Remembering Nothing

[NNN0LHI]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14081416/site/newsweek/

The common thread of the administration’s policy in Iraq and Lebanon is an ignorance of history and a willful disregard of its lessons

July 28, 2006 - President Bush has this annoying tendency of enlarging problems, thinking that makes him a bold and visionary leader. An ordinary ceasefire that stops people from killing each other isn’t good enough for Bush and his diplomatic automaton, Condoleezza Rice, who sees the violence in Lebanon and Iraq as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

Secretary of State Rice is holding out for “a sustainable ceasefire,” which reminds me of the old Gershwin tune, “Nice Work If You Can Get It.” A grand bargain that can last into the future is a laudable goal but well out of reach for an administration that is weakened and isolated on the world stage. Why not settle for what every American government has done until this one? Stop the fighting first and then resolve the conflict as best you can.

Living from crisis to crisis is no fun, but it’s better than the alternative of maimed children, hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese refugees and a million terrified northern Israelis confined to bomb shelters. The Bush Doctrine in the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict is an extension of the theory applied in Iraq: that anything is better than the status quo. Bush’s worldview emanates from a childish need to do everything different from his predecessors. He operates from a gut belief that if he dares to reshuffle the deck in the Middle East, the result will be better than the hand American presidents traditionally play. The reverse is happening. Iraq is on its way to becoming the next Lebanon, and Lebanon is descending back into the hell that made its very name synonymous with sectarian warfare.

Four years of Bush-style wars have made Americans wish they could wash their hands of the rest of the world. A New York Times/CBS News poll found a strong isolationist streak emerging, with 58 percent saying the United States has no responsibility to resolve the conflict between Israel and other countries in the Middle East, and 56 percent supporting a timetable for getting out of Iraq. A substantial majority of 62 percent say the Iraq war has not been worth it in terms of lives lost and dollars spent. Yet there are no signs the administration is backing away from its determination to stay the course in Iraq and to give Israel the room it needs to inflict more damage on Hizbullah.

[MadMaddie]

1. Yea....well they wanted to rewrite history...isn't that what

that said....well this will go down as the biggest fiasco maybe of the century....historians will look back and wonder how it happened...

[tularetom]

2. Rest of the world wishes the US would adopt an isolationist

policy and get the fuck out of the ME or anywhere else for that matter. Just talked to friends just back from Europe where * is thought of not as a "strong leader" but a pathetic insecure mama's boy, desperate to prove to Mommy that he actually posses male genitalia.