Killing America by Claiming Failure as Success

BuzzFlash was looking at the front page of the July 9th business section of the Chicago Tribune and came across a large photo of a young, short-skirted woman trying out a software program on a laptop. All around her were sophisticated marketing booths for such hi-tech firms as Intel and Panasonic. Part of the photo caption read: "Thousands of young visitors crowded the exhibition space eager to try out the newest offerings from local and international tech companies."

Was this hi-tech bazaar in Silicon Valley? No, it was, according to the caption, "a technology show Friday in Ho Chi Minh City."

And then we were thinking about the effort of China to buy Unocal, the gas company that, ironically, has figured so strongly in the "deep background" story about why the U.S. needed to control Afghanistan (that is to say a trans-Afghan oil pipeline that Unocal was planning for years.) Indeed, the current president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was a paid consultant to Unocal before the U.S. invasion.

Why is BuzzFlash mentioning this in an editorial about Bush's failed war on terrorism? Because, much to the chagrin of Cheney and Rumsfeld (who are still trying to make up for the "loss of face" and "emasculation of America" that occurred on their watch in the White House in the '70s), we won the Vietnam War by leaving it.

Our two foes -- Vietnam and China (the latter nation which was a national enemy of Vietnam until we forced the former into the arms of the latter by taking on the Vietnam War to begin with) -- are now budding capitalist markets. In fact, China is now emerging as an economic powerhouse that may end up owning a good chunk of American free enterprise.

Which brings us to Bush's colossal blunders in his public relations war on terror. Well, the public relations part has actually been a success because it has been based on smoke and mirrors (and it got him re-elected), but the war on terror has been an unmitigated disaster.

The Busheviks aren't so much concerned about decreasing terrorism as they are about projecting an image of dominant power, just as the Chickenhawk architects of the Iraq War were more concerned about the "image" of the U.S. pulling out of Vietnam, than by the fact that we "won" by withdrawing (and saved thousands upon thousands of American and Vietnamese lives in the process.)

The Bush Adminsitration Chickenhawks (a tradition inherited by their children and grandchildren, as well as pro-Iraq War Young Republicans who are "too busy" to sign up for military service) want to use the rallying cry of terrorism -- and the fear it invokes -- as the vehicle to reassert U.S. military and nuclear supremacy.

But it is a conundrum that threatens our national security and our lives, because a war on terrorism requires intelligent and resilient strategy, not a nuclear "shock and awe" blunderbuss approach.

A Newsweek article this Monday confirms the BuzzFlash critique:

In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst [who headed the CIA’s bin Laden unit for nine years], rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.

Now, he said, "we’re at the point where jihad is self-sustaining," where Islamic "holy warriors" in Iraq fight America with or without allegiance to al-Qaida’s bin Laden.

The cold statistics of a RAND Corp. database show the impact of the explosion of violence in Iraq: The 5,362 deaths from terrorism worldwide between March 2004 and March 2005 were almost double the total for the same 12-month period before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The Newsweek piece undercuts the most basic foundation of Bush's continued rule by deception; i.e., that he is a bold, resolute wartime leader:

Scheuer sees a different way out -- through U.S. foreign policy. He said he resigned last November to expose the U.S. leadership’s "willful blindness" to what needs to be done: withdraw the U.S. military from the Mideast, end "unqualified support" for Israel, sever close ties to Arab oil-state "tyrannies."

He acknowledged such actions aren’t likely soon, but said his longtime subject bin Laden will "make us bleed enough to get our attention." Ultimately, he said, "his goal is to destroy the Arab monarchies."

So why do so many Democratic leaders, such as John Kerry and Joe Biden, support Bush's basic approach, but quibble with some issues around the margin? Good question, because as far as BuzzFlash is concerned, by basically confirming that Bush is on the "right track," but that we need MORE troops, the Democratic leaders are also helping to make our nation less secure, because it is Bush's fundamental premise which is fatally flawed and killing us slowly, not the "fine points" of his strategy.

As we have said from the beginning, the debate is not about whether or not you are opposed to terrorism? Who ISN'T opposed to terrorism? But if the Democratic leadership basically agrees with Bush's archaic, inflexible and inept policies, they are enabling a disastrous approach because they don't have the ability to frame the issue as it should be framed: it's not a question of whether or not to fight terrorism; it's a question of HOW to fight terrorism effectively.

