Saturday, January 14, 2006

March to War: Part Deux

Atrios synthesizes the "march to war" campaign the Bushies are now waging against Iran:

Winter/Spring - The clone army of foreign policy "experts" from conservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of before suddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowning furiously and expressing concerns about the "grave threat" that Iran poses. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members start appearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear program and talking up Iran's human rights violations.
Spring/Summer - "Liberal hawks" point out that all serious people understand the serious threat posed by serious Iran, and while they acknowledge grudgingly that the Bush administration has fucked up everything it touches, they stress, and I mean stress, that we really must support the Bush administration's serious efforts to deal with the serious problem and that criticisms of such serious approaches to a serious problem are highly irresponsible and come only from irrational very unserious Bush haters who would rather live in Iran than the U.S.

Late Summer - Rumsfeld denies having an Iran war plan "on his desk." He refuses to answer if he has one "in his file cabinet." Andy Card explains that you don't roll out new product until after labor day.

Early Fall - Bush suddenly demands Congress give him the authority to attack Iran to ensure they "disarm." Some Democrats have the temerity to ask "with what army?" Marshall Wittman and Peter Beinart explain that courageous Democrats will have the courageous courage to be serious and to confront the "grave threat" with seriousness and vote to send other peoples' kids off to war, otherwise they'll be seen as highly unserious on national security. Neither enlists.

Late October - Despite the fact that all but 30 Democrats vote for the resolution, Republicans run a national ad campaign telling voters that Democrats are objectively pro-Ahmadinejad. Glenn Reynolds muses, sadly, that Democrats aren't just anti-war, but "on the other side." Nick Kristof writes that liberals must support the war due to Ahmadinejad's opposition to gay rights in Iran.

Election Day - Democrats lose 5 seats in the Senate, 30 in the House. Marshall Wittman blames it on the "pro-Iranian caucus."

The Day After Election Day - Miraculously we never hear another word about the grave Iranian threat. Peter Beinart writes a book about how serious Democrats must support the liberation of Venezuela and Bolivia.

Yup, that's the script. And as Atrios notes in a later post, this isn't really about war - it's about domestic politics:


Joking aside, I suppose it's necessary that just because I mock the inevitable rhetoric on Iran from the Bush administration and the wingnutosphere doesn't mean that I don't think a nuclear Iran thing would be a less than desirable development. But Iran Talk has nothing to do with what we're going to about that, Iran Talk is entirely about domestic politics. There's a difference between Talking and Doing, even if words have consequences, and the Iran PR campaign is more about domestic politics than actually doing anything about the problem.

This "march to war" bullshit, or Iran Talk as Atrios calls it, is just another part of Karl Rove's strategy to scare the piss out of stupid, fat, brain-dead Americans too busy working their three jobs and refinancing their houses to realize the idiots running our country are making things worse in the War on Terror, not better.

Notice too how the Swift Boating of Democratic Representative John Murtha has started in concert with the "march to war" p.r. campaign. Notice also how Howie Fucking Putz in the Washington Post gave this Brent Bozell sponsored garbage credence today by publishing it. (I won't link to Howie's piece of shit article, but I will link to Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake noting how Howie as usual fucked up the story and left out important info about the people behind the Murtha allegations.)

Got the message, everybody? The world's a dangerous place, only Republicans (specifically George W. Bush) can keep you safe and opponents of the Iraq war and/or critics of Bush administration policy are cowards, liars, and traitors.

Let's party like it's 2003.

Comments:
Let's see, while the UN goes blah, blah, blah, the Iranians enrich the uranium until sometime in 2007 they reach the point of no return. Then what?

Rather then complain, what do you suggest?
 
What do I suggest?

Okay, here's what I suggest - only it won't work, cuz' it's already too late.

Don't invade Iraq.

By not invading Iraq, Iran would still have to worry about Saddam breathing down on them and the U.S. wouldn't be tapped out both financially and militarily to actually pose a threat to Iran.

But instead the neo-cons decided to take out Saddam and create a Shi'ite controlled government in Iraq that looks like it is going to be heavily influenced, if not completely co-opted, by Shi'ite Iran, and the U.S. is so tapped out both financially and militarily that we do not have a viable military option to deal with Iran.

Frankly, I can't understand why the Bush administration should suddenly be so worried about Iran gaining nuclear weapons. They don't seem to be too concerned about nuclear proliferation coming out of the old Eastern European bloc countries and they certainly weren't too concerned when Pakistan gave away nuclear technology and know-how to half a dozen scary countries around the world, including Iran. Since WE gave Pakistan the bomb and Pakistan has been trading nuclear secrets to other nations, doesn't that make us culpable with the problem too?

To be honest, the drumbeat on this Iran story is so full of hypocrisy and bullshit that I also feel like this is just another Rove "rat-fucking" anyway. If the administration was so concerned about Iran, they should have been doing something about them the last five years. The question is, why weren't they? Madelaine Albright asked the same question and the response was, "Well, we were...but we can't tell you what cuz' its classified."

In other words, the administration has been doing nothing about Iran for the last five years. they figured after Iraq fell and we planted "democracy" there, the other problems in the Middle East, including Iran, would take care of themselves. But instead we have managed to plant civil discord in Iraq and Shi'ite gov't that helps Iran out more and more each passing day.
 
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