Thoughts from a wingnut (via Kos and Digby):
When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.
This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.
The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.
This is not some random crazy wingnut, as Kos mentions, “this is from the conservative group Family Security Matters, whose board includes mainstream conservatives Barbara Comstock, Monica Crowley, Frank Gaffney, Laura Ingraham and James Woolsey.” The particular author’s name is Philip Atkinson.
Here’s more:
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
The folks at FSM have been trying to scrub this (and evidently some other articles that are just as insane) from their site. Steve Clemons wrote about this group last summer.
Well, hopefully James Woolsey is one of the folks working to get the crazy shit off their site. The rest of the folks you listed are nut jobs.
Unfortunately, their concept is all too true.
Look at the successes of the Romanization approach ….look at how the Soviets tried to use this in the Baltics and how China IS doing it in Tibet.
Of course, where this fails is the conflict between imperialism and democracy. Ac act of ethnic cleansing of the sort suggested is repugnant to the US even though our own country came into being on the backs of very much this sort of process.
Hmm…
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind.....ty_Matters
Family Security Matters
From SourceWatch
Family Security Matters is a conservative front group that claims to represent “security moms” and supports President George W. Bush.
Following an appearance on Fox News, Media Matters for America noted that “Family Security Matters (FSM) is a front group for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative Washington think tank “committed to the time-tested philosophy of promoting international peace through American strength.” (The phone number listed on the FSM website is answered by the CSP.) [1]
Holy shit, this must be satire. If not, Family Security Matters needs a direct hit with a nuclear weapon. The hatred for democracy reflected in the quote is truly astounding.
I think somebody must have been dreaming when they wrote this shit.
The nation is in deep doo-doo.
This is why conservatives are unfit to govern. In fact, they’re positively dangerous.
@3 “committed to the time-tested philosophy of promoting international peace through American strength.”
In other words, bullying.
If I were a third world tinpot despot and read this, I would acquire nuclear weapons as fast as I possibly could.
I am sure this guy is willing to hide behind his keyboard of democracy in Virginia while everyone else does the dirty work in Iraq.
How neo-con-ically patriotic of him.
I wonder how cost free everybody would think it is in the up wind area from the nuclear strikes,
I’m sure even Maria Cantwell wouldn’t support this idea…..unless it was an election year.
“President for Life Bush”
Well, we all know how well THAT worked out for Caesar. Not to mention Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Hitler.
OOpsie, Nazi analogies are Verboten, I did a Prescott!
If this is supposed to be satire, we might be laughing all the way to our graves.
One slightly ironic development is that with all the mention it’s getting on this and other blogs, the FSM sits appears to have fallen victim to the “slashdot effect”.
@12
Yeh …Hitler, Alexander died. BUT the Roman Empire Survived a long time and gave birth to Christianity which claims ot be immortal.
There are a LOT of examples of this sort of policy working for a long time … the Muslim conquests, the Turkish conquests, the Conquest by Euros of Merica.
The real fault, other than moral disgust withe this idea, is simple … we do not have the power to get away with it even if we wanted to. Nor, by the way, did the Soviets. Romanization is alot more difficult in a world where a $1000 Stinger can shoot down a $100,000,000 chopper and information flows at the spped of light.
The USA is simply too weak to take on the world, even if we wanted to. That leaves one realistic alternative … we need to resurrect Kissinger and Bismarck, we need to work with allies to engineer a balance of power that preserves our national and moral interests. The next question ought to be .. who are our natural allies and do we have real enemies?
What worries me is the cowboy philosophy of GW and the sheep farmer attitude of the Europeans. If we share an interest in a safer, better world, it means that the uS shuld not be the dominant military power.
The “Heart of Darkness” returns.
Anytime Laura or Jamie show up for a forum or submit an op-ed they should be laughed out of the room.
This is almost certainly a hoax. Nobody claiming to be from a civilized background would seriously advocate such a thing.
