"Bush is an ideologue, a Utopian..."

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-12-01 02:41am

As the election recedes there's good news and bad news. And we're not going to like any of it.

Welcome to the world of investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, whose remarkable career has been bookended by two of the most shameful events in America's military history: My Lai in Vietnam, a story he broke as a free-lance reporter, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, a story he broke for The New Yorker.

During his 38-year career, Hersh has written eight books, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer and a host of other prizes. His sources serve at the highest levels of many governments, including our own.

In person, Hersh is tall, stooped, rumpled, gray-haired and bespectacled. He speaks rapidly and intensely in a deep voice. Currently touring to "pimp," as he put it, his newest book, "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," he spoke last week at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., to a rapt audience of about 900 people. They greeted him with applause; he said, "Thank you, but you'll be less happy once I'm done."

Hersh's message is simple and frightening: "(George W.) Bush is an ideologue, a Utopian," Hersh said. "He wants to clean out the Middle East and install democracy. He doesn't care how many body bags come back home. There's nothing more dangerous than an ideologue who is completely bonkers and no one is going to tell him."

Bush is committed to perpetual war, Hersh said.

"He risked his presidency on this war," Hersh said. "He could have gotten more votes if he backed off. But he insisted he hasn't made any mistakes."

Hersh has talked privately with many in the military and CIA, including some who have recently resigned. All told him that if the Iraq war had gone "right" - say, if the Americans had been greeted as liberators - our military would have marched "right and left" - to Syria and Iran.

Oil is a big factor in this war, Hersh said, and so is Israel, but to Bush it's about ideology: "Whether this man communicates with God, or is on a crusade, or really is a neo-con, or if he thought that his father's not taking Baghdad was a mistake - in any case, I think he is absolutely committed to staying in Iraq to the end."

After 9/11, Hersh said, America had some good choices.

"Early in 2002, the Taliban was split," Hersh said. "About 50 percent of the Taliban leadership hated Osama bin Laden and wanted him out. We could have worked with them. But we went ahead and treated the Taliban as one entity. The Taliban has survived. Al Queda has survived. We wanted to eliminate crazy people who want to fly planes into buildings. But instead we dehumanized everyone in Afghanistan and Iraq."

After March 2002, the question about Iraq was not if, but when.

"They started moving secret units, the commandos, the Delta Force, secret British elite forces, into the Middle East staging areas," Hersh said. "They were pulling people away from a war which was much more important - against al-Qaida - and putting them in a staging area for Iraq."

How could the administration have made such a mistake?

"Inside, if you agreed that the road to ending international terrorism ended in Baghdad, you were a hero," Hersh said. "You were promoted. Bush didn't have to ask for information to be slanted his way. If you wanted promotions, or to sit in on the conferences with the big boys, you told him what he wanted to hear. If you disagreed, then your career stalled. Totally wacky."

This sorry state of affairs continues today. Bush is told only what he wants to hear, and since he doesn't read newspapers, he has become completely divorced from reality. For example, the people we're fighting in Iraq are not insurgents, Hersh said.

"They're the same people we fought in the beginning," he said. "It's not like we had a war, and then installed a government, and then gradually people rebelled and an insurgency sprung up and we have guerrilla operations. These are the people we went to war against. According to my sources, there are remarkably few foreign fighters in Iraq. And when has an occupying force ever won a war?"

Hersh pointed out that Fallujah was once famous for resisting British imperialism; it is also the ancient center of Sunni Wahaabism - the state religion of Saudi Arabia.

"Now Bush has guaranteed that the Saudi princes, no matter what they say, will be giving money to the insurgents," Hersh said. "We've basically committed ourselves to Saudi opposition."

We cannot win in Iraq, Hersh said. "We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.' All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."

The United States cannot afford this endless war, Hersh said. The dollar is already falling against the Euro, and the Chinese and Japanese hold trillions of dollars of U.S. debt.

"Soon China and Russia will start buying oil in Euros," Hersh said. "They'll stop buying American in Europe because they hate us so much - Disney in Paris is already going down. Large American corporations doing business abroad are going down. We could see more anti-American violence abroad. The dollar will fall. Billionaires are now telling other billionaires to get out of the stock market and buy foreign currency and stocks."

Then what could the good news be?

"The good side - and I promise you I'm not selling uppers - is that there will be direct attacks on the Supreme Court, a change in the filibuster rules, it's going to be down and dirty, a complete hoe-down, but there won't be anything subtle," Hersh said. "It's all going to be out in the open."

We must let events take over, Hersh said.

