It's okay. Lots of people disagree with me about Baby Bush. In my less cynical moments, I don't think he means to be a power-mad megalomaniac. He doesn't intend to suck the country and what he can get to of the world dry to support his imperialist ambitions. He's merely convinced that if the rest of the world ran their affairs according to his plans, the world would be a better place; and now that he's got the power to force them to run their affairs that way, it would be silly not to use it.
And yes, I think he is imperialist. No, he doesn't intend to take over the entire world, but he does intend to essentially seize Iraq and its oil resources and colonize it, placing his own military governor in charge. That's pretty freaking imperialist. But it's not just Baby Bush: we've done (or tried to do) the same sort of thing all over the world under other Presidents, except that we call them "peacekeepers" instead of military governors.
I cannot see any credible threat to the US from Iraq, terrorist or otherwise. (Even Iraq's neighbors say Iraq is no threat to them.) As a matter of fact, that seems to be the very reason Bush has chosen Iraq as the setting for his war: it's projected to be a pushover compared with somebody more serious like North Korea. There is no evidence that Iraq was involved with 9/11, and it's very unlikely that Hussein and bin Laden could be in a room together for five minutes without killing each other.
Yes, yes, I know: "You want to try disarming him after he has nuclear weapons?" No, not particularly. Whether he has nuclear weapons is between him and the UN. If the UN is so all-fired convinced that he should be disarmed, then let the UN worry about disarming him. We shouldn't have a dog in that fight. And whatever the danger to us now from Iraq-equipped terrorism, it's nowhere near the danger we'll be in from terrorism sponsored by every oil-rich Muslim country in the Middle East once Iraq is an American colony.
America used to be a country to admire among the nations of the world. In the last couple of decades, however, we've been becoming a police state on the inside and the Evil Empire Jr. on the outside. (Generous? Are you kidding? Are armed robbers generous because they give some of their loot to charity? That's exactly what the US government does.)
But Baby Bush has done so much cowboy posturing now that it's politically impossible for him to back down, even with his public support hemorrhaging away. Watching him continuing to threaten, "This is your last chance!" and "This is your really last chance!" and "This time I really really really mean it, honest!" makes it difficult to avoid the cynical view: Papa Bush had a war, and Slick Willy had a war, and if Baby Bush doesn't get his war too, nobody will talk to him at cocktail parties. As I saw on a .sig the other day, "Yo, George! When even the Germans don't want to fight, get a frickin' clue!"
What he needs to revive his support is another horrific terrorist attack that kills thousands of people but can easily be blamed on Iraq. Stay tuned.
See what I mean about cynical?
No. I'm not a pacifist. I understand that war is sometimes necessary. I even believe that the United States has been involved in a few just wars. But this one is a stupid idea from beginning to end, apparently stemming from the theory that it's okay to give Bush whatever power he wants because he's a conservative and we can trust him not to abuse it. It's not worth a single drop of American blood, including the four guys killed yesterday in Kuwait when their chopper crashed during training. It's not even worth any Iraqi blood. Hussein is already killing plenty of Iraqis every day; he doesn't need any help from us.
Yes, I support our troops. I support bringing them home where they belong and not spending their lives on a stupid arrogant demonstration that the US military is bigger than the Iraqi military.
