Getting Off

by digby

Everybody is wondering just what game Bush is playing. I tend to the “go for it” model, the typical spoiled rich kind, alcoholic style that is born of someone who has never had to deal with the consequences of their actions. I think that Junior sees “history” as having already vindicated him so there is no need for caution, prudence or reason to interfere with anything he emotionally needs to do.

Cheney is trying to secure oil fields and create an imperial America that only superficially answers to the people, whom he disdains. So, for him, everything is going fine. I think they figure that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by going after Iran and while they might get their hair mussed, at the end of the day, the oil fields will be securely under American control.

But I could be wrong. James Ridgeway doesn’t believe, as I do, that Rove would manipulate the simpleton Bush into purposefully dragging out the war to avoid responsibility for losing or that Bush himself is a psycho. He sees something else going on:

There may well be a much more sinister game at play here. That centers around the emergence of Henry Kissinger over the last year as an outside advisor to Bush and other top officials in Washington.

Gareth Porter, the historian who ran the Indochina Resource Center in the early 70s, points out in a January 11 article on Asia Online that “although he knows very little about how to deal with Sunnis and Shi’ites, Kissinger does know how to convey to the public the illusion of victory, even though the US position in the war is actually weak and unstable.”

Porter continues, “One of Kissinger’s accomplishments was to sell the news media on the Nixon administration’ s propaganda line that the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi had so unnerved the North Vietnamese that it had allowed president Richard Nixon and Kissinger to achieve a diplomatic victory over the communists in the Paris Agreement. That line was a gross distortion of what actually happened before and after the bombing.” Moreover, it was Kissinger who figured out how Ford could claim a Vietnam victory and blame the whole mess on the Democrats.

So, it’s quite possible that Bush will plunge into a counterinsurgency operation in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, and then amidst mass civilian carnage, declare victory and announce negotiations. Sooner or later there will have to be negotiations, and this may be his ploy.

I think it’s highly unlikely that they could get away with this ploy with a president virtually everyone now acknowledges is an idiot. Neither will it be believable in an age of mass communication and suicide bombers in the middle of a block-by-block urban civil war. But I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if that’s what Kissinger is advising. It would be so like him.

And then there’s this, from Commander Jeff Huber USN (Ret.)at Pen and Sword, who made the obvious observation the other day that the reason to put a navy man in charge of Centcom is because you anticipate a naval battle:

No one seems to seriously think Mr. Bush’s escalation strategy will work, including, one gets the distinct impression, Mr. Bush himself.

That depends, of course, on what your definition of “works” is. If you mean something along the lines of “restore order to Iraq, disband the militias, unify the government and rebuild the country,” no, that’s not going to work.

If you mean: “escalate and expand the war throughout the region,” yeah, that will work. It’s working already.

Read the whole thing. This is no joke. There are some very weird things going on. As Huber points out, even Ralph Peters gets it:

WORD that Adm. William Fallon will move laterally from our Pacific Command to take charge of Central Command – responsible for the Middle East – while two ground wars rage in the region baffled the media.

Why put a swabbie in charge of grunt operations?

There’s a one-word answer: Iran.

ASSIGNING a Navy avia tor and combat veteran to oversee our military operations in the Persian Gulf makes perfect sense when seen as a preparatory step for striking Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities – if that becomes necessary.

While the Air Force would deliver the heaviest tonnage of ordnance in a campaign to frustrate Tehran’s quest for nukes, the toughest strategic missions would fall to our Navy. Iran would seek to retaliate asymmetrically by attacking oil platforms and tankers, closing the Strait of Hormuz – and trying to hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates.

Only the U.S. Navy – hopefully, with Royal Navy and Aussie vessels underway beside us – could keep the oil flowing to a thirsty world.

In your dreams buddy. Nobody else is signing on to this crazy shit.

Bush’s affect was completely flat last night. I think he’s now just letting all this unfold around him, secure in the belief that God is on his side and he will be bailed out by history no matter what happens in the short term, just as his Daddy’s friends always bailed him out of everything he did before he became president. (With all the blathering about character in the two Bush elections, the media gave this guy such a pass for his obvious, lifelong character flaws and we are paying the price for it now.)

It occurs to me as I read that breathless acount from Peters that we shouldn’t underestimate the pull of war addiction as a motivator either. As I pictured the wingnuts and the media getting all hot and bothered over air strikes and naval battles, I could see that they and Bush and Cheney might just need a fix that only a bright shiny new war can provide. This is the problem with wars in which individuals make no sacrifices and suffer no personal consequences. They get off on the rush and don’t have to pay the price. That’s not good.

I think they are going for it.

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