I am a 38 year old writer, politically a pragmatic liberatarian with an emphasis on civil liberties. I live in the South, in a Blue town in a Red state, and I work in . . . well, I'll tell you later, if you really must know.
As the bad news from the Middle East just keeps getting worse, one has to wonder what George II and his merry band are thinking. Is the Iraq Study Group, a high-powered spin-machine designed to extricate the Bush Imperium from its stupid mistakes, going to be able to rescue the day? And at what cost? Will Lebanon and the Palestinians keep blissfully quiet for the remaining two years of his reign? Will the Israelis keep a lid on their simmering resentment against Iran for a while longer?
And, most importantly, can he get out of a subpoena with a note from his Dad?
As we get closer and closer to the January swearing-in of a new Democratically-controlled Congress, Bush & Co. must be sweating bullets. The question of hearings isn't "if", anymore, but "when", and they aren't going to be pretty. But will they actually be damaging? Rumsfeld is being investigated for war crimes, now, and may someday face the same "universal jurisdiction" court that the Nazis did -- unless political pressure can be used to keep that threat at bay. People are suing the government left and right over the Imperial policies of the last six years, and one of these days some liberal judge is going to rule the wrong way and every dirty little secret ostensibly on the War on Terror will be put under hot lights. Every shred and shadow of Administration incompetence is going to come to the fore, and almost all of his old allies are melting away.
Big Pharma? They're hedging bets and courting the democrats, now, in an effort to reduce the impact that a Democratic Congress will have on their industry -- and most of the people in Big Pharma were never too comfortable with Bush's little kingdom, anyway. Pro-business is great, of course, but when you start monkeying around with the science, that stifles the innovation that keeps the pills rolling. Oh, they'll miss their friendly buddies at the FDA ("Enforcement? What is this enforcement thing of which you speak?")but they'll make up for it with the windfall of Stem Cell money due any day now.
Big Church is reeling and divided, the Religious Right a tangle of accusations, loss of faith in the Neo-Con agenda, and open disgust at the candidates they were begged to vote for. Abortion and Gay Marriage are a dead horse, at this point, overshadowed by increasingly dire predictions about the environment and the economy. Only a small, radical element that is actively seeking to play a role in the post-Armageddon Second Coming clings yet to the Imperium, and even they are upset about Bush's backsliding. The days of Big Time Ole Time Religion are waning, and they can smell it.
Big Auto? Also never completely comfortable with the Imperium. Sensitive to labor problems and in a brutally competitive market, they've used their political mojo to keep higher efficiency standards at bay so they can keep making lovely, high profit SUVs. The problem is that the public, despite the recent beneficence from the oil industry that brought pump prices down, has read the writing on the wall. The future belongs to hybrids and alt.fuel cars, not the Hummer. Brazil is months away from declaring complete energy independence, based on their ethanol/gas fueled cars -- made in America, by the way -- and Americans are waiting for the next middle-east crisis to come along and push the pump up again. The smart auto companies will follow maverick Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in his quest for eco-friendly fuel technologies, which will eventually put the entire industry at odds with its traditional ally . . .
Big Oil. Strong and robust after two years of record profits, they're digging foxholes and building bomb shelters inside their corporate war rooms to figure out how to play the endgame. They know the subpoenas are coming. They know that they will be implicated by association, if not directly, in the shenanigans in the middle-east. After all, it was largely on their orders that the invasion of Iraq took place. Not so they could loot the country's oil reserves, as commonly thought. But to keep that oil from flooding the market in the wake of a lifting of sanctions on Saddam Hussein. Iraq has always had an inefficient, spotty record getting its oil to market. Had Hussein been given the green light to sell on the open market, for whatever he could get for it, then prices would have nose-dived back to the $20 a barrel range of the Iran-Iraq war, and we can't have that, now, can we? While they are grateful to their toy prince for doing their bidding, they look towards their own interests. But maybe they can call in one last favor . . .
And that's what's so scary about this holiday-break before the ugly politics of January take hold. With Iraq in a shambles, cutting and running seeming the only viable way out, and foreign policy failures stretching from Lebanon to North Korea, there isn't much hope for anything less than one Congressional hearing after another. Thinking fondly back to his post 9-11 mandate, Bush may well decide that he has nothing to lose -- and everything to gain -- by engineering another patriotic crisis that could take years to untangle. And by that time, he can be safely back in Crawford writing his memoirs. In crayon.
Iran is the best target. We already have over 150,000 troops on their doorstep, and a gargantuan naval presence in their bathtub, just itching to start lobbing cruise missiles. Even Iran's allies are afraid of Iran. Of course, sparking a conflict before subpoena season might be hard to arrange for our US forces, but Israel might could find a way to start a little war that we would just naturally have to respond to.
Consider: Olmert is facing a broken government, insurrection in the occupied territories, daily rocket attacks and public humiliation over the debacle in Lebanon. The vaunted Israeli war machine is broken, its reputation in tatters. Under Bush's incompetent leadership, Iran has the bomb (or close enough, in his eyes.) What better way to redeem the potency of Israeli military might than a few select air-strikes on Iranian targets? What could possibly go wrong?
Look for Israel to try an Ossirak-style raid sometime around Christmas, and a dramatic Iranian response shortly thereafter. Indeed, things might get so bloody that the American people will be glued to CNN watching the action instead of watching their newly-elected Congress get sworn in. It's a December surprise, and its about the only Hail Mary Bush has left in his playbook. He’s the by-God Commander-in-Chief, after all, and what does that mean if there isn’t a decent war around? He could call in that favor. Olmert owes him.
After all, you take away his other allies, and leave him with just the remains of Big Church and the bloated coffers of Big Oil, and it’s the only course of action that will appease both allies. And that's about the last card left in his hand.