George W. Bush was in the United Arab Emirates today, where, as CNN.com reports, he had a few words for Iran.
"President Bush said Sunday that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger ‘before it’s too late’...
‘Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,’ Bush said in a speech he delivered about midway through his eight-day Mideast trip that began with a renewed push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace pact — an accord he said whose ‘time has come’...
"‘Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,’ Bush said. ‘So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.’"
Last time I checked, Iranians had television sets. Unless Bush is looking to incite even more anti-American sentiment, he should probably try a more diplomatic approach that "rallying" the world against Iran in a speech on Middle Eastern soil.
There was an incident last week in which an Iranian boat bullied one of our boats in Iranian waters, and Bush is taking that incident "deadly seriously." But are we taking it so seriously that we plan to launch a World War over it? Let’s not forget that American combat in the Vietnam War began because of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which American ships apparently attacked each other and blamed the incident on the Viet Cong. I am NOT saying that we threatened ourselves in Iranian water. But we do need to take the war-mongering rhetoric down a notch.
Cleary Bush lacks inner dialogue, but it has gotten to a point where every time he opens his mouth, another nation in the world can interpret what he says as a threat. Perhaps he should bite his tongue until we’ve won one of the wars he’s already started. Afghanistan and Iraq are not success stories. We may not have as many "friends around the world" as the Bush adminstration thinks.
And who really is the biggest threat to our security? One upon a time it was Saddam Hussein. Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Iraqi insurgents. The Taliban. Terrorists-in-the-making in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and who knows where else. I’m no foreign policy expert (and neither is Bush), but this does not seem like the time to be bullying Iran. We can’t afford armor for our troops in Iraq. How can we afford to send thousands more men and women into another conflict without a foreseeable end?
I hate fear-mongering. But these days, I’m more afraid of the words that come out of this administration’s mouth than anything else.
We have 380 days of Bush’s reign of terror left. I only hope someone in Congress will find the courage to impeach this man or at the very least censure him on the world stage. He is a loose cannon in an already dangerous world.