Watching the President’s Iraq Speech: A Diagnostic Guide
[W]atching Sen. Lindsey Graham shill for the administration on Meet the Press this weekend, and hearing him state with utter conviction and a gleam in his eye, “We’ve got a new team on the ground. We’re going to come up with a new strategy. The strategy is going to be designed to win,” I couldn’t help but think of the reports from psychiatrists who have treated patients with delusional personalities. The truly deranged are often so committed to their delusions, and so insistent, that part of your brain actually starts thinking: Hmm, maybe this person really is Napoleon! Maybe that woman really is a fried egg! Maybe the surge really will lead to victory in Iraq! Meanwhile, the other part of your brain — the rational part — is reminding you that, no, in fact, that person is not Napoleon or any part of a Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast. They are simply utterly insane.
I seriously doubt that I’ll be watching Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © speech tonight. Frankly, I don’t know if I’d be able to get through it without throwing something at our big screen television. Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © is going to do what he’s going to do, and the speech will no doubt with another propaganda exercise straight out of 1984: “We are at war with Eurasia. We have ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia.” INGSOC rules….
Given that the Administration is already rolling out their talking heads and apologists this morning (My day is complete; Dan Bartlett just removed the veils of ignorance from my eyes….), the massaging of the propaganda message has already begun. We’re being prepared for a surge in troop levels an escalation in the war in Iraq. Sure, it will be sold to us as a necessary (and temporary) step in assuring “victory in Iraq”…whatever that means. The reality, though, is that while this escalation will be marketed as the ticket to swift and inevitable victory, throwing more bodies at the problem is hardly a prescription for success.
Does he display clear indications of denial, continuing to use words like “victory,” “win,” and “stable democracy”? Does he avoid using the phrase “civil war”? When he repeatedly talks about “sacrifice” does he skip over the fact that this doesn’t include me and you, and over 99 percent of Americans?
Does he exhibit signs of the classic layman’s definition of insanity: repeatedly doing the same thing but expecting a different result? Look to see if he trots out strategies that have already failed time and time again and acts like he expects them to have a different outcome. Be on particular alert for mentions of a new Baghdad security plan, and see if they are accompanied by any reference to the five previous such plans, all of which have failed to curb the chaos. And keep an eye open for even the slightest acknowledgment that throughout the war the military has repeatedly carried out troop surges of more than 20,000 and the bloodshed in Iraq has continued to increase….
Does he continue to make the claim that we’re fighting them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here…even though there isn’t a shred of evidence that the war in Iraq has made us safer, and a great deal of evidence that it has, in fact, had the opposite effect?
Does he continue to irrationally link the war in Iraq to 9/11, as Tony Snow did on Monday when he claimed the president “understands there is a lot of public anxiety” about the war, but that the American people “don’t want another September 11.”
Great; almost four years later, AND A PRESIDENT ADMITTING THAT IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9.11, and Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © propagandists are STILL trying to connect Iraq and 9.11 in the minds of the American sheeple. Somewhere, Josef Goebbels is smiling.
The only strategy I’ve been able to discern from this clusterf—k is the desire to prolong the war long enough to be able to turn it over to Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © successor. Given the probability that his successor will be a Democrat, the clusterf—k war in Iraq will more than likely become just another “Democrat war” (apologies for stealing Sen. Bob Dole’s line), which will then be used against Democrats during the following election cycle.
Do you really need to waste your time watching Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © attempt to propagandize the American sheeple? Probably not…unless you really WANT to believe; it’s not as if there’s really any mystery involved. There’s just one think you’re going to want to keep in mind, though: these people really are @!#$%^& nuts. Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his evil spinmeisters really do believe that we’re THIS close to “victory” in Iraq. Right…and pigs are violating Saudi Arabian airspace as you read this….