Right?
It is worth bearing in mind that just because one (or a few) nutjobs have fallen off the deep end, it is unfair to paint all conservatives with the same brush.
Honestly, I don’t want to have to answer for some of the idiots out on my end of the spectrum either.
-OM
Bastards.
17 “This is almost certainly a hoax. Nobody claiming to be from a civilized background would seriously advocate such a thing.”
I’m beginning to wonder. These people have been sitting together in their own insulated little world, being told what they want to hear and reinforcing their delusions, for a long time. Maybe it’s time to recognize the possibility that our “leadership” has progressed from mere greed and hubris into total madness.
Up to this point, I have to admit that I’ve taken Laura Ingraham with a grain of salt and a degree of dirty-old-man lechery. I’d been telling myself that if she’s bat-shit crazy, at least she’s sexy bat-shit crazy. But if she’s helping the rest of the neocon elite ouija-board their way into blowing up the world in a desperate attempt to install a Thousand Year American Reich, then she and the rest of them are a menace to all of us, and must be stopped.
Oh come now. We’ve all seen these folks for a long time.
Sense of humor? None.
Playfully satiric fiction? None.
Propensity to “hoax?” None.
Absolutely batshit crazy militaristic delusions about eliminating entire populations for the greater glory of the Homeland, then covering up once caught? Endless supply.
Philip Atkinson? Never heard of him, but I’m sure Rowan Atkinson would probably like to kick his ass.
21 Now, that’s funny!
Obama says we should ease restrictions on travel and sending money to Cuba. ~I~ think we should eliminate EVERY restriction on Cuba. It’s a ridiculous farce that serves to make the current government there more popular and not less, and makes us less popular there and not more. Heck, the emigres could return home freely, and they could finally BUY NEW CARS.
The incredible power of American money and cultural influence would remake that society.
23 Hopefully better than we’ve done with Iraq…
re 15: You miss the point, Senor Semito. The neo-cons aren’t trying to take over the world. They are trying, and succeeding, at taking over America. They have control of more than enough weapons and technology to do that.
25 Naaaaaaah….without control over the rest of the world’s resources, dominating America would just be the booby prize.
Oh, they may have started out intending to be satisfied with gaining control of the hearts and minds (and access to the pocketbooks) of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Six-Pack America. But the way they conspired to do that had a lot to do with convincing a significant segment of the public that acceptance of their “leadership” would be a surefire ticket to restoring America to the “greatness” that it’s entitled to, such as we’ve all had drilled into our souls since Kindergarten. (Pause here for John Ashcroft to sing a few verses of Let The Eagle Soar…)
Clearly, somewhere along the way, the intelligentia of the New Right came to believe their own bullshit.
To continue from what I posted above…while conducting their campaign of “the conning of America”, while looting the treasury to support corporate socialism on an ever-grander scale, the right has over the last quarter-century made us so dependent on the rest of the world for everything that the only way they can continue to support themselves in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed is to attempt to rob the rest of the planet at gunpoint as well.
How long that can be sustained is anybody’s guess. You speak of how they have “enough weapons” to control the populace at home–will that continue? One interesting piece of news in the last week is that police departments and military units still stationed Stateside are dealing with an acute shortage of bullets.
You have to hand it to the Reich, … I mean, Right. They gather together to share thoughts, spawn their young, and conduct science experiments to determine if a disembodied head can still think and a mindless body still speak. The latter is a given. One strike for the Reich.
~
In the end there is such cool, calculated economic logic to the use of nukular weapons by the Fourth Reich. Kind of like when GI’s would kick back on patrol and say, … “Smoke ’em if you got’em!”. They are paid for, … just sitting in tin cans on the Bay of Pigs, … whoa, flashback, sorry Pappy Bush! I mean the Persian Gulf, … They’ll never be any fresher than they are, … right, … now! Right Dick? Now there’s a man’s man, defibillater and all! Never let’s reason stand in the way of action, … see somethin’ flashin’ in the Bush, … just shoots at it for cryin’out loud, … asks questions later, … Oh, Sorry Bud!
