"Bush Has An Increasingly Tenuous Hold On The Real World"

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Tue Sep-04-07 12:14 AM
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"Bush Has An Increasingly Tenuous Hold On The Real World"

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/329910_bush04.html

Last updated September 3, 2007 8:08 p.m. PT

Bush has an increasingly tenuous hold on the real world
ADRIAN HAMILTON
Adrian Hamilton writes for The Independent in London.

One explanation for President Bush's rant against Iran last week, following his extraordinary speech comparing Iraq with Vietnam the week before, is that the pressure is finally getting to him. Presidential history, from Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan by way of FDR, is replete with presidents who on grounds of failing powers shouldn't really have been allowed to go on. Besieged by events, cast down by the opinion polls, isolated by the loss of his closest advisers, it would not be surprising if this particular president was now losing it.

It's unnerving for the rest of the world, of course, as Bush's finger is still on the nuclear button, raising the terrifying prospect that his vision of nuclear holocaust in the Middle East could be set off not by Tehran but the U.S. president himself launching an attack on Iran, which then involved Israel with all its nuclear weaponry. It's unlikely, I know, but it's not something that can absolutely be ruled out, given the way the White House is now ramping up the confrontation with Iran.

The more likely explanation for Bush's increasingly apocalyptic tone, however, is in some ways more worrying. It is that all eyes in Washington are now exclusively directed to the domestic audience with the added sting that the White House is under the control of a president who does not need to seek re-election and has the will to go down like a western hero, all guns blazing.

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Domestic advantage doesn't make good policy, however, particularly when it comes to quite so volatile a situation as the Middle East. The trouble with demonizing Iran is that you play right into the hands of the most xenophobic and extremist elements in the region. The more the U.S. makes Iran the special object of its fear and loathing, the more opinion in the Muslim street, Arab as well as Iranian, makes a hero of it. No wonder President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a sort of Hugo Chavez of the Middle East.

Given the state of the country's finances and Ahmadinejad's desperate firings and contortions in the economic sphere, the Persian populist would be in deep trouble at home if it were not for the outside pressure. Like Bush, he needs a foreign threat to keep his head above domestic water. Nor, for all his posturing on the Holocaust and Israel, is Ahmadinejad in charge of nuclear or foreign policy, where authority has been deliberately concentrated on much more experienced heads who consistently have sought accommodation with the West on the understanding that Washington in return accepts what Tehran regards as its legitimate interests as a power in the region.

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