"We have put ourselves in an enormous hole," he said. "There's no magic story to get us out. The market will crash. Maybe people will come to their senses. Maybe some Democrat will step forward to do the right thing. And maybe the Easter bunny will turn out to be real."

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-12-01 03:19am

I just skimmed it, but the only point I see worth contesting is the bit about the Taliban. We could have destroyed them root and branch if Iraq hadn't distracted us, and I don't see why we shouldn't try to nail them all.

GySgt. Hartman · Post by **GySgt. Hartman** » 2004-12-01 07:35am

If it is true that they were split, we could have used one half to fight the other, getting them to kill each other and leaving the victor weakened to fight the northern alliance. But I guess this was a political impossibility, since people wanted to see action being taken.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-12-01 07:37am

If it is true that they were split, we could have used one half to fight the other, getting them to kill each other and leaving the victor weakened to fight the northern alliance. But I guess this was a political impossibility, since people wanted to see action being taken.

True, but that wouldn't have exterminated them, and we could have destroyed them totally had it not been for Iraq.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-12-01 08:55am

Galvatron wrote:"The good side - and I promise you I'm not selling uppers - is that there will be direct attacks on the Supreme Court, a change in the filibuster rules, it's going to be down and dirty, a complete hoe-down, but there won't be anything subtle," Hersh said. "It's all going to be out in the open."

We must let events take over, Hersh said.

"We have put ourselves in an enormous hole," he said. "There's no magic story to get us out. The market will crash. Maybe people will come to their senses. Maybe some Democrat will step forward to do the right thing. And maybe the Easter bunny will turn out to be real."

[/quote]

Lets hope something like that happens, something so big that there is no way to decive the public about it.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-12-01 09:14am

Im not so quick to agree, ace pace.

after all, we just had a 200 billion dollar 100k dead war. that didnt seem big enough.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-12-01 09:27am

Enforcer Talen wrote:Im not so quick to agree, ace pace.

after all, we just had a 200 billion dollar 100k dead war. that didnt seem big enough.

I would have hope that the body bags coming home would shock people, but since even the internet dosn't have pictures of them, I assume most hear "1000 soldiers dead" and just shrug it off.

The U.S needs a serious shock that reachs into every home, but one that can't be blamed on anything foreign, something that screams "THIS IS THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATIONS DOING".

Post by **Dalton** » 2004-12-01 12:03pm

Enforcer Talen wrote:Im not so quick to agree, ace pace.

after all, we just had a 200 billion dollar 100k dead war. that didnt seem big enough.

It was filtered through the Bush Administration and the news media.

We need a biiiiiiiiiig shitstorm here.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-12-01 01:23pm

like what? I think he could shrug off both watergate and pearl harbor.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-01 01:35pm

It's due to a tribal mentality. In a tribal mentality, you base your decisions upon tribal allegiances, not abstract principles. Look at how the early settlers regarded the "Indians"; did they care who was at fault for the conflict, or who had done the greatest wrong, or who had the strongest ethical position? Of course not; all that mattered was Us vs Them. The other stuff is just smokescreen bullshit you use to justify your tribally motivated actions after the fact.

Post by **Coyote** » 2004-12-01 02:19pm

To be honest I think one of the many motivating factors behind invading Iraq was to draw Jihadis there instead of to Afghanistan.

Think about it-- a Western power, reliant on mechanization and high-tech, slogging it out in resource and infrastructure-poor Afghanistan...? That's the Jihadi's home turf-- a fight there is what they want.

On the other hand, you've got Iraq-- moderate as far as Islam goes, somewhat Westernized, with lots of armor-friendly wide-open spaces and fairly reliable infrastructure.

We needed to resolve Iraq anyway before we could go any further in the Middle East because, as I theorized before, it would have been the bleeding wound at our back. Since it was already a "Western Injustice" being used as a rally call, may as well play it out and draw attention from Afghanistan at the same time.

The writer knows his audience-- Bush haters and anti-America shrills-- but not his subject matter. I find it interseting that he thinks we could have "worked with half of the Taliban"-- the most virulent violators of even the most basic human rights and dignities on the planet-- to head off the "human rights violations" of the Evil US.

Whether we'd gone to Afghanistan and turned into a Utopian paradise with streets of gold, food for all and had everyone at a Ph.D level of education within a year is unimportant-- the Jihadist movement would still hate and despise us, and still come up with reasons, some real, some imagined, some a bit of both-- to carry out further attacks.

We "worked with" the Taliban once before-- when they were the Mujahideen against the Soviets. We essentially gave them whatever they wanted and then, when it was over, we left them alone and did not try to add them to our collection of "Imperial Conquests(tm)". And it got us...

