So Much For That "Spreading Liberation And Democracy" Thingie
by Steve
Take yourself back into those heady days when we were told that the adults were returning to Washington to run foreign policy, and the media lauded the incoming A-Team like saviors. But wait, August vacations at the ranch took a higher priority than August 6, 2001 PDBs, and in the calamity that followed, the A-Team took political advantage of the climate of fear they created to sell the country on "we can go it alone" and pre-emption is best.
Shortly after letting Mr. Dead or Alive escape at Tora Bora, the A-Team turned their attention full-time to the ultimate prize; finishing old business. But to do that, the A-Team treated us and Congressional Democrats to a media manipulation and strategic disinformation campaign run through the White House and carried out by the Rendon Group, using our media and supposed journalists like Judy Miller and Bob Woodward to drive the opposition party towards a use of force resolution just in time for the 2002 elections.
Before the IAEA could fully take apart the faulty case that the war drive was based on, Bush and the A-Team implemented a war without heeding the cautions and obtaining the strong approval of his “Pottery Barn” Secretary of State nor now apparently his Secretary of Defense, who seemingly now wants to wash his hands of the war before The Hague comes calling. Neither one had the guts to live up to their alleged convictions and stop this war before it started. In this vacuum, the Vice President and others who did take a strong position steered a gullible, immature, unstable, petty-minded, and in-over-his-head Commander in Chief into a war for which we had a sufficient plan to win the battles but never a plan to win the war.
As a result, the A-Team has stretched and nearly ruined the best military in the world, our actions have cost us much of the respect we had around the globe, and to top it off, we are now propping up leaders in Iraq who have the active support of Iran and the makings of being just as reprehensible as the tyrant we replaced. And how does the American public react to five years of the A-Team running this scam? The public now increasingly supports an isolationist, "come home" approach to the world where we should keep our nose out of other folks’ business. By a 2-1 margin in a recent Pew poll, the American public now rejects the Bush "we'll go it alone if we have to" approach to foreign policy.
What a raging success these guys are. Cheney and the rest of these guys have managed to turn the country inward and against the notion that we have a mission to save the world, thereby undercutting the need for all those overseas corporate crony profit opportunities supported with American taxpayer dollars. It appears that the public would like to take a breather from saving the world, since we can't even save ourselves here at home or figure out how to in the first place.
Oh sure, the GOP will react domestically as they always do next year: they'll blame the immigrants and run on fear again, when the problem isn't the immigrants but the people in charge who have degraded our national honor and soiled us in the court of world public opinion. And what will get lost in the process for at least several years until public interest can replace private gain once again in Washington, is the underlying principle, supported by many Americans, that this country is a force for good in the world, and not something to be ashamed of.
This country needs to regain its faith in the world and our ability to lead it, as well as regain our zeal for tackling challenges wherever we find them. There is nothing wrong with this loss of confidence and aversion to challenges that a change of leadership next year can't fix. Immigrants and foreigners are not the problem; our GOP A-Team leaders are.
(Thanks to Pew for the graphic)