Deranged: Bush believes that starting wars will secure lasting peace

[ProSense]

Three days, three comments make clear the plan:

PRESIDENT BUSH: My goal is exactly what I said it was, and that is to hopefully end this as quickly as possible, and at the same time, making sure there's a lasting peace -- not a fake peace, not a fake, you know, kind of circumstances that make us all feel better, and then, sure enough, the problem arises again. And that's the goal of the United States. And we're working toward that end. And we're working hard diplomatically. Look, as soon as we can get this resolved the better, obviously, but it must be real. And it can't be fake. And so there's a serious diplomatic effort going forward, led ably by my Secretary of State.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060727-5.html

Transcript:

QUESTION: Mr. President, both of you, I’d like to ask you about the big picture that you’re discussing. Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel.

Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they’re sharply critical of Israel. And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.

So what has happened to America’s clout in this region that you’ve committed yourself to transform?

BUSH: It’s an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let’s hope everything is calm — manage calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

And so we’ve taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

And make no mistake: They’re still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for. In the long term, to defeat this ideology — and they’re bound by an ideology — you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/28/manage-calm

This moment of conflict in the Middle East is painful and tragic. Yet it is also a moment of opportunity for broader change in the region. Transforming countries that have suffered decades of tyranny and violence is difficult, and it will take time to achieve. But the consequences will be profound -- for our country and the world. When the Middle East grows in liberty and democracy, it will also grow in peace, and that will make America and all free nations more secure.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060729.html

Does this lunatic really believe that starting wars will secure lasting peace?


From Iraq to Lebanon to...:

But there are persistent signs that the US is egging Israel on to bring the war to Damascus.

Here's a clip from the end of an article today in the Jerusalem Post ...

(Israeli) Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

And there are other ominous indications of the US pressing for expansion the Israelis don't seem to want.

There's more here than the US not wanting a ceasefire before meaningful changes on the ground have happened in south Lebanon. Or at least I fear there is. This started because Israel doesn't want and won't tolerate a menacing militia building up on their northern border and lashing out with occasional raids or missile attacks, especially in the context of withdrawals from other areas.

The world has sat by for six years and let Hizbullah's anamolous position in south Lebanon be Israel's problem. Whether their response was wise or just, I'll set aside for the moment. It's not about totalitarianism or Afghanistan or Iraq, at least not in an operational sense, or dingbat fantasies about Freedom and Terror. But there do appear to be forces in Washington -- seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade -- who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve. Condi's mindless 'birth pangs' remark wasn't just a gaffe -- or perhaps it was a gaffe in the Kinsleyan sense of inopportunely saying what you really think. That seems to be the thinking -- transformation through destabilization.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009245.php

[ProSense]

1. Matthews: Iraq war united "Shia radicalism into a Frankenstein monster"

Matthews: War in Iraq United ‘the Disparate Pieces of Shia Radicalism into a Frankenstein Monster’

Chris Matthews, at the conclusion of his Sunday morning talk show explored the impact of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Matthews said that Iraq used to be “a country which has fought revolutionary Iran for eight years to a bloody stand still.” Now, it’s a “Shia dominated ally of Iran.” Matthews concluded: “Our brave soldiers have fought, died and been dismembered in Iraq only to connect the disparate pieces of Shia radicalism into a frankenstein monster that has come to life right there on our TV screens.” Watch it:

[ginnyinWI]

2. For once I agree with Tweety

Violence has always only radicalized the Mid-East and Islam, not turned it into a democracy. Was this really what the bushies thought would happen, or was it only a slogan? It's hard to know for sure whether they thought democracy would be born, or that they would simply be taking over control of a new puppet regime. In either case, they were wrong.

Meanwhile the koolaid drinkers go on believing that their "good" president is going to make the world a better, safer place. My head hurts.

Big Brother keeps saying: "War is Peace" and they all go on believing it.

[ProSense]

3. A Futile Little War

A Futile Little War

Roger Cohen:

Snip...

Whatever vestigial standing the United States had as an honest broker in the Middle East has disappeared with the Bush administration's embrace of Israel's sustained use of force in response to Hezbollah's murderous July 12 cross-border raid.

With little subtlety and great predictability, the administration has gone through its familiar post-9/11 paces: Hezbollah equals terrorism, terrorism must be crushed, ruthlessness is the only way forward, and damn the consequences.

