I’m Not Worried
This afternoon, blogger Andrew Sullivan writes of his discomfort over President Bush’s increasingly provocative rhetoric vis-à-vis Iran.
I don’t feel the same apprehension, and here’s why: Bush possesses none of the “political capital” he once claimed to have. With a (sigh) year and a half left in his term he is, for all intents and purposes, as lame a duck as there ever was. Sure, he is still commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, but to take any military action against Iran without a strong public mandate at this point seems to me impossible even for him to pull off, and he has pulled off some impressive feats of popular disregard. But that was when he was surrounded by sycophants; lorded over a compliant Congress, eager to suckle at the presidential teat; and enabled by a feckless media. He no longer enjoys those luxuries to the degree he once did. In fact, almost any time he opens his mouth to speak these days there seems to be a great national disbelief; he isn’t credible, and the American people now know it.
The irony is that, at this point, even if he were to start telling the truth–don’t worry, he won’t–two-thirds of Americans still wouldn’t believe him. That’s what is what will keep us from attacking Iran.
I don't like going places, doing things or seeing people.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
yeah that and the fact that Iran is NOT the kind of country we normally attack: they’re not a small, weak David to our Goliath. Iran is way bigger and waaay more powerful than Iraq was even before the start of the first Gulf War. We *might* be able to take them on but only if we weren’t bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t try in the way that many empires when they begin to spread out over the whole world try to take on more than they can handle and end up spreading themselves too thin but if our leaders were smart and wanted to maintain their current position as world hegemon (or semi-hegemon) they wouldn’t attempt such a thing.