Scowcroft and Baker Up the Ante

[rodeodance]

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney01272005.html


> January 27, 2005

> Scowcroft and Baker Up the Ante

> The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
>
> By MIKE WHITNEY
........The deteriorating situation in Iraq has precipitated this very scenario. The rift we allude to, has, in fact, developed into a yawning chasm; pitting one faction of conservative elder statesmen against their antecedents in the Bush administration. This battle of the giants can be expected to grow exponentially as the principle characters clash over the future of the Iraq occupation.


On the one hand, we have perhaps the most widely respected (conservative) policy experts alive today, advising the administration to withdraw from Iraq. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and James Baker have joined the ranks of anti-war Leftists in calling for an immediate withdrawal of all American troops. They have noted the failed attempts by the Bush administration to establish even minimal security or to achieve the overall objectives of the invasion. With Iraq tilting precipitously towards civil war, and with America's prestige irreparably damaged, their protestations should be regarded as an appeal for a return to political sanity.........

The growing chasm between American elites will have no measurable affect on the embattled White House. Already, the administration has announced its intention to keep at least 120,000 troops deployed in Iraq for at least the next three years. This is a clear message to the nay-sayers that their advice has been duly rejected. As Donald Rumsfeld said just recently, "They,ll be no second guessing". The grand-plan to occupy Iraq will continue and the voices of reason will be silenced.

By marginalizing Baker, Scowcroft and Brzezinski the administration is severing relations with their ideological forebears. The project in Iraq is now cut-off from the reasoned analysis of conservative policy experts and is supported only by the hard-right ideology of political extremists. As the ground is increasingly cut away from more and more of the people who might provide some rational relief to the bloodletting; the project becomes more infused with the incendiary rhetoric of religiosity and nationalism. The crusade in Iraq is now propped up by nothing more than the flimsy stanchions of hubris and delusion; the foundation blocks of catastrophe........

[Disturbed]

1. Hubris and Delusion

That describes the Bush perfectly.

[indepat]

5. Baker can take comfort his efforts in FL in 2000 were instrumental

to GWB being in the WH.

[Wilms]

2. Stunning.

This furthur erosion I wouldn't have imagined despite all these guys warning against going to Iraq over two years ago.

Think I'll go dust off my tin-foil hat.

[rodeodance]

3. more than a little late for developing a consciousness!!

[Wilms]

4. At least in the movie's, the mafia guys go to church.

(* doesn't)

[Martin Eden]

6. When conservative imperialists disagree with each other ...

... about Iraq, you KNOW it's an unwinnable quagmire.