MORE CRAZINESS….Another thing that drives me crazy: the administration’s apparent belief that occupying Iraq would be relatively easy because the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. Here is Rod Nordland, Baghdad bureau chief for Newsweek:
ROD NORDLAND: I mean, they are still laboring under the delusion that most Iraqis are glad to have them here, and I think that’s one of the reasons that they are [misreading the mood of Iraqis].
….TERENCE SMITH: You say the troops were laboring still under the — what you called the delusion that the Iraqis are happy to have them there. You’ve concluded it truly is a delusion?
ROD NORDLAND: No, I don’t have any doubt about that at all. I mean, there’s a bit of schizophrenia. The Iraqis are glad to see the end of the Saddam Hussein regime and they’re glad to see a change in government, but that does not mean that they’re happy with the American occupation. And just the contrary, I think. And they’re growing more and more unhappy with it.
Lord almighty, they still believe this? There are many things about war that are intensely complicated, but there are also some things that aren’t, and this is one of them: people don’t like being invaded by foreign countries. They especially don’t like being invaded by enormous superpowers with cultures, religions, and beliefs that they have hated all their lives.
In the long run, the administration’s fudging of the WMD intelligence is a mere nitpick compared to their stubborn refusal to work on a timetable that might have gotten our allies on board with our war plans, their criminally negligent lack of postwar planning, and their blinkered acceptance of the delusional neocon view that the United States can unilaterally change the culture of the Middle East via military power.
It’s remarkable. I assume that George Bush and his advisors truly want to make America safer and the Middle East less dangerous, but at every step of the way they have followed plans that ensure almost exactly the opposite. It’s the flip side of their domestic policy, where they have singlemindedly pursued strategies almost perfectly designed not to help solve the real problems the economy faces.
I’m not sure there’s been a president in my lifetime who so obviously doesn’t care about the actual facts of a situation before he formulates policies. I wonder if he even knows?