This position has allowed Israel to do its own post-9/11 thing. "Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror," said Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister.

Not so: A victory for Hezbollah is a victory for Hezbollah, which is not Al Qaeda, which is not the Palestinian national movement, which is not the Iraqi insurgency, which is not homegrown European Muslim suicide bombers.

Snip...

Problems must be fixed one at a time, which requires the curiosity to understand them, and to come up with particular solutions. Not everyone in the Middle East wants to be Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, a man generally ready to do America's bidding. Siniora, who is understandably furious, certainly does not want to be. Nor, of course, does President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Snip...

The fragile Lebanese polity born since the withdrawal of Syrian troops last year has been shattered.

The democratic movement of 2005, applauded by the State Department as the "Cedar Revolution," has been left with shipments of American food as a token of sympathy. America's regional record of cheering on democratic uprisings and disappearing when the going gets rough - remember the Shiites of Iraq at the end of the 1991 Gulf war - has notched another unhappy chapter.

Yep. This 'accidental' war (as The Economist recently put it) will end up having proved something of a disaster for all parties involved save, perhaps, Hezbollah. Israel will not have eradicated Hezbollah (a totally unrealistic war aim, regardless, Krauthammer and Co's reckless imbecility aside), the United States has complicated its regional position immensely, and, as Cohen points out, the Cedar Revolution lies in ashes. Was the IDF action worth hundreds dead, thousands wounded, massive flows of internally displaced and refugees numbering in the hundreds of thousands, an environmental disaster unprecedented in Lebanon's modern history, and the scuttling of Lebanon's tenuous movements towards emergence from an oppressive Syrian yoke? All for, at the end of the day, a deal on Shaba Farms, the return of the two soldiers (probably in the context of a prisoner exchange anyway), French and other troops on the Lebanese-Israeli and Lebanese-Syrian borders (gee, wonder how porous that latter one will be?), and some (likely mostly chimerical) 'disarming' of Hezbollah?

Snip...

Sound familiar? Baghdad becomes 70s era Beirut, and Beirut, perhaps, will go full circle yet again, and join Baghdad in the quasi-civil-war stakes. We're not there yet, of course, and let us at least hope Condi will belatedly nail down a cease fire in the next 5 or so days, so that we can do our best to stave off greater chaos, including the specter of such a Lebanese civil war. If adults had been at the helm, and people weren't chattering on about "root causes" and "birth pangs" like cocksure, naive pimpled adolescents, we wouldn't be in this mess, having instead sought an immediate cease-fire in early days, and asked the Israelis to restrict their military retaliation solely to actual Hezbollah military targets in the south, and very select strategic targets elsewhere. But no, adults weren't at the helm, and the consequences have been rather devastating. This appears to have been, in the main, an unmitigated blunder, save I guess, for the comfort that cross-border kidnappings and rocket attacks will no longer occur under the watch of the multinational force (well, at least for a spell, as we'd have to talk seriously with the Syrians and the Iranians, directly and indirectly, respectively, to effect any long-lasting dimunition in Hezbollah's power). But such a result could have been achieved regardless, without the severe over-reaching of an Israeli military campaign that has set back Lebanon (and increasingly the region) many years.

more...

http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2006/07/post_36.html

[gulliver]

4. He doesn't believe it. He's tap-dancing for the stockholders.

With Bush, every result is either a blessing or a blessing in disguise. There is no admitting mistakes. Every loss is an opportunity, every change is a sign of progress, every sacrifice and cost is for eventual victory, every setback is temporary.

Denial ain't just a river.

[ProSense]

5. Bush stresses 'sustainable' Mideast peace

34 youths among 56 dead in Israeli strike

By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 30, 12:35 PM ET

QANA, Lebanon - Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at
Israel, and said he would not halt the army's operation.

The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike in Qana, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500. Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Lebanon in a setback for diplomatic efforts to end hostilities. She was to return to the U.S. Monday morning, abruptly breaking off her diplomatic mission in the Mideast.

Before the airstrike, Olmert told Rice he needed 10-14 days to finish the offensive in Lebanon, according to a senior Israeli government official. The two said they would meet again Sunday evening.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060730/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_israel_596

Bush stresses 'sustainable' Mideast peace

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 5 minutes ago

Snip...

"Our hope for peace for boys and girls everywhere extends across the world, especially in the Middle East," the president said before the start of a T-ball game at the White House.

