Letters to the Editor
_zack_
Published Letters: 373 Editor's Choice: 5
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Lebanon the model
[Read the article: War as reality rather than cartoon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Since reality is still anathema in this administration, this might be a good time to remember that Cheney and Elliot Abrams were solidly behind Israel’s war plans and as Seymour Hersh reported, saw it as the precursor to what they were planning in Iran:
The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)….
Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”
Did the administration learn anything by watching Israel fail? I’m not sure, but it’s not too hard to believe that the answer might be found in the last sentence of Hersh’s article:
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060821fa_fact
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the "war president" and his "political capital"
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt and the "Triumphant Top Gun"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it’s a safe bet that Rove had planned this sort of image even before Bush became president. Bush, himself, before he was elected said he wanted to be “a war president” and that this would build up “political capital” so he could do want he wanted on the domestic front too.
This sentiment was indeed echoed in a comment by Tom Friedman on May 4, after the “mission accomplished” stagecraft:
“Conservatives now want to use the victory in Iraq to defeat all liberal ideas at home, and to make this war a model for America's relations with the world, while liberals -- fearing all that -- are still quietly rooting for Mr. Bush to fail.”
This image (of Bush as “war hero”) was part of Rove’s plan to make the Republican Party power “permanent” and to do so by casting liberals as wimps and girly men, and the Republicans as manly men who could protect us. Thus, Republicans would “own” the “national security” issue. And the Democrats would get haircuts.
Karl got his image, but now it’s an object of derision and a symbol of failure, incompetence, delusion and dishonesty.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003578624
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Insecurity, immaturity and authoritarianism (or why Karl Rove fell in love with Bush)
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt and the "Triumphant Top Gun"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“George W. Bush is a real warrior who is strong, powerful, masculine and a genuine Man -- even swooningly hot ("he looked great") -- unlike the effeminate, clumsy loser Democrats.”
That’s Greenwald mocking Hiatt. But there are two aspects to Hiatt’s comments that seem to me to be common among almost all hard-core warriors of the right: first, a very fundamental insecurity in the need for such a “strong” leader; and secondly, a very prominent level of immaturity.
Gary Kamiya noted the immaturity in his excellent Salon post today:
War supporters are counting on a certain level of John Wayne war-movie immaturity on the part of the American people, a Technicolor conviction that America is ordained to be, must be, eternally victorious.
And various authors have noted a need to be a “macho man” in other authoritarian leaders. Kershaw, for example, found it in Hitler:
“mediocre, not monstrous, a blundering amateur rather than the malevolent genius of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus or Klaus Mann's Mephisto. With his braggatry and his tantrums, Kershaw finds him pitiably infantile, 'the spoilt child turned into the would-be macho man'.” [1]
I realized what I found just plain creepy in the “man-crush” of Hiatt or Matthews (or Zach Wamp’s recent drooling over Fred Thompson on Politics Tv [2]) was not anything sexual at all, but an overt expression of a component of the authoritarian mindset.
Insecurity, immaturity and authoritarianism seem to be what George W. Bush and those swooning over his image on the flight deck have in common.
[1] http://www.fpp.co.uk/Hitler/Kershaw/Observer.html
[2] http://www.politicstv.com/blog/?p=2552
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Wil this "mindset" withstand a change of power? I don't think so.
[Read the article: The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While it is true that this is the mindset that has governed this country the last six years, will that mindset immediately change if a Democratic candidate is elected president? I think there is a good deal of evidence to support that such a change would occur.
We see almost on a daily basis Republicans making speeches that are the complete opposite of what they said when Clinton was president. And as soon as they lost majority status in Congress, they immediately embraced the minority rights that they had previously denounced as “unconstitutional.”
In short, they do not believe in “our constitutional framework and our most defining political values” for Republicans. whom they would trust with having a tyrannical, all-powerful “leader.” They wouldn’t have that trust with any of the Democratic candidates so all of this mindset would become “no longer operative” if the Republicans lose the election.
We see this in the Justice Department scandal too. They want to enforce laws for Democrats not Republicans (who shouldn’t have to worry about braking the law because no one will prosecute them for it).
If the Democrats win the next election, we’ll start to see the Republicans carrying the constitution around with them like the old days, and they’ll suddenly find a fondness for the rule of law – as long as they’re out of power.