Why We All Have a Huge Stake in America’s Election

Look at George Bush and South Ossetia. See any connection? Too bad because it’s there.

One of the lasting scars we’ll all have to deal with after the death of the BuCheney regime will be the enormous damage it’s caused to global security. Answer a few questions.

Who drove the revival and spread of Islamist fundamentalism?

Who has destabilized the once Sunni-dominated Middle East and precipitated the ascendancy of Shiite power in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories?

Who relentlessly pressed for the expansion of NATO right to the borders of Russia?

Who has undermined the strength and economic stability of the very nation the world has accepted for so long as the leader of the Free World, the United States itself?

Who has sparked and then fueled arms races around the world?

These are just some of the dregs of BuCheney that’ll be left behind for others to deal with. The Frat Boy and his puppeteer have done their work. They don’t see their administration as a failure if only because they managed to enact the social agenda they wanted, albeit with some setbacks such as the Social Security debacle.

George w. Bush meant it when, during his first term, he addressed a black-tie dinner and described the guests as “his base” calling them “the haves and the have-mores.” To these people, this top sliver of American society, the Bush years have been grand indeed.

So, what’s the connection between George w. Bush, Dick Cheney and South Ossetia? The White House has relentlessly pressured NATO to expand to the very borders of Russia. It was France and Germany that balked at admitting Georgia into the Alliance. America has encouraged Georgian adventurism and defiance of Russia, even backing a thug like Saakashvili (shown with Bush above) while he violently suppressed dissent in his country.

Georgia was no place for clumsy meddling. The Ossetia issue has been around since at least 1922 when the South Ossetia Autonomous region came into being. In fact the Russians have been backing Ossetian autonomy since the reign of Catherine the Great. Since 1925 there has been a movement to unite South and North Ossetia. Georgia moved on South Ossetia in 1989 declaring it no longer autonomous and trying to force assimilation by measures such as declaring Georgian the official language. Fighting between the Ossetians and Georgians has been an on and off reality since 1991.

When America, despite the wishes of the Europeans, moved to consolidate its influence with Georgia, it emboldened Saakashvili to the point where he thought he could execute a coup de main while everyone was distracted with the Beijing Olympics.

America’s puerile foreign policy has played a direct role in the current fighting and has been reflected in Condoleeza Rice calling for Russia but not Georgia to withdraw entirely from Ossetia. Her rank stupidity and complete disregard for the historical realities at play in Ossetia has been nothing short of breathtaking.

We can only hope that we’ll see a new face of America after the November elections.

 

Bush Drops a Huge One Right Smack in the Middle of His Road Map

America’s all-time Moron in Chief has just sent his Middle East peace initiative up in flames. His administration’s own credibility is utterly gone and so is that of Fatah stooge Mahmoud Abbas.

Vanity Fair has dropped a bombshell – after Palestinian elections that led to victory for Hamas, Bush, Rice and deputy national security advisor Elliot Abrams backed an armed uprising under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan that sparked a civil war in Gaza.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

The Vanity Fair link keeps going down. You can also find the article here:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030508A.shtml

The report seems more than plausible and it’ll be enough to turn the Palestinians against Abbas. If he gets out with his life, he’ll be lucky. Abbas, with a well earned reputation for corruption, now stands exposed as an American operative to boot.

Bush has issued a blanket denial – as if he had any other choice – but the damage is done. There’s no more room for pretending to be an honest broker. His turn at the Middle East Wheel of Fortune is over but the way it ended, mired in scandal, will be a fitting legacy for his entire administration.

H/T to Red Jenny

 

Paying the Price for Playing Both Sides

It all looked so clear when Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq. It was all about toppling Saddam and cleaning out the Sunni’s Baathist regime.

That went pretty well except that Washington found itself with a bunch Iraq’s great unwashed, its Shiites, demanding democracy of all things – neatly put, a transfer of the political reins from Sunni to Shia control. Ouch! Shiites in control, just ’cause they’re the majority?

In one blistering moment of clarity amidst a thick fog of idiocy, the White House realized it had just made Shiite controlled Iran, the dominant power in the region. Its options were rapidly being foreclosed.

