Special Interest Group on CRAP

There is no better example of crap than the current administration calling the war in Iraq the “war on terror”.

It’s a great tragedy that the president was able to mislead the American public into thinking that mounting a military offensive to oust Saddam Hussein from power would result in a world safe from terror. Quite the contrary, I predicted at the time that it would result in an even worse situation. Whereas the world was solidly behind the US after the terrible 9/11 attack, the world is now firmly convinced that the US is engaged in a war of aggression on Islam.

How did the president manage to delude the US into thinking that the war on Saddam’s regime was a front in the war on terror? For one thing, people were angry after 9/11, and they wanted revenge. Second, the administration flat out LIED to the American public that the Iraqi regime was somehow involved in the 9/11 attack and support for Al Quaeda. Moreover, the administration felt that they needed to show that they were doing *something* to combat terrorism, and it was a convenient deception to charge out to conquer Iraq.

Is there any recovery from the current situation? Probably not for a long time after Bush is gone from office. A large fraction of the US public still wants to cling to the belief that Islam is the problem. A large fraction of the US public still clings to the notion that terrorism can be fought with convential military campaigns. The US has largely squandered any moral high ground that we may have occupied in the past, and once such trust is lost, it is not easy to recover.

Ultimately I am confident that the US will recover somewhat from the deception that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld perpetrated on the world. I am less confident that middle America (the so-called red states) will easily adapt to the reality of a heterogenous mix of religions, cultures, birthplaces, and races that exist in places like Los Angeles, silicon valley, and New York. It takes a long time to change attitudes, but the continuing migration of people around the world will eventually permeate their consciousness. It remains to be seen whether this will occur before they drive the world to the brink of global war.

History will judge the Bush/Cheny administration almost solely on the outcome of the war in Iraq. That judgement will probably be harsh, but the judgement is inevitable. Bush’s suggestion that democracy will be good for the middle east is probably true, and that goal will probably be honored just as Nixon’s initiative to open relations with China is honored today. The dominant legacy from Bush’s presidency will almost certainly be that he drove the world to a level of hatred that went beyond what existed on 9/11. His approach to the war on terror is simply crap.