...here. Where, even after 8 years of Bill Clinton pushing the Middle East Peace Process, trying to find justice and a fair settlement for the Palestinians and the Israelis and end their conflict, the Jihadists still planned and carried out their attack regardless. Planning for 9/11 went back as far as 1998, when the Oslo Peace Plan was in full swing and not a single Intifadah rock had been thrown. ("The 9-11 Report: 'The Planes Operation')

They don't give a frozen rat's as about peace or working out differences. They have nothing to negotiate, nothing we have that they want. All they have wanted a violent "Gotterdammerung" war with the West for decades and quite frankly I think we would have been dragged into this sooner or later, one way or another.

By invading Iraq under the circumstances in which we did, they got the war they always wanted but we got to frame it in terms more favorable to us.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-01 02:21pm

Coyote wrote:To be honest I think one of the many motivating factors behind invading Iraq was to draw Jihadis there instead of to Afghanistan.

There were many motivations. But we're talking about the motivations for this hysterical behaviour of punishing contrarians and rewarding yes-men: a classic behaviour trait of bad managers: a contemptible class of person often found in businesses (particularly nepotistic ones) and which seems to be running rampant through this administration.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-12-01 02:50pm

In other news Pointy Haired boss has been appointed as ambassadore to the new Iraqi government, and Catbert the Evil Director of Human resources will be in charge of our service people's benefit program....

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-12-01 02:52pm

it might be an improvement.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-12-01 02:57pm

well the Luthor+dogbert ticket failed...

Post by **Coyote** » 2004-12-01 02:57pm

Therein lies the rub-- I think we have the worst possible leadership for this most crucial juncture in history. I often wonder why the Religious Far-Right is so adamant about fighting the Taliban, in some extents they are ideological kin (women as modest, demure housekeepers, learning scripture in school, creationist teachings, etc...)

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2004-12-01 03:08pm

Coyote wrote:Therein lies the rub-- I think we have the worst possible leadership for this most crucial juncture in history. I often wonder why the Religious Far-Right is so adamant about fighting the Taliban, in some extents they are ideological kin (women as modest, demure housekeepers, learning scripture in school, creationist teachings, etc...)

Because the most vicious ideological warfare among fanatics will arise over the stupidest of points. In this case...

"God!" "Allah!" "God!" "Allah!"

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-01 03:10pm

It's true, look at Christians. Some of their worst and most vicious behaviour has historically been directed at fellow Christians whose beliefs differed only slightly from their own. The intolerant mindset does not make allowances for kinship, only complete obedience.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-12-01 03:30pm

I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2004-12-01 11:04pm

Why is having the dollar fall bad, exactly? A weak dollar means that our exports will be much more competitive on the world market, IE, that the steady loss of manufacturing jobs could very well halt itself and perhaps even be reversed. The fact that we are letting the dollar fall is perhaps the best and brightest component of the upcoming administration.

Marksist · Post by **Marksist** » 2004-12-01 11:15pm

I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made.

Oooo, pulling out the old Stones quotes.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2004-12-01 11:47pm

I see several people here have fallen for the "Maybe if things get REALLY bad, the people will rise up and..." Fallacy.

I'm not buying it. People didn't get bent out of shape over Vietnam until the casualties were WAY higher than they are in Iraq (for Americans -"sand niggers" don't count) and middle class kids who had avoided the war for four years by going to college suddenly found themselves as draft bait.

It's the same with the economy. People think that when it takes a dive, voters will kick the party responsible out.

What they forget is that the art of scapegoating has been perfected over the last 40 years. If the the shit hits the fan in Iraq on a huge scale, the Bush junta, right-wing media whores, and the other usual suspects will blame it on the fags and/ or a famous actress and the sheep will say "Baa-aaa save us from those wolves!" I just want to know which actress will be the new scapegoat. The Nazis had Marlene Dietrich. The Vietnam Freikorps had Jane Fonda. Who will it be this time?

Susan Sarandon? No. Her rack is just too nice.
Jennifer Connelly? Ditto. When she dissed Dubya on Bravo, I forgave her for going on that goddamned diet.
Gwyneth Paltrow? No. She already left the country.
Julia Roberts? No. She's too popular.
Jeanine Garafalo? No. How are the cud-chewers going to smear her when even smart people can't spell her name?

Any other suggestions?

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-12-01 11:58pm

Elfdart wrote:(for Americans -"sand niggers" don't count)

Alright Elfie, care to explain your use of racial slurs?

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-12-02 12:02am

Oh, it's just another inflammatory strawman. Don't mind him.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-12-02 12:10am

Sometimes I wonder if Elfdart isn't a Rove plant.

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