So Much For The Indispensible Nation
by digby
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the United States should stay out of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, according to a CNN poll conducted and released Wednesday by Opinion Research Corp.
Sixty-five percent of 633 American adults responding to the telephone poll said the United States should not play an active role in attempting to solve the issue.
Yet respondents were much more closely divided on whether they would favor the presence of U.S. ground troops as part of an international peacekeeping force on the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Forty-five percent said they would favor such a measure, and 42 percent said they would oppose it. Thirteen percent had no opinion.
One might assume on first glance that this is incoherent. How can 65% believe that the US should stay out of it while 45% favor sending in peacekeepers? But if you think about it, it likely reflects a natural and healthy reluctance to give the Bush administration permission to pursue some mad plan to fight WWIII, which is what they are hearing from the wingnuts on TV.
The neocons have achieved the opposite of what they set out to achieve. Instead of an empire their failed experiment is turning the American public isolationist. There was a time not so long ago when it would have been assumed that the US would play an active role in solving any serious foreign policy crisis. After the cock-ups of the last few years, people are no longer so sanguine that we will actually help the situation rather than make it worse.
As we survey the situation tonight, it seems as if the Bush administration is living in an alternate universe. In a week, after Israel has “defanged” Hezbollah, Condi is slated to fly in and sing kumbaaya. Either that or we are going to officially begin WWIII. Or Armageddon is imminent — oh happy day, the Bridegroom is on his way. These are what the big thinkers on the right are offering us right now. Of those choices the Bush administration has, so far, opted for the first scenario. They are going to wait until the Israelis shoot all the bad guys and then they’ll ride in and hold a town meeting.
David Ignatius wrote today:
There is an attitude among policymakers in the United States and Israel that I would call “Prospero’s temptation,” after the wizard of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Prospero thinks that with his magic powers he can do anything — subdue the wild Caliban and the other denizens of his haunted island and bend them to his purposes. This temptation was evident in Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982; it was clear in America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. In each case, Israel and America were encouraged by their Arab allies to think that they could alter the fundamentals in a way that the Arabs themselves could not. You can hear echoes of that same thinking today, as Israeli analysts talk of how the Sunni nations — Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — are privately thanking them for breaking Shiite power.
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this:
”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
That is what’s known as magical thinking and it is the hallmark of this administration. Again, maybe the public really has the right of this. We’ve seen ample evidence over the last six years that these are not the people you want in charge during a crisis.
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