Oh dear. Then followed the kiss and make up moment with Iraq’s Sunni leadership. The Americans even gave the “former” insurgents (ha, ha, ha) weapons and equipment so they could fight al-Qaeda terrorists. Now the Shiite government in Baghdad saw the US lavishing arms on he very group they know they’re going to have to fight once the Yanks leave. Grrrrrreat!

Not to worry. Roughly a billion dollars worth of arms and equipment has somehow vanished from the Abu Ghraib compound. The stuff has vanished alright, that is if you don’t bother following the tire tracks to the Shiite militias.

Isn’t that great. Iraq’s enormous weapons shortage has now been relieved!

But there were always the Kurds in the north to remain America’s trusted and grateful allies. Not so much as you might think. First there was the poison pill of the Kurdish Autonomous Region’s constitution that managed to get infiltrated, er incorporated into the Iraq constitution. This is the deal that will likely lead to the Arab-Kurd war over Kirkuk.

And then there’s the Turks and their own Kurdish rebels. Now the Kurdish rebels, or freedom fighters, or terrorists, have been using northern Iraq as a safe haven from which to raid targets in Turkey. In response the Turks sent about 100,000 forces to the Iraq border.

The Americans have tried to get Turkey to back off but Ankara is in virtually the same moral position as Israel was when it invaded Lebanon last year to go after Hezbollah – with complete American support. So, Turkey’s now saying “me too, me too” and has launched air strikes and even a small ground raid into the Kurdish Autonomous Region.

Then word leaked out that the Americans are helping the Turks target Kurdish sites inside Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds are livid. So is the Baghdad government even though it’s Arab dominated.

What to do, what to do? The Sunni don’t trust them and the Shiite don’t trust them and, now, the Kurds don’t trust them. Best send Condi to Iraq to soothe hurt feelings.

I think even the Bushies are realizing you can only play this game so many times before it gets old. That message got delivered to Condi today when the head of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, President Massoud Barzani, refused to meet with her. From BBC:

Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said: “It was decided that Massoud Barzani would go to Baghdad to take part in a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and other officials, but he will not go now as a sign of protest against the American position on the bombings by Turkey.

“It is unacceptable that the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, authorised Turkey to bomb our villages,” he said.

 

Condi Rice’s Christmas Wish List

Wonder what you’ll get US state secretary Condoleeza Rice for Christmas this year? Here’s what she wants more than anything. Ready? She wants a calendar – one of those big, wall calendars with separate boxes for every day. And to go with it she wants a box of red felt marker pens.

Condi wants to slap that sucker up on the wall of her office and use the pens to cross off the days until it’s all over, when it becomes somebody else’s miserable job to try to clean up the messes she and her bosses have made around the world, the day when she can say “screw it” and kick back with a pitcher of margaritas.

Maybe if she can just down enough tequila she’ll be able to overcome any residual traces of conscience, integrity and decency in time to bundle up three hundred pages of hallucinations, spin and outright lies to pour into a volume of memoirs. Lord knows she’s done enough spinning and lying over the past seven years that, by the time Bush is run out of Washington, that she should be able to do it even passed out in a pool of vomit.

Then, as the hangover fades and the hands steady, she can ready herself for the real challenges of the coming years – defending herself and her masters against their accusers and attackers. They’ll likely be challenged as no other administration in history. That’s because there’s been no previous administration so incompetent, self-serving, dishonest, secretive and utterly abusive of the public trust that attends high office. It’ll be a whistle blowers’ Mardi Gras and all those minions, keepers of the darkest truths, who’ve buried their heads all these years out of fear of the fabled retribution of the masters, will be free at last to talk, to reveal and indict, even to draw maps showing where the bodies are buried.

Yes, I would think that, much as the Bushies must be looking forward to being released from the constant shirking of responsibility, they must also view life after 2008 with a certain dread. Unless, of course, the Terror continues. Unless luck is with them one more time and the November runoff comes down to Clinton versus Giuliani. Then there may yet be hope.