"Today's actions in the Middle East remind us that friends and allies must work together for a sustainable peace particularly for the sake of children," Bush told the teams of youngsters and visitors.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060730/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_mideast_6

[ProSense]

6. Annan calls for cease fire; Bolton opposes implication (fake peace)

Snip...

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said he opposed calling for a truce, as requested by Annan in an impassioned plea to an emergency council meeting he called after the strike on Qana, the deadliest single attack of Israel's 19-day-old war against Hizbollah militants.

"We don't think that simply returning to business as usual is a way to bring about a lasting solution," Bolton said.

"Rather than jump to conclusions about ceases-fires and other matters, we felt it was important to let that play out and to do what was important today, which was address the tragic loss of civilian life," Bolton told reporters.

Council statements need the consent of all 15 members.

The council did not mention a U.S. announcement that Israel would stop aerial bombing for 48 hours, presumably because Israel had not confirmed it.

more...

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-07-31T011418Z_01_N291546_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST-UN.xml

[fuzzyball]

7. I was never good at history, so does anyone know how long it took

to fight the war of US independence from Britain, the civil war,
the WW II, and the Korean war, and the Viet-Nam war before peace
was achieved in each case?

My reason for asking is so I can get a clear perspective on how the
3 year old Iraw war compares in its length.

[ProSense]

9. (Welcome fuzzyball!) The War on Terror is Like WW II Except. . . .

The War on Terror is Like WW II Except. . . .

by
Larry C. Johnson

Snip...

President Bush spoke earlier this week at the Naval Air Station in San Diego and said:

“As we mark this anniversary, we are again a nation at war. Once again war came to our shores with a surprise attack that killed thousands in cold blood.”

Having played the 9-11 card he said that like the Second World War, the US now faces "a ruthless enemy" and "once again we will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure."

Drawing on World War II for solace to excuse the debacle in Iraq was also employed in June of this year by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who told members of the Senate and House that we faced setbacks in World War II and we should take that into account in our current war of terrorism.

So, if World War II is the benchmark for our current effort than why have Bush and Rumsfeld botched things so badly? Consider these facts:

The United States and its allies in WWII defeated the Third Reich, Italy, and Japan in 1364 days (that covers the period from 7 December 1941 until 2 September 1945, when Japan signed the surrender documents). Of course that required a massive mobilization of our society to defeat these enemies, a dramatic expansion of the U.S. military forces, and a solid international coalition.

How goes it in the war on terror? For starters it is taking a lot longer. One thousand four hundred and forty nine days (1449) have elapsed since the attacks on 9-11 (today’s date, 31 August 2005). Why is it that our grandparents managed to defeat two major Armies in three combat theatres, but we still cannot find and finish Bin Laden?

Snip...

If the fact that international terrorism attacks have skyrocketed since 2003 (we have gone from 203 significant attacks in 2003 to almost 700 significant attacks in 2004) then we are winning.

Perhaps the time has come to call the Bush Administration on its persistent happy talk and delusional thinking (e.g., the insurgency is in its last throes). There is an enormous gulf between their public spin and the truth on the ground.

Bush’s comparison with World War II raises several uncomfortable questions:

Snip...

One answer is that Bush talks tough but doesn't take these threats seriously. In World War II we not only believed we were at war but we acted like it and organized ourselves to fight it. Not so today. In the Second World War we had General George C. Marshall running the war effort. Today, there is no one in charge. Don Rumsfeld does his thing and the CIA does its things. In addition, very few Americans are being asked to make any sacrifice in this effort. As we approach the fourth anniversary of the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 it is time to ask ourselves why George Bush does not take the threat of terrorism as seriously as Franklin D. Roosevelt did the threats of Nazi and Japanese fascism. Instead of taking frequent vacations George Bush might want to spend some time actually dealing with this threat rather than offering empty speeches.


http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/08/the_war_on_terr.html

Real similarities:

Stabbed in the Back!

The past and future of a right-wing myth
Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006. Originally from June 2006. By Kevin Baker.

First drink, hero, from my horn:
I spiced the draught well for you
To waken your memory clearly
So that the past shall not slip your mind!

—Hagen to Siegfried
Die Götterdämmerung

Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

As the United States staggers past the third anniversary of its misadventure in Iraq, the dagger is already poised, the myth is already being perpetuated. To understand just how this strategy is likely to unfold—and why this time it may well fail—we must return to the birth of a legend.

