The same old crowd

While the media continues to distract us with the interminable dog-and-pony show known as the “presidential election,” the likelihood of an attack on Iran continues to rise.

Polls show that about 60% of the American public think we should pursue talks with Iran. But, as Dick Cheney said in another context: “So?” The political classes and their media parrots apparently don’t fall within that 60%. Once again, and for the umpteenth time, we find ourselves in a position of watching helplessly while the elites prepare to sink us into further chaos and destruction.

The two main reasons—excuses, I should say—are Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its arming of militias in Iraq. Both are the products of exaggeration, distortion, and outright deception. There are many reasons why attacking Iran is a terrible idea. William R. Polk offered a good summary of them a few months ago. But there’s one very simple and elemental reason that generally goes unremarked in the mainstream media, although I am by no means the first to point it out in the blogosphere. And that is: that the same group of people who ran the Iraq War would be coordinating the attack on Iran.

In other words, even if you thought there was a possible rationale for attacking Iran—which I don’t think, but let’s just talk hypothetically—such an attack would be doomed to have disastrous results for us simply because it would be initiated by the Bush administration.

Call me old fashioned, but I think a record of failure should count for something when the people and organizations that have failed are proposing new projects. Especially something as important and hazardous as an act of war. Now, when I say a “record of failure,” I am aware that the phrase is too mild to completely describe the situation. In fact, the Bush administration has brought the art of failure to a level of perfection never before achieved in the annals of U.S. politics. In our decadent version of the ancient story of Midas, the Bush regime has managed to turn every single thing it touches into pure shit.

I challenge anyone to come up with one Bush policy or initiative that has not been a corrupt, despicable failure. There isn’t one. These people have been wrong on everything with breathtaking consistency. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, to cite only the most obvious example, has been a disaster of unimaginable proportions, a stinking cesspool of rapacity, callous destruction, and mass murder. Bush has destroyed that country, and we can not yet calculate the extent of the damage he’s done to his own. Naturally we notice the economic impact, although the media acts as if the war has nothing to do with the recession. Worse has been the impact on the men who were sent to Iraq, and the degradation of our own souls by being a party to these crimes against humanity.

So why should we ever again trust these people with a decision to go to war? Credibility is a finite quantity. To forget what has gone before, acting as if this Iran situation can be effectively managed by this group of politicians at this time, is insane. Nothing they say can be trusted—they lie every time they move their lips. When they carry out their intentions, the results have always been bad. They have long ago run out of chances to prove that they can be right about anything, or effective in carrying out the duties of government. The entire debate, if it can be called that, is invalid already because the people who are arguing for an attack are proven criminals.

This is a primary example, I may add, of why the Democrats failed the country so gravely in not pursuing impeachment. Even if conviction was unlikely, and even if impeachment would have hurt Democratic election chances (the usual excuse, which I dispute), it was the right thing to do because it would help tie this administration up in a survival for its political life instead of being given tacit permission to continue to act as if it were a legitimate government that can be trusted to take us to war.