After suffering one misfire after another, the Dubya Administration has realized that unless something afflicts/offends the average USAmerican, the collective country would rather stay out of other people’s business. Take Saddam, for instance.
Nobody cares how he kills his own people or finances suicide bombers to deliver death in Israel. As long as oil remains at USD$18-$20 a barrel and everyone has their weed/heroin/coke/XTC for the weekend, no problems exist for USAmericans.
In a society where the interests of self reign supreme, the media can blare out propaganda about things like “terrorism” and “the post-9/11 paradigm shift” and people won’t give a damn after learning basic facts:
The Saudi Family sells less oil than it is capable of producing. The Saudi Family contributes to 25% of daily worldwide production. The United States buy more oil than it will ever hope to produce. The United States contributes to 25% of daily worldwide consumption.
As long as those numbers are balanced and Venezuela makes up for anything Iraq might do, nobody will give critical introspection to the petroleum question except for writers and academics. People would rather play video games and watch porn than worry about energy needs in the next minute, the next day, the next year or the next decade.
Bush, however, knows that he still has a little problem with more than half the country thinking that his cronies essentially pulled off a coup d’etat to get him into the Oval Office. People will remember this because the opposition is sure to remind them. People will learn that Afghanistan was a war about drugs and not a war about terror. Those inconvenient facts about U.S. military personnel being in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, long before the World Trade Center attack, will eventually find their way out into the open.
Bush has problems and the only way he can get over them is to keep fanning the flames of International contingencies. He desperately wants a ground offensive in Baghdad because such an operation will carry him through the next presidential election. Americans, and democracies in general, do not like to leave troops out in the field for any prolonged period of time for any reason.
Putting troops in country after country at the tune of at least $1 billion a month is just the beginning of the horrible foreign-policy decisions made by Bush. With the help of his trusty friend, Saddam, and the laser-guided propaganda bombs developed by defense conglomerate subsidiaries known as “The U.S. media” to scare the ignorant masses, Dubya will make justification for military action and shove it down the throat of every other nation.
Nobody ever said no to him before and it’s not likely that anyone will be able to say no to him now.
