Category: The Middle East

Slider, you stink.

Apparently, Bush gave a campaign speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln yesterday, but I couldn’t hear it over all the saber-rattling. Something to do with Iraq being about September 11 or somesuch. At any rate, you have to wonder if any of the officers on the Lincoln wondered when they saw Dubya show up in aviator gear if he was coming to make up for the year he spent AWOL and on the lam from military drug tests. The election of 2004 will be won or lost on the Bush record, but nevertheless – push the Mr. Military campaign tack too far and people might just start taking a closer look at Dubya’s year-long holiday.

Hedging their Bets.

In the wake of Dubya’s embrace of preemption, historian Joyce Appleby wonders whatever happened to Congress as a center of foreign policy. As James Madison put it, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it.” Looks like recent experience has proven him right.

Francophobia.

Utilizing a technique he learned in his fratboy hazing days, Dubya decides to freeze France out for her opposition to the war in Iraq. Along the same lines, Bushies are now trying to deride Kerry by saying he looks French. (Why not tell the American people he’s got cooties, while you’re at it?) Yes, folks, these people run the country.

A New Enemy.

Toning down on the Syria talk, the Bushies instead decide to invoke their post-Iraq mojo to launch a sneak attack on the economy, vis a vis the now phased-in Dubya Dividend Debacle. It’s not conservative to give out tax handouts to the rich during a time of exploding deficits, y’all. It’s radical.

Meanwhile, in 2004.

Kerry’s got the loot, Lieberman’s spending too much, Edwards is bleeding support (I’m not sure if losing Shrum is a negative), and, even among nine candidates, Florida Senator Bob Graham has come up with a novel position on the Middle East: He’s against the war in Iraq, for a war in Syria. And we’ve got eighteen months to go, folks.

Blast from the Past.

With the war in Iraq wrapping up, former President Clinton derides the failures of Dubya’s amateurish diplomacy. “Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us.” He also takes time to call out the recently-lowered but still-lousy Dubya tax cut. Hopefully, this’ll serve notice to the other Dems (besides Kerry) to get off the fence and release the hounds.

Goodnight Euphrates.

Despite significant warnings from historians and anthropologists, the Pentagon does little to stop Baghdad’s National Museum of Antiquities, a priceless archive on some of the world’s oldest civilizations, from being systematically looted and pillaged. Our response to this tragic event is too little too late – what are we going to do? Have a couple of INTERPOL guys watch for suspicious items on Ebay? I doubt many of the most priceless artifacts travel that well anyway. It just wouldn’t have been that hard to station troops around the museum, particularly given (a) that the Pentagon was briefed beforehand, and (b) US troops were already protecting the (ahem) Oil Ministry. This isn’t the burning of Alexandria’s library, but it might just end up being close. For shame.

Here We Go Again.

Second verse, same as the first. With the war in Iraq coming to a close, Dubya’s hawks start turning up the heat on Syria. “I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,” Bush said yesterday. Boy, that rationale never gets old, does it? Even with India now latching onto Dubya’s “preemption” to justify possibly bombing Pakistan back into the Stone Age, the Bushies don’t even make an attempt to forge a casus belli more in tune with international diplomatic precedent. Let’s just hope China also doesn’t decide to “preempt” terrorism in Taiwan anytime soon. (Second link via Follow Me Here.) Update: Bush and Blair try to kill the Syria war hype, for now.