In his blog today, Dan Froomkin gave the simplest explanation I've ever read about why we're in Iraq and why the NeoCons want us to stay there forever.
Follow me below the fold.
It's Not Just About Iraq examines Cheney's comments in regard to the proposed Kerry/Feingold amendments defeated in the Senate on Thursday and offers substantial insight into the war mongering motivations of our Vice President.
Vice President Cheney yesterday offered an unusually revealing glimpse of his worldview -- one in which a withdrawal from Iraq may have less to do with Iraq, and more to do with the message it would send to the world about the limits of American power.
To be specific Cheney said
"If we were to do that, it would be devastating from the standpoint of the global war on terror. It would affect what happens in Afghanistan. It would make it difficult for us to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations for nuclear weapons. It would threaten the stability of regimes like Musharraf in Pakistan and the Saudis in Saudi Arabia. It is -- absolutely the worst possible thing we could do at this point would be to validate and encourage the terrorists by doing exactly what they want us to do, which is to leave. . . .
We've heard this before. We've heard it from everyone who cloaks him/herself in the righteousness of the NeoCon Right. But what does it really mean? What is Cheney really saying?
According to Froomkin, we need look no further than Ron Suskind's
The One Percent Doctrine for this answer.
'If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response,' Suskind quotes Cheney as saying.
And then Cheney went on to utter the lines that can be said to define the Bush presidency: 'It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our response.' "
Froomkin sums it up and knocks it out of the park. Wrap your mind around this:
And if you subscribe to that theory -- that invading Iraq was fundamentally a way of delivering a message about U.S. power -- you can see why anything short of absolute victory would be so unpalatable.
Please take a few minutes to read the whole
article and visit Gary Kamiya's
review of Suskind's
book.
For the first time, it makes sense to me. To be clear, I think Cheney is
nuts and I don't think World Domination is the business we should be in. It's just nice to finally have a clearer window into the mind of the opposition.
What do you think?