It’s becoming clear to me how people in the past who were under leaders who were obviously losing their minds didn’t find the heart to rebel. Tristero’s post about Bush’s madness today really brings it home. The opening line in the WaPo article today:
President Bush is weighing a range of options in Iraq, including a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from violence-plagued cities and a troop buildup near the Iranian and Syrian borders, his top security aide said today.
The evil and, in a way more disturbing, the sheer insanity of BushCo’s foreign policy is breathtaking. They have decided to justify “withdrawal” using their usual “blame the victims” logic. You know the routine—the poor are only hungry because they’re lazy and if we starved them out, they might be bothered to lift a finger to work. The more I see this line trotted out, the more convinced I am that it’s a belief that is racist to the core. To believe both that you and everyone you know is hard working and deserves all your luxuries while some other people are so inherently lazy that they can’t be bothered to do a thing without some kind of whip across their back requires you to believe that those other people are different from you in some fundamental way. And for the racist, that’s easy to believe, that someone of a different nationality or skin color is somehow born lazy while you’re born hard-working. Anyway, I mention this, because the Bushies, unable to face up to the fact that they made this mess themselves out of sheer stupidity, have fallen back on their usual racist line that some group of people Not Them is fundamentally unable to care about their own self-interest without the whip across their back.
Hadley said the president is considering a “laundry list of ideas” from a Nov. 6 memo by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who announced his resignation two days later — just after Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. The options include the redeployment of substantial U.S. forces to areas near the Iranian and Syrian borders, withdrawing U.S. troops from especially vulnerable positions and starting modest drawdowns of American forces to encourage Iraqis, as Rumsfeld wrote, “to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.”
Emphasis mine. It’s not really a “thought” Rumsfeld is having here so much as a long-standing ritual of dehumanization that authoritarians in our society have indulged in since the slave days when it was literally believed that slaves wouldn’t pick cotton because they were inherently lazy. The deep, sick irony of all this is evident, because it’s clear that the bemoaning of this suddenly discovered Iraqi irresponsibility is all a show so that the Bushies don’t have to own up to their responsibility for this mess. Take that and extrapolate it backwards to every other occasion you hear some racist bemoaning Group X’s inability to take basic responsibility and it doesn’t take long to find out what responsibility the white racist is evading with his oh-so-responsible self.
Anyway, I digress. Bush is almost out there trying to get attention paid to the fact that he’s lost what little grip he had on basic human empathy and, if Tristero’s retort to his commenters is to be believed, even a lot of liberals are sort of whistling in the wind. “Surely he can’t be crazy enough to do an end run around the wishes of the entire country and the entire military brass and just start throwing nuclear bombs at Iran!” But yes, he is crazy enough, I’d say. Tristero outlines the entire scenario they’re probably laying out in hopes that they “get” to throw a nuclear bomb at Iran.
The question I ask myself when I start to wonder if it’s possible that Bush and his crew are batshit enough to deliberately arrange things so that they “get” to kill god only knows how many innocent people with a nuclear bomb is this: What is the likelihood that he can be convinced to let go of the dream of being the President with the balls to do it? I know it sounds stupid and immature to frame refraining from full scale massacre as some sort of emasculation, but before you write that off, take a moment to consider how, at every turn, the Bushies have demonstrated that they think that anything short of being a nasty, brutish bully is a sure sign you’ve turned into a girl. Let’s just hope the Democrats can find a way to stop him.
31 Responses to “BushCo looking for a way to excuse nuclear attacks on Iran?”
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And that, dear comrades, is the focus of our great anxiety. We know the President has the will to defy Congress should they try to rein him in. We don’t know yet whether Congress has the will to even lift a finger against him.
After seeing Bush’ behavior last week during a press conference this is not surprising. He acted like an indignant teenager and insisted that troops would not be pulled out of Iraq until he thought the job was done. He looked like he was going to start stomping his feet too.
Bush seems to be in vandalism mode. Look at some of his recent appointments (the kind Congress doesn’t get to approve). He knows they are not popular and were put there to erode those agencies.
Bushco is downright dangerous. They really need to look at impeachment more seriously, before they do more damage.
This is breathtaking in its sheer stupidity. If we hadn’t gone after the non-existant WMDS—hell, if the admin hadn’t outed one of the agents in the anti-WMD program—-we’d have had the wherewithal to keep an eye on this stuff. Then again, if we hadn’t attacked a country for nothing, and demoralized them by turning their land into a killing field, if we hadn’t…..
Oh, Good God, there’s no end to it, is there? It’s just beyond belief.
So, the lesson learned from the Iraq debacle is that they need to deliberately provoke actual showdowns for additional Middle Eastern wars, instead of entirely fictional ones. Wonderful.
