Sigh for America
Bush’s latest rationale for this war is to act in support of “the Iraqi military,” but does any such entity exist? Does defending the openly tribal government of Nouri al-Maliki mean that US soldiers are now an adjunct to Shi’ite death squads, even while being their target? If Maliki and Bush are allies, why do they talk past each other? Why should the Sunni leaders of “moderate” Arab states not be alarmed by the tightening US-Shi’a embrace? And when insanity rules, does the fact that an air attack on Iran’s nuclear facility would be insane any longer mean it will not happen?
In other words, the “surge” in Iraq that matters is the movement from disaster to catastrophe. A question: How can otherwise rational policy makers and military leaders continue to cooperate in this madness?
That, obviously, is a question that goes to the US Constitution: What happens when a president’s dogged determination begins to show itself as an obsessive irrationality? In numerous television appearances last week, interviewers successfully drew Bush out, showing him to be a man in the grip of an idée fixe: He is saving America. From what, now that all explanations for the war have been debunked, he cannot say. But the president’s transcendent project of national redemption justifies his isolated inflexibility. That his decisions so palpably undermine US security and lead to unnecessary deaths means little to him because his decisions are deemed correct not by outcomes, but by being his. He is the decider.