~
Anyway, gettin’ kinda quiet around the White House, with Karl gone, and Tony packin’ up. ‘Bout time for the old turdtoaker himself to come back from clearin’ brush and set a few fires of his own, I think. Glad the Woolly Mammoth pulled that silly blog about nukin’ Iraq. There’ll be plenty left over after we blow the hell outta Iran, … Yuk, Yuk, … cough, sputter. Yeah, this makin’ war is a young man’s game. Where’d I put my oxygen cylinder, … hate that ,,, when I, … lose, ,, track ……
Genocide:
In following the Bush Administrations policies on Iraq it is clear that the thought of planting an American government in Iraq, ran by Americans – was the perhaps the second or third phase of the invasion. It would however, have been a very challenging endeaver considering Russia, Iran, Turkey, Syria and China’s long term interests. If successful, the new American government would have been another Israel with its many middle eastern enemies.
A total take over of Iraq by America would have given Bush an undeniable, unchallenged place in history but would also have guaranteed instability in America in the long run. Unfortunately, America is not the superpower it was at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when America was the most militarily invincible, economically unrivaled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide.
The invasion of Iraq has futher dimishes this status by ushering in challenges from old enemies such as Russia and China with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming formidable alliances.
The invasion and now disastrous occupation of Iraq, including the internationally recognized mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the credibility of the United States deeper than previously realized.
President Bush could have adopted the strategy of Ceasar by imlementing military might in the form of genocide however, he would have ignored the main reason we’re having so much difficulty which is political, manipulated by a power media. Ceasar did not have the media to contend with which unfortunately for the Bush administration is also signaling the end of the Anglo-American monopoly in international television news. This new form of war (media)provide further explanations for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations like never before.
The Bush doctrine is oudated but would have worked 20 years ago before the internet became such a powerful force in world-wide communications. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration discovered this too late.
Genocide would have been a world-wide problem for the US which would have haunted the US as the nuclear bomb on Japan still does.
Ceasar would have known better.
@29 Caesar would have what???
I dunno. Hated this man since I read the Gallic Wars 650 years ago. Besides is there really any more rlevance in this tribal warrior than in Shaka Zulu?
We will never know what might ahve worked in Iraq. All else aside, we should never gone in without a clear goal and the idea that the 14th Iman, Thoma ben Jeffer, would rise from his cave was beyond absurdity. The Bush regime will be the subject of great books for ever.
NOW the issue is how to alvage as much as we can out of this mess. The most difficult issue for the DEms is how politically to prepare the American public for the all too necessary eating of crow? The only solutions that I see require rebuilding alliances destroyed by lil Bush and I do notsee that happening easily. Indeed if I were Putin or Iran and really wanted to bring trouble to the uS, I would go to the Hague and file war crimes accusations!
This is one reason I support OBama. While he obviously lacks Richardson’s experience, he has brought together very good people and i think has a real chance of using his novelty factor to emrge quickly as a world favorite. Hillary, despite the patinas of experience, seems to me to overstate her actual experience. More seriously, I am not sure she has a clear vision of a US strategy either.
30: I agree with your analysis however, I am not so sure that Obama is the answer. We all can certainly agree that conversations about Iraq will probably be a dinner table discussion for years to come. The war has certainly opened a can of trouble for the US no matter how you view it. Bush has finally accepted the Viet Nam and Iraq war correlations but for the wrong reasons. He believe we left Viet Nam too soon and as a result we suffered both militarily and politically – and the veterans who sacrificed their lives did so in vain. He’s even backed this obsolete philosophy up with his national advertising campaign utilizing wounded soldiers.
It will be interesting to see where we’re at in relationship to middle eastern policies in five years. Who knows, history may be kind to lil bush. Anything can happen in 18 months.