Invading Iran Not on the Agenda

Condaleeza Rice had to announce the fact that invading Iran is not part of the administration's agenda. She added, "However, maybe if we move a few things around we could squeeze it in."

What's a hoot about this?

Soon we will have a generation of citizens who ask presidential candidates, "If elected, who would you invade and why?"

What Rice didn't address of course is that America's ability to invade anybody is practically nil right now. Bush's ridiculous invasion of Iraq under false pretenses (that Iraq is an imminent threat) has now hog-tied America's ability to seriously maneuver anywhere else. Al Quaeda couldn't found a dumber bait-and-switch victim than the Bush White House, and the toady yes-men who cowtow to the president who doesn't think things through. Oh, but look at me, dredging up the past. In his 1960 book Mr. Citizen, Harry Truman writes,

"I am not one who believes it does any good to cry over past mistakes." [unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Truman evidently can recognize making past mistakes.] "You have got to keep looking ahead and going stragith ahead all the time, making decisions and coreecting the situation as you go along. This calls for fundamental policy, a basic outlook, for the making of major foreign and domestic decisions. Otherwise the operations of the government would be reduced to improvisation -- and inevitable trouble."

The last sentence is key because I think Bush policy, while rooted in a fundamental outlook created by others that George W. Bush has happily signed on to, has been administered by improvisation.

"A President who hesitates or temporizes usually is not certain of what he wants, and he is greatly handicapped when he has to act without a clear-cut policy."

The Bush administration's inability to look at the world as it really is and build upon that backdrop a blueprint -- ie, a clear-cut, well-thought policy -- that will tangibily build their neoconservative world alos illustrates Truman's point, even though most people think President Bush is a man who doesn't hesitate or temporize. Truth is, the Bush team does a version of hesitation. That is, they flip-flop. They create crises, then make up reactions to crises so they can eliminate resistance to their hastily-assembled policies, then they continually evolve and make up new justifications for their policies when the old ones get run up the flagpole and nobody salutes. Likewise, during the 2004 campaign, Senator Kerry did hesitate and temporize to the point where people felt like he was too cautious. James Carville and I have something in common. We were so frustrated with Kerry (for not blasting back at those swift boat goons for their character assassination of Kerry) that we wept. So hungry were we to see the Democratic candidate tear limb-from-limb the tacts of the cowards and bullies in and around the Bush administration.