1115.org

If you’re not sure whether to support the Bush administration’s position vis-à-vis the unfolding Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon situation, that’s probably the question you need to ask yourself.

These are the same people who sold us Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction with visions of mushroom clouds. The folks who convinced us that these WMDs were an imminent threat to the U.S. The guys who assured us that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and in cahoots with Osama bin Laden.

But all of that is in the past. The real question is: can’t we trust them now? Would they lie to us again?

They have, of course, openly admitted the mistakes of the past, haven’t they? Especially Dick Cheney? They have engaged in anguished soul-searching, determined to never again be responsible for the needless deaths of thousands. They have done this in private, and they have proved it to us by their public demeanor and pronouncements. They have demonstrated the hard-won wisdom that comes only from bitter experience. They have won back our trust.

If all of that were true, we could perhaps be comfortable trusting them again. If some of that were true, we could at least consider trusting them again. But if none of that is true, then the only question left is: how stupid are we?

In Bush-Cheney-Rice’s fantasy, they are the uber-diplomats who are going to bring about the permanent peace between Israel and its enemies that has proved elusive for close to 60 years now, and that has not even looked remotely possible for as long as I can remember. And they are going to achieve this by insisting that Israel’s indiscriminate pulverization policy be allowed to continue for as long as Israel cares to continue it. Once we have earned the trust of Israel’s enemies in this way, we’ll be able to waltz in later to warmly appreciative applause, and bring everyone to the table, and hammer out that lasting, permanent peace.

That’s quite a fantasy, even for these guys. How could our Iraq experience have left them even more delusional than they were three years ago?

If we dismiss the fantasies, and the delusional rhetoric about peace and democracy and freedom and how we will bring all three of those to the Middle East, what are we left with?

That people are dying every day is a fact. That they are dying needlessly is a pretty safe bet, needlessly in the sense that these deaths will do nothing to improve the prospects for peace in the region.

That our standing in the community of nations is taking a brutal hammering is a fact. And we don’t have very much standing left to lose at this point.

That no country other than the U.S. can possibly bring about an immediate end to the deaths is a fact.

That we resolutely refuse to do anything to bring about an immediate end to the deaths, and to restore some of our lost standing, surely that doesn’t have to be a fact?