The Bush administration's deliberate attempts to derail every "liberal" program, from alternative energy sources and environmental protection to health care and public education, are worrisome enough, but at least we know these are part and parcel of the ultra-conservative package.  It is the calamities that Team Bush has caused through sheer accident and incompetence that are truly alarming.

Bull-headed reliance upon "intelligence" that was dubious at best, and flat out false at worst, to promote a war that, it turns, out, has actually diverted resources from the mission against terrorism, decreased stability in the Middle East, and destroyed American credibility at home and abroad.  It had long been the international perception that, even if the world didn't like what the American leadership said, it could trust that it was in earnest, that it would do as it said, that its grounds for action were credible.  It is that trust upon which effective treaties and alliances are built.  Thanks to Team Bush, that trust no longer exists.  That is not to say that America is no longer powerful, that it is not feared; it is just no longer respected and trusted.  It has forfeit its role as world leader, and traded it for that of a loose cannon.

Forgetting the lessons of the past (or perhaps never having learned them in the first place), Team Bush has reverted to a time-worn policy of instigating wars of "Crusade," with apparently no realistic appreciation of the costs, not only in money, but in terms of materiel and human suffering, and no honest assessment of the opposition, the hazards, or the odds of success.  Consequently, troops are sent into battle without adequate preparation and protection, and are spread so thinly that domestic reserves have had to be sent into foreign combat, leaving the homeland more vulnerable than ever.  Moreover, the adventure has been undertaken with apparently no awareness by the American administration of the enormous cultural differences between the West and the Middle East, leaving the invader with no workable exit strategy.  It seems to have been naïvely assumed that Iraq would be just like France during World War II, that the entire Iraqi population would welcome U.S. troops as liberators upon the fall of their tyrannical leader, and that peace and democracy would spontaneously spring up in place of despotism.

But the Pollyanna vision was false.  Iraq wasn't France.  Unlike Nazi-occupied Europe, Iraq wasn't occupied by a foreign force; it was violently factional; it had no tradition of democracy.  The American invasion didn't restore a pre-existing order to Iraq, but simply destroyed what little order there was.  As any student of world cultures can tell you (but the Bush administration insisted upon learning the hard way), there are immense differences between Western and Eastern cultures, in the beliefs and values they hold, in the assumptions they make, in the ways they think, even in their concepts of truth and justice.  The other leaders of the Western world have been reluctant to participate, because they are well aware of this vast cultural gulf, of which the Bush administration seems to have been deplorably and inexcusably ignorant.  And now America finds itself in the unhappy predicament, that the undesirable but essentially crippled regime it destroyed under false pretenses might well be replaced by something much more undesirable, something that brings all the power of unbridled religious fanaticism to the breeding of terrorism against a despised and now increasingly friendless United States.  Though it started out well enough against a clear target in Afghanistan, the war against terror has since been misdirected, mismanaged, and overextended, with the result that now the world is a far more dangerous place.  The instigators of that war are now universally seen as untrustworthy and dangerously impulsive.  The Bush administration is disgraced and scorned in the civilized world, and the forces of terrorism it opposes have drawn new strength and courage from this turn of events.  America has Am-Bushed itself!

=SAJ=