Thinking Like an Idiot

Upfront, let me say that I was totally wrong about Iraq.  Before June of 2002, I was positive that the Bush Admin wouldn’t be stupid or crazy enough to want to invade Iraq; and I was wrong on both counts.  Even in the fall of 2002, I continued to believe that we wouldn’t actually do it.  That cooler heads would prevail and the Bush Admin would quietly pack away their war rhetoric.  And I was wrong about that too.  It wasn’t until Novemberish or so that I realized that it was a done deal and that almost nothing could stop the war.  It could be said in my defense that Bush had said even much later than that that the decision for war had still not been made; but I’m not one to rely on the GOP’s much used Idiot Defense to defend myself, so I’m not going to go there.

Thus said, I really really think that this Iran thing is going to blow-up in the Bush Admin’s collective face.  Because to me, the more they emphasize how dangerous Iran is, the more they’ll remind people how dangerous they said Iraq was; and now a majority clearly thinks that invasion was kind of a flop.  And if Republicans were more honest and didn’t want to cover-up for Dear Leader, that would be a strong majority; probably approaching the 85% mark.  And even worse for the Bushies, the more they emphasize how dire the situation is, the more people will remember that we can’t really take strong action; again, because of the blunder in Iraq.  

It’s kind of like a fire fighter who expended almost all his water putting out a small campfire, now insisting that they combat a raging forest-fire.  And either you think the guy’s wrong again and it’s just another campfire, or you believe him that it really is dangerous, but that you can’t possibly combat it effectively; thanks to his earlier boobery.  But in this case, the campfire is just as dangerous to fight as the forest-fire; and has been made far more dangerous due to the prior mistake.  This just sounds like a lose-lose for the Bush Admin.

And so I just don’t see how this is supposed to work for them.  Sure, the Bushies will still have much of the media on their side, so that helps.  But Bush is already fairly unpopular, in large part due to the current war, and so it would seem to me that all this works heavily against war in Iran; no matter how much the media wants to push it.  Particularly during a mid-term election year, when Republican Congressmen can no longer rely on the “I’m with Bush” platform to pull them through anymore.  But I was wrong on the last war, so I’m not going to stake too much on my reasoning on this one.  Logic can only take you so far where the Bush Admin is concerned, and sometimes, you just have to think like an idiot.

One note, there is the possibility that the Bush Admin is only talking tough to: A) Bluff Iran into submitting, and B) Distract from the world of hurt they’re now suffering from politically.  But, we are talking about the Bush Administration, and despite all of the “Karl Rove: Supergenius” talk, they really don’t seem to use these sorts of subtle techniques.  Their idea of “subtle” is using a cruise missile to crack a walnut, while loudly denouncing the walnut on all the cable news networks.  But there is the unlikely possibility that they’ve learned from their mistakes and have now taken a smarter course of action.  We can hope, anyway.