Let’s just hope the Democrats can find a way to stop him.
You know, I really must applaud the Republicans for their impeachment of President Clinton over nothing. Thanks to that, any attempt to impeach a Republican president for at least a generation is “off the table” because it could only be an act of petty revenge.
This has really exposed the vulnerable underbelly of our Constitutional system. The scale of our government and the growth in the executive bureaucracy has eliminated control of the pursestrings as an effective Congressional power; unless Congress is willing to “shut down” the government on principle, this administration will simply appropriate funds from somewhere else. They illegally shifted funds from Afghanistan operations to Iraq preparations back in ‘02, so why would they behave differently now?
Before the Clinton era, exposure of widespread illegal activity by a President, and open defiance of Congress and the courts by said President, would lead inevitably to resignation, or impeachment and conviction. Yet it is utterly impossible to remove Bush and Cheney from office. Count the votes in the Senate; there are more than enough Senators who applaud Bush when he wipes his ass with the Constitution.
So, if Democrats can’t de-fund, and can’t impeach, what’s left to stop the Decider from nuking the entire Middle East in a pissy fit? Off the top of my head, I can only think of military officers deciding en masse to honor their oaths to the Constitution over the chain of command. And that’s a pretty tenuous hook to hang a hope hat on.
Think you’re right.
He might well be crazy enough.
And getting daily crazier as all the fear demons threaten to crash back in upon him.
[trapped rat scenario]
The weakness and evil of fear coming back to visit once again.
This piece of shi*t scares the hell outta me.
To believe both that you and everyone you know is hard working and deserves all your luxuries while some other people are so inherently lazy that they can’t be bothered to do a thing without some kind of whip across their back requires you to believe that those other people are different from you in some fundamental way.
Actually, I think it’s the opposite: Bush knows perfectly well what a lazy good-for-nothing he really is … and yet he was able to become president by barely lifting a finger! So if he can do that, all of those other people must be even lazier than he is.
Bush honestly doesn’t seem to realize how many advantages he’s had throughout his life, which points to very, very bad parenting.
Very nice, functional description of the processes and expression of racism in political discourse. Thanks for the insight.
[…] Amanda Marcotte thinks the Bush administration is looking to justify a nuclear exchange with Iran, primarily because Bush thinks nuclear war is manly. I don’t want to think that, but how anyone could think ratcheting up tensions with Iran by a factor of one million is a good idea is beyond me; if this happens, it will be hard to see this as anything but Bush deliberately picking a fight–trying to advance the great neocon dream of carnage from Damascus to Tehran in any way he can. Add to: Bloglines | document.write(”Del.icio.us”) | Digg it | +Google | Y! MyWeb […]
It’s not really a “thoughtâ€? Rumsfeld is having here so much as a long-standing ritual of dehumanization…
That’s propably the clearest way to describe this “Oh those people can pull their socks up” mentality that I’ve seen.
I don’t want to believe that Bush would launch a nuclear war to prove his toughness–but I don’t see how this can be seen any other way.
Just when you think the Bush administration can’t get any lower, they grab a shovel and keep digging.
‘and starting modest drawdowns of American forces to encourage Iraqis, as Rumsfeld wrote, “to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.â€?’
This from a group of people (Bushites) who’ve had servants pull up their socks for them their whole lives? What a bunch of arrogant assholes…
The more I see this line trotted out, the more convinced I am that it’s a belief that is racist to the core.
**Apologies for threadjacking - this is a more ‘in general’ reply and not really Iraq War specific**
Except when people cite people ‘they know’ who are ‘lazy’ who are the same race as them. I get this argument thrown at me all the time when I try to discuss social services - everyone’s got the perfect ancedotal story to justify why (insert social plan here) is being exploited by The Lazy Masses ™.
I’m not arguing there’s not a racial component, but it’s more complicated than that, and attacking it just from that perspective doesn’t do anything for the seemingly pervasive feeling that ’someone, somewhere is screwing you over’ and so looking out for yourself and letting everyone else go down is ok.
Well Bush pretty much destroyed the military so if he wants to massively attack anyone, nukes are going to have to be on the table. Now Cheney may be evil but he’s not crazy, so i hoping that he will reign W in. Maybe Cheney can distract W from the button by jingling his keys in front W’s face.
twig:
maybe “tribalist” would be more specific — just as long as the folks involved are other in some way they can be targets of hate.
Meanwhile, much as I think that the wingnuts in the administration would like to use nuclear weapons on Iran, I fondly imagine that they’re in too much disarray to do it in the immediate future, with the president, Rumsfeld and Cheney all lame ducks and a bunch of congressional lawyers just itching ti investigate no-bid contracts. Although they’re crazy, they’re also in this for personal and policitcal advantage, so it would require more of a media campaign than they’ve got now to convince themselves that this would play out OK. (Another major terrorist attack, of course, and all bets are off.)
