EVEN A FASCIST BLOWHARD LIKE PAT BUCHANAN GETS IT RIGHT SOMETIMES-- THE DIRE CONSEQUENCES OF BUSH'S IRAQI ADVENTURE

For all his decades of vile reactionary blovating, when Pat Buchanan is finally on the way to his rightful place in DanteWorld, the only thing for which he'll be worth remembering, will be the starring role he played in inadvertently helping Bush win the presidential selection of 2000 (Google: butterfly ballots + elderly Jews in Palm Beach voting for Nazis). Still, 5 years later, on this day, Buchanan made some excellent points-- though I suspect he doesn't understand how excellent-- in a piece he wrote about Bush's failed war in Iraq.

The article is about the "cut and run" concept, an age-old right-wing straw man that helps shift blame for their failed hubristic, self-righteous, imperialistic and nationalistic adventures onto democrats (or, in this case, Democrats). I bet you didn't know that more Communards were butchered in the fascist aftermath of Louis Napoleon's imbecilic-- and catastrophic-- war against Prussia than all Parisians, aristos and otherwise, during the entire Terror of the previous century!) But the cutting and running nonsense I'll leave for the talking heads on CNN and Faux. There was something else ole Pat talked about which is far more important.

I like his sneering mention of John McCain's stupider-than-Bush call for sending 10,000 more troops human sacrifices into Iraq (although I wish he had mentioned that Hillary, Warner, Biden and Clark are all on the same page, more or less) and how that proposal "has been met with polite silence, while all signals out of this city point to withdrawal, beginning in 2006, of scores of thousands of U.S. troops, whether the insurgency has been defeated or not, whether an Iraqi democracy is assured or not."

Yep, it's a post Murtha-world now and if Americans have to choose between sober veteran congressman and much-decorated war hero John Murtha (D-PA) and psychotic, fabricating, foaming-at-the-mouth, freshman witch and crack whore Jean "Piece of" Schmidt (R-OH), the troops are on their way home.
As ole Pat puts it "the argument suddenly seems over and the nation appears to have reached a consensus: earliest possible withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, consistent with the avoidance of a strategic disaster."

But there is a rub (as Pat points out, a rub that was absolutely inevitable but one we, as a People, deserve for electing someone as utterly ignorant of history as George W. Bush-- or for allowing ourselves to be bamboozled into acquiescing to his 2 patently transparent coups). "We are not," explains Buchanan, "going to get out of Iraq without suffering terrible consequences for having gone in. And when we come out, we no longer control what goes on within." I don't think a Wes Clark militarist mentality or a Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden "we're-tougher-than-Republicans political posturing will be able to come to terms with that. But they'll have no choice. It's just a matter of how many more Americans and Iraqis have to die for their stupidity.

"Once we depart, there is no guarantee the insurgents will be defeated, no guarantee that thousands of those who cast their lot with us will not be massacred, no guarantee Iraq will remain one nation, no guarantee there will not be chaos and civil war," says Pat. He's being sweet. There is a guarantee-- it's inevitable and it will be far, far worse than what happened after the kind of REALITY BushCo so vehemently abhors forced the American invaders out of Vietnam. It will be worse because Vietnam is a real country (despite our efforts and those of the colonialist French to divide it) and Iraq is not a real country (despite our efforts and those of the colonialist French and British to stitch one together for their own convenience). And because the Vietnamese are inherently sweet people and the Iraqis... aren't.

"There is no guarantee that after having invested* $200 to $300 billion and the lives of thousands of splendid young Americans, we will not end up with an Iraq that is a strategic ally of Iran and a Sunni Triangle that is a base camp and training camp for terrorists larger than the one we destroyed in Afghanistan." Well Pat's being kind again; I'd say that's pretty well-guaranteed too. Bush will be remembered as the president-- if History allows itself to call him that in the future-- who made the single worst strategic blunder in the history of war. And it's our fault for not understanding that that is inevitably just what happens when you allow a narrow-minded, insular moron steeped in ignorance and arrogance to assume stewardship of the nation.




*"Invested," of course being an operative word here. Americans and Iraqis, America and Iraq, may suffer mightily for Bush's... well, let's call them "blunders" for now... but the payoff on his investment will be in the creation of generational wealth for lots of little Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds and the heirs of Halliburton and of all the other foul components of BushCo.