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Re: Re: think for yourself

On 9/26/02 10:02 PM, quoth the effervescent dustyvolume at yahoo_com at 
dustyvolume at yahoo_com:

>If you ask me it all smacks of "Wag the Dog" type politics


Well, to kill two birds with one stone....

I don't think this is simply "Wag the Dog." Bush isn't trying to distract 
us, but I think he is trying to manipulate us.

Mid-term elections are in six weeks. No President has _ever_ gotten so 
involved in the mid-term process as Bush has. In many states, and 
sometimes in multiple races in the same state, he and his advisors went 
in before the primaries and chose a candidate to the exclusion of all 
others, causing no small amount of dismay amongst those Republicans left 
out in the cold. Bush personally pushed some people to run, dissuaded 
others, and even, in some cases, pushed some now-candidates to switch 
races. ("Don't run for Congress, John-- run for Senate. I'll back you 
alll the way. You'll have the GOP coffers behind you!") He's got a 
tremendous amount at stake this time out: the Senate is lost by one seat 
thanks to Jim Jeffords: it's only going to take two seats to win it back.

If Bush wants to be effective at all for the next two years, and come 
into his reelection bid looking strong, he has to set his stage now. If 
he fails to get the House and Senate behind him, the next two years are 
going to be as hellish for him as these past two have been, and any hope 
of reelection is shot. He has to get the Senate and the House as 
Republican as possible, and that means he has to get his chosen sons and 
daughters elected. So in addition to throwing lots of money, political 
bones, and personal appearances at his select candidates, he has to do 
something to make the party as a whole look good. Republicans are known 
more for their stands on defense, for that being one of their strong 
points. So how better to make the party look good than to encourage a 
sweeping, patriotic military action?

Thus in answer to you, Steve, I would agree that yes, politics plays a 
major role in everything. But I don't think Bush is playing this the way 
he should. His rush to judgement is short-sighted: he wants to get us in 
the field within six weeks, or at least rattle our sabers loudly enough 
to make Saddam think we're on our way. But what he fails to take into 
account-- or at least take into account seriously enough-- is how it 
makes us look to ourselves and the rest of the world. I fully agree that 
Saddam Hussein is a vile creature, but this relentless pushing towards 
open aggression seems woefully ill-considered and over-eager. How many 
troops will he have to send over? How many will never come back? Where 
will the money come from?   The rest of the world is not exactly putting 
on the war-paint and beating down our door-- who will stand with us? And 
Bush has put forth no viable plan for what-happens-next-- what do we do 
after we take Hussein out, should we be successful? How do we fill that 
vacuum? How do we set up a friendly regime that can last with Iraq 
divided into three distinct ethnic groups who will be jockeying for power 
the moment we leave? And if we do this, against the protests of many Arab 
countries, what's to stop them from taking their revenge against the only 
friendly country we have in the region, Israel? Many in the region have 
no hope of striking against us, but Israel? It's pretty much fair game.

And there's always the question of where we stop, or why we stop. If we 
go in and replace Hussein, well, there's civil unrest all over the world. 
Why don't we go fix Rwanda, while we're at it? Or, looking at it another 
way, why haven't we done that already? Again, I think it's because this 
is the right war for the Republican Party, at the right time. Everyone 
knows what Hussein has done and what he's capable of. He is, in a way, a 
safe target. It's easy to paint the conflict in black and white, and say 
he is a threat to America and the world that must be dealth with, and 
anyone who doesn't agree is unpatriotic and obstreperous. And in _some_ 
ways, I agree. I would simply prefer that we not treat the potential 
shipping of our troops back to war in the Middle East as the most 
expedient way to get onto the six o'clock news.








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