This article made a lot of sense to me until I got to the following sentence: "Precipitous withdrawal isn't an option -- even a president committed to an exit would need time to seek international and regional assistance in stabilizing the country and encouraging political, not just military, solutions to the violence." Joan, this is just a variation of what Bush himself is saying, i.e. as soon as we get everything stabilized, we'll leave. Stabilization IS victory; problem is, it isn't on the menu. Nor is international aid; we've been hoping someone beside Tony Blair would step up and lend a hand since this mess started -- what is the likelihood anyone of substance will, now that things are a bigger mess than ever? Regional help will probably come to Iraq, but only after we're out of there. We started a civil war in Iraq; whether that was the intention or not, it's the facts, Ma'am, and staying in the middle of it isn't going to improve things.

So yes, call it precipitous if you want, but that's the only kind of withdrawal we're ever going to have. Let's for God's sake have it now!

We're not going to "bring the war to a close" by leaving. We started a civil war in Iraq. That's all we've accomplished, not one damn thing more. Our efforts to stop the war we started have not succeeded, nor will they. An arsonist with a can of gasoline in his hand is not the kind of help one needs in putting out a fire. The Iraqi civil war will continue after we leave. Perhaps it will resolve in five days after we leave, perhaps it will resolve in five years after we leave. But leave we must.

I fear, and predict, that the crisis needed to give evangelical demagoguery its opening will not come from Al Qaeda. Our REACTION to Al Qaeda and 9/11 has damaged us socially, morally and financially to the extent that the house of cards that American democracy has become could be knocked over by something quite small. Like the Chinese deciding not to lend us any more money.

...but exactly where is all this despair coming from? The American public is the most enfranchised group of people in the world, if they choose to be. They have freedoms and opportunities that others only dream of. If anyone is feeling despair because their job is shit or they never became the rock star they thought they'd be, then it's pure laziness and not the fault of "the system." The American economy is a juggernaut, a huge, million-horsepower bulldozer-slash-battle-tank. It is a harsh taskmaster in that it doesn't prop up industries that don't make money (the ability to make large political donations is a sign of economic health, making an industry worthy of propping up). It isn't warm and fuzzy, but it works. If you want health care, move to Canada or Germany where things move along nice and slowly and if your father's a carpenter you'll be a carpenter, too. America is full of opportunity still, and if people are feeling despair, they're just f-ing lazy.

Last night I posted that "If you want health care, move to Canada," crap because I was tired and grumpy and just wanted to hear how it sounded. Sorry. I do think despair is unwarranted if it's based on the complaint that some guy down the street, across town or in the nearest big city is stinkin' rich while poor me has only two cars, a hot tub and a well-fed family. In fact, I wonder if a lot of the despair that leads people to embrace evangelical fairy tales grows out of an excess of plenty, rather than a shortage of it. The caravans of mini-buses I see all too often on the highway, bumper-stickering their membership in some holy-rolling group on a giant prayer-orgy outing, are always well-heeled, smugly groomed middle-class types. Turn on Kristianist TV; who's in the audience? They're not poor, gap-toothed people left behind by the economic juggernaut. They're people who don't have everything, perhaps, but they have more than enough.

Problem is, when you've got everything you need -- which isn't necessarily everything you want -- when there's a DVD player in every room; a couple of nice cars in the garage; if not great health care at least the knowledge that you're not going to die like most humans have, arbitrarily and in great pain, for a reason you don't begin to understand; the kids in school; good food on the table; a trip to Disney World in the planning stages -- what have you got? You're the center of your own little consumer heaven, richer by far than kings and queens of old. But it doesn't feel as good as you've been promised it would. And since every moment isn't a struggle to survive you've got plenty of time to think about the fact that it's all going to end. How unfair. How frightening. Driven to consume, to measure success and happiness by one's ability to consume, you've done what you were told but it's all for nothing because you're going to die and all your stuff will end up in a garage sale. That's a pretty heavy burden for most people. The angst settles most heavily on the affluent (again, not compared to the Joneses but to humanity at large) but modestly educated people who make up so much of the evangelical right. They don't have the comfort of reading great literature or the mental tools to contemplate their place in an existential universe wherein their death is as meet and natural as their life. So, they look for someone to tell them it isn't really going to end. They hug that fairy tale tight and hate anyone who, even with a doubting glance, dares to suggest that the fairy tale isn't true.

Talk about a ripe seedbed for demagoguery.