Snip...

It was an iconography easily transferable to Germany’s new, postwar republic. Hitler himself would claim that while recuperating behind the lines from a leg wound, he found Jewish “slackers” dominating the war-production bureaucracy and that “the Jew robbed the whole nation and pressed it beneath his domination.” The rape imagery is revolting but vivid; Hitler was already attuned to the zeitgeist of his adopted country. Even before the war had been decided, a soldier in his company recalled how Corporal Hitler would “leap up and, running about excitedly, say that in spite of our big guns, victory would be denied us, for the invisible foes of the German people were a greater danger than the biggest cannon of the enemy.”

Yet it was necessary, for the purging that the Nazis had in mind, to believe that the national degeneration went even further. Jerry Lembcke, in his brilliant work, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, writes of how the Nazis fostered the dolchstosslegende in ways that eerily foreshadowed returning veteran mythologies in the United States. Hermann Göring, the most charismatic of the Nazi leaders after Hitler, liked to speak of how “very young boys, degenerate deserters, and prostitutes tore the insignia off our best front line soldiers and spat on their field gray uniforms.” As Lembcke points out, any insignia ripping had actually been done by the mutinous soldiers and sailors who would launch a socialist uprising shortly after the war, tearing them off their own shoulders or those of their officers. Göring’s instant revisionism both covered up this embarrassing reality and created a whole new class of villains who were—in his barely coded language—homosexuals, sexually threatening women, and other “deviants.” All such individuals would be dealt with in the new, Nazi order.

more...

http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html

[fuzzyball]

13. Good post Prosense!! n/t

[MadMaddie]

10. Here is an interesting site that details all of the US wars....

The second table at this link has the following statistics...
http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm
War if 1812 80 months 6.6 years
Civil War 20 months 1.6 years
WWI 19 months 1.5 years
WWII 44 months 3.6 years
Korean War 37 months 3.08 years
Vietnam War 90 months 7.5 years
Gulf War 1 months

[gratuitous]

8. Beatings will continue until morale improves . . .

This administration is just stone stupid, but they've pitched their message in such a way that it makes complete sense to the brain-dead press corps. This is like fucking your way back to virginity.

[meow2u3]

11. Bushco thinks "1984" is a how-to manual

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Big Brother is watching you. Bush is presidunce.

[josh nelson]

12. backwards

This is an absolutely backwards foreign policy. I can't say that I expect any better at this point though.

[The Sleeper]

14. They are ALL about the Politics...

And in their foolish little brains they think that WWIII (or IV) is politically advantageous for them to maintain their complete hold on power, well then...Tally Ho!

Got to ratchet up the fear (the only trick they have) if the level is too low....

So what if "The Little People" die ??
If their death keeps the NeoCons in power, then it must happen.

[ProSense]

15. Bush's attempt to test Einstein's thesis

August 1, 2006

REALITY SINKING IN?....

Condoleezza Rice's "diplomacy" last week in Rome was, quite plainly, nothing more than a fig leaf designed to give Israel more time to conduct its bombing campaign in Lebanon. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that this time around the Bush administration might actually be sincere in its calls for peace:

After presenting a united front against international calls for an immediate cease-fire in the three weeks since fighting began, the U.S. and Israel are diverging some on how much longer Israel should continue its offensive against Hezbollah. While Israel continues to say its campaign will take weeks, the U.S. is shifting its diplomatic focus from trying to buy Israel more time for its campaign against Hezbollah to pushing for a cease-fire package that would end the bloodshed.

....A senior administration official said the U.S. believed Israel would have only a matter of weeks to strike Hezbollah before international pressure for a cease-fire forced an end to the fighting, especially if civilian casualties climbed. Now, the official said, the U.S. is beginning to fear that it could be left both with mounting regional fury and an emboldened Hezbollah that has withstood the initial assault without losing its ability to inflict casualties on Israeli troops and civilians.

It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The Bushies are "beginning" to fear that a massive conventional assault (a) might not work against a guerrilla organization and (b) might cause some regional blowback because massive conventional assaults kill lots of civilians. Do they need sandwich boards hung around their necks to remind them of this?

What was Albert Einstein's famous definition of insanity? "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I just hope we all manage to survive George Bush's attempt to test Einstein's thesis.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_08/009266.php