A strange thanks for morons in public office...

Well,

The headlines, as they seem so often to be, are painted once again with the proclamations that the White House "won't shift Iraq Strategy". While this is not surprising to most, it should be.

So much hot air has been expelled on every talk show and across countless blogs and editorials from both sides of the political trough, describing the subtle cleverness of Karl Rove & Co., the brilliance of their manipulation of the public vote and vox populi. Always seeming to counter the Dems when the opposition seemed impregnable. But what is destroying the GOP these days is an unbelieveable stubborness of the current administration to change anything they do, or anyone they appoint, or anything they've said (see: Dennis Hastert) no matter what anyone in the public, media or political world pleads them to do. Never. Try, right now, to make a list of three major reversals made by this administration after six years in office. Go ahead, I'll wait. They don't have to be about Iraq, but they have to be about at least somewhat important issues. Something that made the papers.
I can't do it.

In fact, I can only come up with one, and it's typically meaningless: Bush almost apologized for using his infamous words "Mission Accomplished". But c'mon...that cost him nothing to do and in fact probably earned him some points with centrists eager to find something to cling to. Something to point to and say "See, he's a good man! He can admit when he's wrong!" But this was transparent and as I said costs the GOP and the White House nothing at all. They'd already been roasted for months about it, and wasn't going to chance a single stitch of policy. He hasn't admitted what his administration is truly wrong about, and he won't. It rings of atheletes who make tearful apologies "What I did was wrong...I'm not hiding from that" when they're discovered to have taken steroids...but would they be so contrite if no one had caught them? Would they apologise so forcefully if there wasn't something to be gained from that apology? No.

So, now that I've meandered from my point yet again, here it is: We should be thankful for the pig-headed obstinancy of this White House crew. It will cost them control of this government (unless they rig yet another set of elections). Any intelligent politician would see the elephant of truth that points to their destruction in the elections and alter their course, or at least lie and say that they will. They probably think, in their over-reaching cleverness, that this will provoke exactly the opposite effect, but there Rove has put his head on the same block he used to destroy his opponents: he is misreading the American voting populace. Maybe his strategy is to show that this White House will not change their "values" and policies just to please the polls...so everyone on the fence can say "Wow! They must really believe in what they're doing, they must know something we don't about the war. Hmm, maybe we should leave them in power after all?" But Rove has swung too far this time. And maybe Americans are too smart for him, he's not overestimating them...he's underestimating them. Maybe, just maybe, Americans realize that not only do we need to get the hell out of Dodge (Iraq, Afghanistan, et al), but that the war was illegal in the first place, and the hands of those in power are stained irrevocably with the blood of hundreds of thousands of lives, and must answer for a devasted landscape dotted only with the burned-out hulks of our tanks and the impromptu cemeteries of a decimated and further impoverished people. People in whom we've planted a deep, black hate for the U.S. for the rest of their lives, and who will instill that hatred in their children.

And I guess that is how Mr Bush and his cronies have made us more safe?

What he and his type doesn't understand is that even our multi-trillion dollar army and it's reluctant allies can't kill fast enough to eliminate all of our enemies, and that for every one we kill illegally and without attempt to compromise, ten more will rise up. That will go on forever until this hideousness stops. Has history ever shown us otherwise?