John's Blog

I guess I've been consumed with real life events recently, and I've been spending more time reading than surfing. Since I've had nothing new to share, I haven't updated in awhile. But the little bit of poking around the web I've done has exposed me to far too many of the traditional year in review or those overdone "best of" lists that everyone seems to love. If that's what you seek; please bail out now!

No, as much as I'd like to offer up a hopeful and optimistic piece about the coming year that's just not where my head is at these days. I continue to read too many news stories about "the decider" and his search for a new course in Iraq that causes me a great deal of trepidation about what lies ahead. It's pretty damn sad that we have to read "spin" in the news that tells us that "The Shrub" actually reads newspapers and worked for almost three hours the other day; quick where's the MENSA application?

What's sadder still is that we are given increasingly frequent signals that the new strategy will be more of the same. The biggest difference being the flawed "surge" concept, which adds additional (and at this point, nonexistent troops). He conveniently ignores the findings of a bipartisan panel of well respected experts, and the recommendations of many of the military leaders who have opposed additional forces. Unfortunately Gates seems to have performed some sort of Vulcan mind control during his recent tour, and now many have done an about face and now welcome the additional forces. Too bad he couldn't have used those powers on his boss to accept reality.

One of the few strengths that most of us critical of Dubya have been willing to concede is that he has been an astute politician. But as any first year political science student will tell you, politics is defined as the art of the possible. Given the probability of a legislature that may actually view "legislative oversight" seriously combined with the rather overwhelming public sentiment from the people of both the US and Iraq that we should leave, why does he resist?

Is this an attempt to salvage his (and the neo-con) legacy? Or is he in some way attempting a do-over of the ending to the Vietnam war? Perhaps it's just a cynical way to set up Democratic opposition to 'the folks who lost the war" in an attempt to engineer a backlash which would benefit a future neo-con campaign effort? I'm not sure which one of these cynical scenarios I'd pick as an excuse for our current situation.

Then again, there is an even more cynical explanation. Has our post 9-11 enabalement of government without limits emboldened Dubya to the point where he thinks he can still do anything he wants? After the illegal (or at least questionable) activities of the last several years, including surveillance, interrogation, imprisonment, torture, and limiting civil liberties has he become so addicted to having his own way that the possibility of a participatory democracy is foreign to him?

Please, let me be wrong on this and let this dark vision be off base. The start of the year should be a time of optimism and hope. The closest I can come to that is to order an Edwards-Obama bumper sticker.

Tags: politics, pointless rambling