The Bush Administration Wants To Go Out With a Bang... Literally

"With the clock winding down on the [Bush] administration, it has a greater appetite for racking up victories against al Qaeda—and less worries about any residual political consequences from striking."

That's from a new article in The New Republic entitled Twilight Struggle: In its closing days, the Bush administration escalates the war on terror. The article goes on to say:

"We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan."

So. Now the military no longer needs approval from President Bush (or presumably even the next President--yikes) to launch a military strike in a country like Pakistan or Syria (where last Sunday, U.S. military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction in a village near the Iraq border, killing eight):

"Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command, General David Petraeus."

And in this "new order", countries like Kenya, Mali, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen may all be fair game, because they are "all places where the American intelligence believe al Qaeda has a significant presence, but can no longer count on the indigenous security services to act. In the parlance of the Cold War, Petraeus will now have the authority to fight a regional "dirty war."

(shudder). So there's yet another facet of the Bush Legacy for you.

Here's another: The Syrian government ordered an American School and a U.S. Cultural Center in Damascus closed Tuesday in response to the deadly attack. So. Another important opportunity for good Public Relations lost, thanks to Sunday's attack. And reports say that Syrian villagers held banners declaring "Down with American enemy" as they carried the coffins of relatives who died in the strike.

See what happens when we all take our eyes off the Bush? (sigh) If America really wanted to win the War on Terror, maybe it would stop helping al Qaeda with it's recruitment drive.

If you're thinking to yourself, Well if they're not with us then they're against us and so they are "Terrorists", please see my earlier post, Is Bjork a Terrorist?

I'm going to go watch Dr. Strangelove now... and hopefully I'll be able to see the comic side to all this... again.

And let me know if you are stumped for things to say to Bush if/when you email or call him (see my post below). Because it's high time for the American people to "engage", to use military-speak--and no, yelling at your TV screen does not count.

Here's the link to the article: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9c613d05-0441-4a14-bf40-ef3ac16a42b5

How To REALLY Support Our Troops

And it doesn't end with the selection of the next best President, or the members of Congress. Bush Jr. will be gone come next January. And our troops will eventually be withdrawn from Iraq. Someday.

But there's still Afghanistan. And Syria may be tomorrow's Iraq, for all we know (if the U.S. launched attack there yesterday is any indication). And the underlying roots of the problem, for which the American people have to accept their 50% share of the responsibility, will still remain. Regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.

Here are two things you can do:

1) Don't let 9/11 continue to be this country's "Groundhog Day." I've blogged on that point before. But let me punt here to someone far more qualified to state the case--Andrew Bacevich, the author of The Limits of Power:

"[A] state of perpetual national security emergency aggravates the disorders afflicting our political system, allowing the executive branch to accrue ever more authority at the expense of the Congress and disfiguring the Constitution."

We as citizens can't declare war, or withdraw our troops. But we can refuse to allow ourselves to be consumed by a false sense of a perpetual national security emergency. The threats are real, sadly. But a "State" of Emergency is not a sustainable, habitable place for us all to live. We know that, don't we.

2) Set thine house in order. Again, I punt here to Mr. Bacevich:

"U.S. troops in battle dress and body armor, whom Americans profess to admire and support, pay the price for the nation's collective refusal to confront our domestic dysfunction." (emphasis added, and of my doing).

We all know about the dysfunction in Washington and on Wall Street. But we need to start thinking about our own dysfunction. There's a "disparity between how much we want and what we can afford to pay." "As individuals, Americans never cease to expect more. As members of a community, especially as members of a national community, they choose to contribute less."

I don't want to be preachy--I really don't. I've been no better, really, for most of my self-absorbed life. But there are all these truly important ideas already out there... and have been for quite some time now. I just want to share them with you, in case you haven't already discovered them for yourself. (But take heart, the "preachy" factor should largely disappear after November 4th).

And I'll leave it to the presidential historians to render their final verdict on Bush. But I do wonder about how History will judge us, the American people. And so, I'll leave you with this one last passage from The Limits of Power:

"History will not judge kindly a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of endless armed conflict so long as they themselves are spared the effects. Nor will it view with favor an electorate that delivers political power into the hands of leaders unable to envision any alternative to perpetual war."

One last note of backstory, though, on the book and author. His son was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and died in Iraq last year. The book is dedicated to him.