Excellent Guardian article... their foreign coverage is improving a lot, although they're still too woolly LW for me overall...
guardian.co.uk
The government's relish for war suffuses the whole city, yet I have caught no sign of it anywhere outside Washington. Other observers, like Tim Garton Ash, report the same phenomenon. Living here, one begins to feel, after a while, the way hostages do: the Stockholm syndrome sets in. Deep down, one may know the cause is ludicrous, but it so dominates the whole of one's life that after a while the victim gets sucked in and starts thinking these people have a point (I speak as someone who caught himself using the word "gotten" in conversation the other day, which suggests total brainwashing).
Somehow, you have to remember where this started. Fifteen months ago, the US was brutally attacked by terrorists. With international support, it went after the perpetrators, initially with brilliant success that confounded anyone who believed Afghanistan would break even the US army. With the job half done, somewhere around the caves of Tora Bora, it got - what? - bored or distracted or simply confused. Should you ever be charged by a rhino, which has overwhelming force but a tiny brain, your life may be spared in similar circumstances: halfway through, it forgets what it was angry about.
The US chose instead to concentrate on an elective confrontation. It had no credible evidence of a prior connection between its attackers and the Iraqis - though its own policies may have been created such a connection, on the ancient Arab principle that my enemy's enemy is my friend. It had no credible evidence of an imminent threat from the Iraqis (threat = capability + intent). It could make no intellectual case that such a confrontation would lessen the danger from terrorism. Indeed, most analysts were and are convinced it can only increase it.
Love the conclusion, too.
The signs that al-Qaida and its allies across the world - in places as obvious as the Middle East, as remote as Australia and eastern Paraguay - are regrouping, and preparing for new attacks is overwhelming. So are the indications that they are assisted by the way the US diverted so many resources into an entirely different conflict and tossed away global goodwill in the process.
There is no obvious explanation for the US allowing its own agenda to be hijacked in this fashion by a notion that a year ago had minimal support from anyone without a government job or a column in the Washington Post. Oil is one factor, for sure, though I do not accept the theory that is at the heart of some American masterplan. Rather, it is true that an administration run by oilmen undoubtedly has different perceptions from any other. I certainly don't believe that's the whole story.
In general, people have two perceptions of the Bushies: that they are strong, patriotic and fearless defenders of freedom, or that they are dangerous warmongers. There is a third possibility, which has been under-considered: that they are, quite simply, blunderers.
Note the bolded sentence, Tim... it isn't just me who thinks the Post too often preaches the neocon gospel. |
