The president's interests are now radically disjoined from the country's....Speak up. We're on the edge of the abyss
Each day, each week, draws America closer to to the disaster that very likely would be a US attack on Iran.
Back in 2002, prior to the debacle that has become the US occupation of Iraq, it was difficult for many within the Washington beltway, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo included, to recognize the radical nature of the Bush Administration. Marshall thought a US invasion, to topple Saddam Hussein, could could be a good thing. He was a "reluctant", "skeptical" hawk and he merely cautioned that if done, it must be done correctly : hundreds of thousands of troops and a massive rebuilding effort.
Well, Iraq wasn't done right. Roll the clock forward several years - Marshall is now speaking out, on the seemingly insane prospect of the Bush Administration launching a war against Iran....
[ picture : author of "Jerusalem Countdown", Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee, has formed a lobbying group to bring on the apocalypse. He thinks a US/Israeli preemptive attack on Iran would do the trick. ]
Back in 2002, Joshuah Micah Marshall wrote a sympathetic review, in the Washington Monthly, on a book called "The Threatening Storm", by Ken Pollack, that made a case for the US invasion of Iraq. At that point, Marshall was one of a group of "skeptical" or "reluctant" hawks sympathetic to calls for regime change in Iraq.
Marshall had a realistic take on the venture though - the venture would require hundreds of thousands of US troops and a massive rebuilding effort, and anything less would probably lead to disaster.
Well, it's too bad Josh Marshall didn't run the operation. Iraq has become a disaster. Now, Marshall is speaking out to try and prevent a far worse disaster, and I think we need to listen to him.
I've said this before. But perhaps it seems like hyperbole. So I'll say it again. The president's interests are now radically disjoined from the country's. We can handle a setback like Iraq. It really is a big disaster. But America will certainly survive it. President Bush -- in the sense of his legacy and historical record -- won't. It's all Iraq for him. And Iraq is all disaster. So, from his perspective (that is to say, through the prism of his interests rather than the country's -- which he probably can't separate) reckless gambits aimed at breaking out of this ever-tightening box make sense....
Speak up. We're on the edge of the abyss.
Simple, forceful, true.
Speak up, we're on the edge of the abyss.
The Bush Administration push for war against is quite real, we've seen this all before. Sean-Paul Kelley, on The Agonist, is one who is speaking out :
The drumbeat for an attack on Iran is getting louder and louder.
Fears of Iranian economic dominance in Iran are being stoked, although the story is already weeks, if not months old. We've also been told the Iranians are cooperating with the North Koreans in their bid for nuclear weapons. Never mind that the North Koreans use plutonium in their reactors and the Iranians use uranium. Ooops.
Not to worry. A parade of administration officials from the President on down inform us that Iran is aiding and abetting the chaos in Iraq by providing weapons to Iraqis. Never mind that there is little or no proof that the Iranians are supplying weapons to groups in Iraq actively targeting American forces. (The Washington Post conducted a similar investigation in October of last year with similar results: no evidence found.) Then we were told the US is fighting a proxy war in Iraq with Iran. That news was complete with evidence, in the form of a leak and just one paragraph in the article, of Iranian weapons to support to Iraqis, never mind exactly which Iraqis.
In response to these clear provocations President Bush authorized US forces to kill Iranian operatives in Iraq. Although the rules of engagement have yet to be worked out in typically incompetent Bush Administration fashion.
There was a serious conference in Israel about Iran attended by the right Democrats who made the right speeches about the right position on Iran, giving the President much needed political cover to seem reasonable, statesmanlike and bipartisan....
Sean-Paul goes on to further detail the growing blizzard of trumped up charges and dubiously sourced stories, bellicose Bush Administration rhetoric and alarmed warnings from senior US politicians and statesmen.... everything points toward a frightening Bush administration gamble that attacking Iran will somehow salvage the debacle that has become the US occupation of Iraq.
This is no game, and I think the time has come for stronger words :
The Bush Administration appears bent on attacking Iran, and to the extent that we do not speak out against that now, we will be complicit in a dereliction of responsibility of the greatest magnitude, a moral failure of the first order
We are all in this together, and all our fates are on the line.
Speak up, we're on the edge of the abyss
Jolly Texas Megachurch Pastor Forms Lobby For 'Armaggedon-Based foreign policy'
Here's a sobering look at some of the people who are rooting for an attack on Iran - "Christian Zionists", such as John Hagee, think such an attack will trigger the "end times", and the nuclear destruction of the East and West coasts of the United States. Hagee's all for that. Nice man, eh ? :
Over the past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a newly formed political organization that tells its members that supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a biblical imperative." CUFI's Washington lobbyist, David Brog, told me that during the meetings, CUFI representatives pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah....
CUFI's advice to the Bush Administration reflects the Armageddon-based foreign-policy views of its founder, John Hagee.....The only way to defeat the Iranian evildoers, he [ Hagee ] says, is a full-scale military assault.
"The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote this year in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide." ( From Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism, by Max Blumenthal )
[ Hagee is ] author of an incendiary new book purporting to show that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran..... Hagee's book, Jerusalem Countdown, had sold nearly 500,000 copies. It had occupied the No. 1 position on the Wal-Mart inspirational best-seller list, showed up on Wal-Mart's list of top 10 best sellers for seven weeks, and made the USA Today top 50 best-seller list for six weeks.
Hagee, who serves as head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, hosts his own television program that is seen twice a day on TBN. He argues that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West . Shortly after the release of his book last January, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobbying organization intended, he says, to be a Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee. With CUFI, which Hagee has said will cause a "political earthquake," the televangelist aims to put the political organizing muscle of the conservative evangelical movement behind his grand plan for a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ. ( Sara Posner, Lobbying for Armageddon, June 2006, The American Prospect )