There’s also the military to consider. Every officer in the chain of comman has to be thinking that six months ago refusing an illegal order to fire nuclear weapons would land them in leavenworth or some undisclosed location, but six months from now it might land them the congressional medal of honor.
pablo - “Now Cheney may be evil but he’s not crazy”
You know, I really want to believe that, but…
I think Cheney is so drunk on power (while GWB is just drunk), I could see scenarios where his orgasmic need to express his domination overwhelms his last shreds of decency and rationality.
However, I sure hope I’m wrong…
Now Cheney may be evil but he’s not crazy
I disagree. I think Cheney’s crazier than Bush is.
In retrospect, I hope Sandy O’Connor realizes what a bad idea it was to put two dry drunks in charge of the country. I’d like to think the realization keeps her up at night.
But then I think, “A Republican with a conscience? There ain’t so such animal.”
You know, in a sick, twisted way, I almost hope Bush does bomb Iran. It seems to me that the only way to knock people off their “War on Terra” high-horses and complacent 101st Fighting Keyboardist wank-perches is to show them exactly what a real global terrorist war would look like. If they think 9/11 was bad, just wait until after we level Tehran and turn the Dasht-e Kavir into radioactive glass.
Not a one of these assholes has ever read a history textbook, or they’d know exactly where their warmongering, fascist policies lead, so they won’t be able to figure it out until they actually see it for themselves. And even then, whether or not they grok the point is still a 50-50% proposition.
I understand the generals revolted, and asked/insisted that that option be taken off the table. I could see him ordering a nuclear attack, and the relevant generals saying “no”.
As long as he keeps his precious bodily fluids pure.
Jokes aside, the problem with the truly insane is that you can’t be certain about that until it’s to late. If you cry wolf to early, nobody will listen when it’s time. It doesn’t matter that you were sincere all along.
Hey! Our Preznit is a manly man, and if a manly man has to kill tens of thousands of folks who never did him any wrong (or, more accurately, order other folks to kill them) just to prove how manly he is, who are we to question? Rember the conservative heirarchy of loyalty: first, faux manliness; second, faux godliness; third, faux patriotism; nowhere on the list, basic human decency.
One thing you have to admire about the wingnuts: They stay on message. Charles Krauthammer (and doesn’t he look like death warmed over?) came out with a column this morning making the same point—that Maliki and the Shiites have to take responsibility for themselves.
How nice. We wreck the whole country and it’s up to them to fix it.
What disturbs me most is that all of those dead Iraqi people are extremelylazy. And unthankful.
Codpiece Accomplished and the Penguin both understand that criticizing a person’s crazy geopolitical blood orgy is exactly the same thing as calling into question the existence of their huge, mammoth masculinity.
I’m pretty much just waiting for the Headline that says: “Bush To Iraq: Stop Invading Yourselves!” at this point.
Please. This is silly. An impotent, lame-duck president huffing and puffing to try to prove he’s relevant. What a joke.
Bush can’t get Bolton approved. And remember after the election he said he would try. I wouldn’t even take the bait: Bush is impotent. He’d need Viagra to invade Laura. Nothing to see here.
epistemology:”…Nothing to see here.”
Pardon me, but WTF? Yes, he’s a lame duck, and he’s huffing and puffing and being silly and petulant. But he’s the frakkin commander in chief, and he’s raining death down upon people as we speak, and he could amp that up at any second. Please don’t imply that I oughta calm down, stop fussing, and dismiss him as a pathetic little clown. I mean, he is, but he’s a pathetic little clown with WMD.
Cheney/Bush are crazy enough to try it.
It could very well come down to whether there are enough high-level military officers who are willing to sacrafice their careers by refusing to obey a nuclear attack order.
I know it’s been said before but how is the Iraqi government meant to get on with ruling the country when their army, police force and civil service have all been decimated or disbanded? This is just a transparent excuse to pull out while trying to save face, presumably because the oil supply’s been legally secured and Halliburton’s wrung as much money as they can out of the situation by now.
As I’ve said before…
The neocons, and Cheny, want to break the nuclear taboo. (Even it it’s just itty-bitty “tactical” ones…) G-dub is messianic enough to think that he’s the only president with the balls to actually do it, that future presidents won’t.
Having given it more thought, you guys might be right about Cheney. Thanks for shattering the illusion that helps me sleep at night.
pablo, sorry…
If there’s anything we’ve learned over the last 6-years, it’s that we are more than capable (as a country) of having leadership as bad or worse than any other country. We are also capable of treating other humans as bad or worse than any other country.
American exceptionalism is on life support and not expected to last the night…