If you change a coach after a losing season, no one accuses the owner of the team of enabling the cross town rivals. You are making the change to increase the odds of beating the other team. BuzzFlash is located in Chicago and when the Coach of the Bears, Dave Wannstedt, was fired for continuing to lose, none of the sports commentators claimed that the owners of the Bears or Wannstedt's numerous critics were enabling the Green Bay Packers, the archrival of the Bears. Wannstedt was fired to improve the chance of the Bears winning against the Packers, not to make the Bears weaker. Why doesn't that same "framing" approach work in terms of Bush?

But the Busheviks turn such logic on its head. Failure begets the need for more failure.

We were promised that we would be welcomed with flowers. We were promised a war that would last six weeks. We were told that the mission was accomplished. We were promised a rose garden, but were left standing at the altar with a pile of corpses and a mountain of debt.

How much incompetence and lying can even a cowering lazy mainstream press tolerate and still appear credible? Not only does Karl Rove put every American at risk in his outing of Valerie Plame, but the mainstream media is complicit in tacitly parroting the Bush Administration line of "your either with our failed policy or you are aiding the terrorists."

The White House has gotten away with so much gibberish in their efforts to justify their failures in fighting terrorism that you wouldn't let a toddler off without a punishment for such balderdash. On Iraq alone, Bush used multiple successive reasons to justify the disastrous invasion, including WMDs (that didn't exist), regime change, democratization and the latest crazed "flypaper" strategy. And that's just to name a few. As each one is proven flawed, Rove writes up a new excuse for Bush, and the press transcribes it for the masses.

It would be laughable, except having the Keystone Cops in charge of protecting us threatens our lives, the lives of our family members, and our national security. Even if Bush were successful in halting terrorism, which he's not been, he is letting Osama bin Laden (who he promised to get "dead or alive" in a macho moment -- and failed at that, too) bankrupt our country, which makes for a terrorist victory of another kind.

The ultimate fallback for the Bush Administration position (particularly championed in backroom whispers by Cheney and Rumsfeld) is that we have to stick it out in Iraq because otherwise we will appear to be weak and then we will really get creamed. Of course, this was their argument about the Vietnam War as they reluctantly presided over the evacuation of Saigon under President Ford.

Then again, there's a biographical history at work here: this has been the pattern of George Bush's life. He fails, gets into a jam, and then expects everyone else to bail him out, which his father's friends did again and again in George's checkered business career. (Even with all the "assistance," he only really made big money when some of daddy's friends "rented" his name as GM of the Texas Rangers and used eminent domain to seize property adjacent to a new stadium, which allowed George to profit handsomely from a job that consisted largely of being a greeter and autograph signer at baseball games.)

But if the strategy to "tough out" the Iraq blunder is based on the ludicrous presumption that there are a fixed number of terrorists, and, therefore, you can drain the swamp, we are doomed. The reality, even according to some of Bush's intelligence officers, is that the Iraq war is motivating a new generation of terrorists. In short, Bush is in the business of creating terrorism through "the blunderbuss approach."

Despite Bush's firm belief that he is leading a religious Crusade, a University of Chicago professor has documented that suicide bombers, for example, are politically motivated, not religiously inspired for the most part. The strategic implications of such a finding are far reaching, but, most significantly, it means Bush is 180 degrees off course, and we -- the American and Iraqi people -- are paying the price.

There are no finite number of terrorists that can be drawn to the "flypaper" of Iraq. Bush is regenerating terrorists daily with his "Ostrich" approach to national security.

As that great political scientist Groucho Marx said: "This is so easy to get, a four year old could understand it....Hey run out and get me a four year old."

It's our lives that are at stake.

This is not about political maneuvering. It's about our lives being held in the hands of a grossly incompetent administration, filled with failed ideologues who believe they are enlightened masters of the universe.

But they are just 9 levels above their Peter Principle level of ability -- and our lives are at risk as a result.

Run out and get us some four-year-olds to put in the White House, Congress, and as reporters in the Mainstream Media.

We need help on an emergency basis.

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