Froomkin: Bush's moment of opportunity looks like opportunity for disaster

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: 'A Moment of Opportunity'
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 31, 2006

President Bush's "moment of opportunity" in the Middle East is increasingly looking like an opportunity for disaster.

Bush's official position is that some blood-spilling in the Middle East is worth it in pursuit of the region's positive transformation.

Even in the wake of an Israeli airstrike Sunday that killed 57 civilians in the Southern Lebanese town of Qana, every terse presidential acknowledgment of the human toll is accompanied by soaring rhetoric about freedom and democracy and lasting stability.

In the best of circumstances, Bush would be running the risk of being considered callous. But in the current circumstances, he runs the risk of being considered both callous and delusional.

By almost no stretch of the imagination is the current conflict strengthening Bush's hand or advancing democracy. Rather, it appears to be emboldening Bush's enemies....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

[patdem]

1. What I do not understand .. IF there IS a solution and CAN be negotiaged

could it NOT have happened BEFORE all this destruction? OR...is the ONLY negotiating point to simply DESTROY hezzbolah? AND...if we can do it NOW with an international force...could we not have done it BEFORE all this killing?

It is almost as if bush says..ohh look over there...bombs....an opportunity to...put my face on the front page and talk about 'democracy and freedom'? Can I get a bump outta this war?

[MissWaverly]

3. He thought Israel would get into real trouble

and we could ride to rescue waving the US Flag and then we could mop up them Hezbollah bad
boys and Bush could dress up and stand on an aircraft carrier. I think he watched too
many John Wayne movies as a kid. There is no perfect moment, there is only death, suffering
and pain associated with war, it's not PR and should not be treated as such. There are 1.3
billion islamic followers on the planet, why incite them all by torturing w/o trials, blanket
bombing and a refusal to acknowledge their identity and their countries as legitimate as our
own country.

[kenny blankenship]

2. Will the religious insanity angle ever be acknowledged?

I mean before he's gone and killed a million or more people in one go?
Bush isn't just a little wrong about the theory of international relations and allied topics--he isn't just a teeny far afield in his thinking due to a stream of poor data. He is a religious nutcase whackjob.
He is in the grip of a racist, genocidal Judeo-Christian worldview.
"Delusional" as a description is such an inadequate estimate of our President's true condition that for a political observer to simply call Bush delusional in a neutral, clinical tone of voice without then detailing the nature and origin of his delusion, appears to me so detached from the threat that Bush represents to humanity at this moment that I'm wondering if that writer himself is delusional. Ok that's hyperbole, but c'mon can anybody really believe that Bush sees this situation in terms of what will actually stop the killing and produce peace? All his killing has led to more and more killing, even he must see that. In the face of that he welcomes still more killing and clearly wishes to take any and all of the local conflicts and inflate and transform them into a climactic, all-out final deathgasm. And even in the Bush Administration the policy players can't be so dumb as to believe that they can kill their way to a permanent peace without essentially depopulating the Middle East.

Bush doesn't have a foreign policy that he's following, he's entering four horses in the Apocalypse Sweepstakes.

[kenny blankenship]

6. -continued

Bush doesn't have a foreign policy that he's following, he's entering four horses in the Apocalypse Sweepstakes. Yet it seems that the maximum that prominent observers will allow themselves to say in criticism of Bush is that his policy might not be so effective, in fact it might produce some uh-ohs! because --oh I don't know-- for whatever reason, this President isn't taking many important factors into consideration and seems sort of unaware what they might even be. The President is off base, the President is not dealing with the world as it is, he's unrealistic, he's...teehee... delusional. Not even that but "he runs the risk of seeming callous and delusional". Well, "seems" is no longer in the picture. HE IS DELUSIONAL and the specific shape of his delusions matter enormously in this case, since it has to do with the Middle East. Everyone knows what I'm talking about: Bush's Middle Eastern derived belief system doesn't just tend to label some people "EVIL" --it assumes that evil is a primary force organizing the universe as we know it, less powerful than Divine Good but capable of taking Good right to the edge. Furthermore, it assumes that many, indeed probably most, people in our world are in league with EVIL and in a final contest they will and must be destroyed. It is a belief system that welcomes the END OF THE FUCKING WORLD and the deaths of the vast majority of people in it. Then comes the Judgement of most people formerly living in the world--also an event to be welcomed, and then the Consignation to Hellfire of most people formerly living in the world--again, something to be welcomed. For all Eternity.

It's one thing to say you believe this kind of insane End-of-times bullshit, people can say they believe most anything without actually having much invested in it, and without being much guided by it; but it's quite another thing to start ACTING like you believe it, particularly while acting in your capacity of President of the United States. When that happens it's imperative for responsible people--public figures, journalists, citizens with whatsoever soapbox to shout from--to ALERT others to the supreme danger that the Lunatic-In-Chief represents to their own lives and futures. If it's really impossible at this late date, for a prominent mainstream critic of the Bush Administration to discuss the damn near DETERMINATIVE role that racial/religious bigotry and eschatological mania currently plays in Bush's Middle Eastern "policies" then he may as well not bother writing anything.
Bush is to be stopped and defused like a bomb, not critiqued on his inefficacy or narrowness of vision.

[MadMaddie]

4. It's the same attitude that the * has hammering the opposition

first and then maybe thinking about peace

I am not taking sides but this is not the way to do it...

[Cha]

5. I think we all know

bush IS Callous AND Delusional but that's a way to put it that you get away with in the wapo...i.e.~ "the risk" of being said "callous and delusional."

Instead of coming right out and saying bush is lying piece of delusional crap.