended regional war to such an extent that we are made to believe that a draft is necessary, that huge tax increases to pay for this madness are necessary and that our civil liberties (given that by escalating the regional war it will escalate the terrorist attacks within our borders) will have to be curtailed in order to keep us safe. Lets look at this from another angle.
Our choices are to leave the region and let it fend for itself, about which it might well do a better job. Or to get more and more stuck to in the quagmire of conflict, to have more of our children killed and maimed, to have more taxes, to be more subject to terrorist attacks at home and to sacrifice our civil liberties, so the two clearly crazy people can save face.
Does this make any sense to you? It doesn't make any sense to me either.
