|
you really should read through the posts by folk who are still struggling to find a justification of bush's actions with reference to iraq--just read through them--if you want to see a curious outline of how political propositions and psychological structures interact, an interaction that only really surfaces at point of dissonance or crisis.
so far, i have seen amazing willingness to distort reality through false equilvalences (clinton's acts versus those of gwb); desperate attempts to salvage an explanation that was obviously floated ex post facto, was never relevant to the decision to go to war (hussein was a bad man), the construction of fantasy scenarios (wmds are buried in the sand)-----anything and everything but a direct confrontation with the fact of the matter.
there are no wmds.
the un inpsections team made this argument at the moment when the bush people were looking to go to war--they were hellbent on war, so allowing the un teams to confirm the nonexistence of the wmds--and thereby imploding the whole argument the bush people were trying to advance--was not an option politically, according to the terms specific to their worldview.
bush had no argument for war.
not really.
it was based on premises that were false, wrong, erroneous.
you might say: well, he believed it, as you might have....
but the fact is that the guy is president of the united states and is not in a position like you sitting on your couch watching tv--you cannot send 150,000 american troops into harm's way on account of your suspicions or beliefs---and you work from a very differently filtered information pool, so it is a damn good thing that you cannot do it.
you have to assume that bush was privy to a full range of information.
therefore george w bush is not in a position like that you are in, and must be held to other standards.
if part of his administration lied to him to justify carrying out a project that ran counter to the political interests of the country, then you have to hold bush accountable for that.
and there is no way, no way at all, that launching a war on false pretenses was in the interests of the united states.
drawing the conclusions about the iraq war from this information should be a no-brainer.
why is it so diffucult for bush supporters to face this?
what kind of democratic politics is the conservative worldview if it is not amenable to the slightest degree of self-criticism?
what good is it to support this position if it places you in a situation in which you are psychologically unable to draw obvious inferences?
if you assume this inability is a function of the political worldview itself, then the obvious question is how does this worldview enable anyone who subscribes to it competent to run the country? if the avoidance of dissonance is the hallmakr of this kind of belief, how is rational decision making possible?
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|