Bush is frequently mocked as the proverbial "deer in the headlights" frozen into inaction by overwhelming fear and deep ignorance. But, faced with the possibility of a ruinous war with Iran, who is the deer? Bush has the initiative. Bush, Cheney, and their minions are deftly moving military assets into place and ratcheting up the infowar against Iran. At a time and place of their choosing, they will launch this war. They are in command of events. And what about everyone else? Let's take stock:
- The Congress is like a deer in the headlights, because it is frozen in an impotent discussion over non-binding resolutions that cannot stop a war. It is utterly lacking in the courage to pre-emptively impeach - or even threaten impeachment to avert a war.
- The press is like a deer in the headlights, because it refuses to connect the dots among the steps Bush is taking to set the stage for war - despite the fact that these steps are almost an exact replay of the setup for war on Iraq. The press doesn't want to tell the public what the public doesn't want to hear, so the war draws closer, while the press talks about the Iranian "threat."
- The US military are like a deer in the headlights, because they feel bound to execute any orders that come from Bush, even dropping nuclear weapons on a country that has not attacked us. They cling to a feeble belief that Bush would never do anything this stupid and destructive, but they will do his bidding.
- The public, you, me, and most everyone else, is like a deer in the headlights because we feel the war coming on and can't exert ourselves to stop it. The oncoming war feels as remote and inexorable as a killer asteroid. All we can do is find the best distractions to keep from thinking about it.
When the chronicle of the war on Iran is written, historians will puzzle over why nothing was done to stop it, despite abundant evidence that war was coming. They will probe for causes, and they will probably end up saying that the American people were paralyzed by fear and ingnorance, like a deer in the headlights, unable to avert the oncoming calamity.