Separate Reality, here it comes.
Reading the latest run of things out in the news, it strikes me that there seems to be a competition between Bush and Larry Craig as to which one can twist reality around in their heads and ignore what’s going on and what the heck they did and what consequences that has. I’m betting on Bush to be the one that’s most delusional, but in his case, we’re talking about something bigger by far that being caught out being on the down low.
There’s a good quote from John Adams on this, from a letter he wrote to Jefferson in 1816:
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.”
No, AlQaeda is not a big factor in Iraq. Yes, Bush set up benchmarks in January for Iragi performance and demanded they be met; only the most trivial of them have been, and anything of consequence in the benchmarks has not and will not be met in the near future, because there’s too much disinterest in coming to a solution other than My Faction Stomps All Of You Guys and you beg Allah for mercy. No political progress is followed by no significant military progress; Bush and the DOD are cooking the numbers on that to say that there has been something of that sort, while noisily rejecting all other reports.
The other reports from independent observers are saying – the only peace that is going on is because there’s a zillion soldiers there and where the ethnic cleansing process has exiled the non-whatevers out of the neighborhood. In the meantime, we’re keeping the sides busy and happy – by passing out a lot of weapons, telling them who to shoot and hoping that the weapons won’t be used later against someone else, like, say, us.
The point on all of this isn’t to keep the political process going, or to win militarily; the point is now what became screamingly obvious after this new Bush bio came out. Bush is totally incapable of admitting there is a universe out there that doesn’t fit in his point of view or preconceptions, and he will never admit error. He can’t.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.”
If I was Barack Obama, I’d start calling out this whole business from the tree tops. Why are we giving so much deference to Bush and Cheney on this war? They fabricated us into it, and are trying like hell to fabricate like mad to keep us in it for the foreseeable future. Why was it that practically nobody in the Congress actually read the reports from the intelligence agencies before they voted for war? Why was it that these men decided to lie and cheat to get us there and keep us there? Where is the accountability for this, for Katrina, for a million different things? Do you think that Hillary will have the guts to force this issue when she wouldn’t even read the reports before voting for the war?
I don’t, honestly. And this is the discussion that should be before the American people, if anyone has the wits and guts to do it. Someone needs to bring these points home to the people in power and to the public and make a big deal about it.