God, how I despise people who think war is a game.The origin of 'Bush think' may be found in a scenario dreamed up at the Rand Corporation at the height of the Cold War. Rand had designed mathematical models that dared think the unthinkable: a nuclear war can be won! Typically, the scenario relied heavily on 'game theory'. It proposed to use 'nukes' like poker chips, so-called 'rational incentives', to manipulate the other side. Rand theorists 'gamed' how many megatons might be dropped on a city, which cities would be nuked, how many deaths it would take to bring the Russians to the bargaining table.A clue to Bush's thinking may be found in Bush's remarks to Matt Lauer of NBC Sept. 2, 2004. The topic was the War on Terrorism that Bush committed the US to fight.
I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world - let's put it that way.That would appear not to have been the case or the outcome. Terrorism is always been worse under GOP administrations. There is no reason to believe that 'terrorism' is in any way 'less acceptable' especially to those to whom Bush had addressed his remarks at the outset of his foreign adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his failures, Bush has resorted to dragging out a scenario that had been 'gamed' by the Rand corporation at the height of the cold war. According to Mother Jones, the robber barons of big oil, Bush's base, began planning for the war some thirty years ago. They had been 'inspired' by the Arab Oil Embargo. It was certainly an act of war: spoiled Americans had been grievously inconvenienced!
Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance.The Orwellian nightmare, the state of perpetual war, has come true but cannot be sustained. Worse than "mutually assured destruction", this universal exploitation of nightmare spells an end to those dreams that make life worth living. The grim vision offered by the GOP is --or had been --an avoidable choice. It was forced upon us by incompetent and cowardly administration. [See: Terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes]Dragging out Rand's Nuclear War Version 1.0 is not a good idea. Times have changed. Iran is not the Soviet Union. And, contrary to GOP tactics of exploitation of various threats and 'boogie men', terrorism is a tactic --not an ideology like communism. Terrorism is not a 'state' that can be identified. Terrorism, rather, is a tactic and, as such, it is inspired among many nations and many peoples at many and various times. An act of terrorism is a crime --not an act of war. Bush think is wrong and Rand's old scenario Version 1.0 is made obsolete by Reality Version 6.0. Bush makes claims about Iranian nuclear capabilities are without independent and/or credible verification. The world has not forgotten the lies told about how Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons in a beat up trailer, how Saddam tried to buy 'yellow cake' in Niger. Realistically --can anything said by Bush be believed? Desperate to wage war on Saddam, Bushco told the world that Saddam was supporting terrorists. It was a lie. As the failed war dragged on, millions came to understand that Saddam's regime had not supported bona fide 'terrorists' in any way. According to the Pew Research Center, American skepticism about the war in Iraq increased steadily from its inception. It is increasingly seen as harming the "war on terrorism".
Having lied about Iraq, Bush will certainly lie about Iran in order to justify an attack. There is a danger of massive over-response to provocation, a 'scenario' perhaps just recently was narrowly avoided in the Straits of Horumuz. The question now is: will the world survive the remainder of his tenure? As long as Bush continues to occupy the Oval Office, Americans must ask the question: is there any rational basis for fearing Iran when every credible and independent source has said that Iran is years away from developing nukes --nukes that the US had previously made available to other nations?With the collapse of the Soviet Union, old 'cold warriors' had been overtaken by events and reality. Their very jobs depended upon scaring the beejeebers out of Americans.A plurality (47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism, up from 41% in February of this year. Further, a plurality (45%) now says that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at home, up from 36% in October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the US (22% now and 32% in October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no effect on the chances of a terrorist attack in the US
- Pew Research Center, "Iraq Hurting War on Terror"
What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats?What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam, and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-life? What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside the mainstream of Islam? What if that hype was done largely to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W. Bush and Tony Blair?And what if the world was to discover the most shocking dimensions of these twin deceits - that the same men promulgated them in the 1970s and today?Hartman's source was a BBC piece called "The Power of Nightmares".Thom Hartmann, Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organized terrorist network is an illusion.In the US, more have begun to question the Bush modus operandi of exploiting our nightmares, our fears of "radical Islam", a prospect at least as terrifying as "radical Christianity" and the equally ideological, rabid "Christianist" movement which overtly seeks to make of the US a theocracy. Should either side "win", people themselves will be enslaved to nonsense, claptrap and ideology, nothing less than a new dark age. Shakespeare said it best: "A plague o' both your houses!" What is the date of America's descent into madness? It might have been Pearl Harbor. Certainly, the US helped meet the very real threat posed by Hitler's Third Reich, but, in retrospect, our leaders may have learned all the wrong lessons. Did they learn only that FDR grew in strength by promising to protect Americans from the spectres of world wide fascism and Nazism? Certainly, GOP regimes, having propped up Saddam, tried to make of him --Hitler! The GOP hated FDR but again learned from him all the wrong lessons. The GOP never forgave FDR for winning World War II but have been eager to exploit war and manufactured crises in times of peace. The GOP became the party of wars though there is nary a war that they GOP can claim to have won! Not one! Desparate for any success at all, the GOP has become the party of phony wars on drugs, porn, immigration and Murphy Brown. Bush sought a chance to use nukes! Surely, a war on terrorism would give him the opportunity. But how? "Terrorism" is not a geographical location. It is, rather, a phantom menace that is whatever the right wing says it is. It is a phantom menace. Game theory aside --there are NO winners. Game theorists should read Godel, to wit: NO formal system can generate every theorem from any given set of axioms and, likewise, no "game theory" of any sort can "game" every contingency. The use of nukes of any size or sort in the middle east will be catastrophic beyond our abilities to predict or plan for. It could very well usher in the end of mankind.--BBC: The Power of Nightmares
BBC: The Trap
A related story:If the U.S. were to face a new conventional threat, its military could not respond effectively without turning to air power, officials and analysts say. "That is the ultimate upshot of the war in Iraq: a response elsewhere would consist largely of U.S. fighters and bombers -- even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear strike -- because so many ground troops are tied up in Operation Iraqi Freedom." Even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear stike??? They are insane.The "government" is not our "country". Bush is not the sovereign. We are the nation; we are the sovereign. Whatever "government" is in Washington, its only job is to protect and defend the country. The country is us! We can fire the government when it fails to do its job. New Orleans is merely the most graphic proof, the most dramatic illustration of how this government has failed the people of America and should be fired. Not just Bush --I envision a mass layoff! It is time the country changed its government. It is time to bring this government to its knees for having betrayed us --the nation.
