The only likely alternative to Hamas running Gaza is much worse

I really wonder what the top politicians in Israel are smoking. It must be the really good stuff. Why else would they start a war they are certain to lose, and lose big? Maybe it was just the fear of the upcoming Israeli election, with the government still having the festering sore of a Hamas dominated Gaze randomly lobbing missiles into Israel that the government had found themselves unable to stop. But it is getting clear now that the attack into Gaza is likely to leave Israel in even worse shape than they were before. In the absence of a complete reoccupation of Gaza by the Israelis (a concept previously tried and failed) the only alternative to a Hamas dominated Gaza is an al Qaeda dominated Gaza, and that's much, much worse.

M.J. Rosenberg has laid out the real players and the logic of the attack on Gaza quite well.

The takeover of Gaza by Hamass was set up in large part by several key missteps made by the Bush administration. First was the decision of the Bush administration to oust Yassar Arafat, who had successfully almost completely stopped terrorism after 1997. This was compounded by providing minimal support to the replacement Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas, apparently to try to make him more compliant. The worst though, was then Bush forced an election in Gaza, one which both the Israelis and the Palestinians argued against. It looks like only Bush was surprised when Hamas won that election, and it is clear that the residents of Gaza would reelect Hamas again if they needed to. Even if Hamas is destroyed, the residents of Gaza will not accept the government of Fatah back. They would consider it the puppet of the U.S. and Israel. So if the invasion of Gaza can succeed in destroying Hamas, who will replace them? M. J. Rosenberg lays it out clearly.

Hamas' likely successors would be Al Qaeda--and its allies--which already have cells in Gaza. Hamas and Al Qaeda hate each other for many reasons, most of which are of interest only to students of Islam. The one that matters to us is that Hamas is willing to compromise with its enemies.

Al Qaeda and its ilk are at permanent war with the West, a war which cannot end until either AQ or the infidels are destroyed. Al Qaeda is not fighting for political goals but to create a pan-national Islamic State that would supplant not only Israel but all the Arab states.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim brotherhood, limits its ambitions to achieving a state in Palestine. It believes in compromise, if only as a stop gap. That is why it could sign a ceasefire agreement with Israel and, according to even Israeli sources, observe it until it decided that Israel was not living up to its end of the deal. It has even raised the idea of a 15 or 20 year ceasefire with the Jewish state.

All this is anathema to groups like Al Qaeda, for whom the destruction of the World Trade Center was a triumph--although it advanced no political goals. AQ has none, just as the terrorists in Mumbai killed for killing's sake.

And these are the people who could make Gaza--a few miles miles from Tel Aviv--its ultimate base of operations.

Writing in the London Jewish Chronicle, reporter Jonathan Freedland predicts, "Gaza could become a vacuum, rapidly descending into Somalia, a lawless badland of warlords and clans. . . . And from the rubble of Gaza, the attacks on Israel will surely resume."

So what is the strategic goal the Israelis wanted to accomplish by invading Gaza? If they aren't going to stay and occupy Gaza, the likely alternative to Hamas is much, much worse. And now that the Israelis have invaded, the situation is not going to return to the relative simplicity that characterized relations between Israel and Gaza before the invasion. The best that can be hoped for is a return to the government of Hamas.

If so, it seems very unlikely that Hamas is going to be amenable to making agreements with Israel for quite a while, since Israel does not keep them. Hamas will not make the mistake, though, of thinking that Israel will not make the mistake of self-defeating measures.

M.J Rosenberg has laid out some of the key errors made by the U.S. and Israel. I haven't found a similarly good and concise article on the errors made by the Palestinians. Nor have I found any good articles that offered Israel an alternative solution (that would have been likely to be effective) to invading Gaza.

As for what happens next, clearly a cease fire is critical. What can follow that is another mystery. Did the Israeli political leadership have a strategic plan for the invasion of Gaza? Anthony Cordesman makes that point.

What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain any grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made by Israel’s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?

To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government’s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it is not apparent.

As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel’s top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them.

Whatever the strategic plan might have been (if there was one) the after effects of the invasion will require efforts that go way beyond use of military force. Tough talk and military actions to back it up have created this current disaster. And the government of Israel is still the same one that invaded Southern Lebanon at Israel's political great cost, and had to be restrained by (of all people) George W. Bush from attacking Iraq and trying to take out Iran's nuclear installations.

When Bill Clinton left office he left the critical Middle Eastern problems of terrorism and the Palestinian - Israeli situations to George Bush and the beginnings of a mild recession. Clinton had stabilized the Palestinian - Israeli situation and appeared to be making progress, and his entire White House was working on the terrorism problem and tried to pass on their urgency to the incoming Bush administration. George Bush dropped both Middle Eastern balls as the attack on 9/11 almost immediately demonstrated, and discussion of the causes of the current economic situation have yet to determine what happened. Bush has now left Barack Obama with an active and escalating war in Afghanistan, an occupation/war still simmering in Iraq, an economy already in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and a seriously deteriorating Palestinian - Israeli situation. And Bush actually was reported as going on vacation in December.

Bush is going to be a hard act For Obama to follow. And I really wonder what the Israeli elections are going to bring.

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Disclaimer. I am not an expert on the middle east, and clearly not on the Palestinian - Israeli problems. I have, however, studied corporate strategy and management decision making extensively, and I can recognize when an effective strategy is being implemented. This is not one of those times when an effective strategy is apparent.

The Israelis seem to be destroying all hope of Peace with Palestinians.

Steve Clemons offers a report from Palestine. He spoke briefly with Mustafa Barghouti

...a former doctor turned political leader who previously ran for the presidency of Palestine. He now heads the Palestinian National Initiative and is an advocate of non-violent resistance against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The information is not good.

...particularly disturbing was his comment that road blocks and barriers to movement before the Annapolis process started number 521. Today, there are 607. Settlements are growing at a faster pace after Annapolis than before. This is wrong.

These trends are destroying the possibilities of peace in the Middle East -- and they are undermining America's national interests as well as Israel's own security situation.

The settlement movement appears to be a group of Israeli religious extremists who want to do their best to prevent any resolution of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict and are trying to take control of all of the Palestinian lands they can prior to any negotiations.

That's not to say that there are not equally committed extremists on the Palestinian side who still want to destroy all of Israel. But neither side is going to dislodge or destroy the other. As long as the extremists on both sides set the agenda, there will be war between them. Most people on both sides really just want what all sane humans want - a decent life and the opportunity to raise their families. That isn't going to happen until both sides get serious about negotiations. More settlements are a large step away from that.

White House doesn't try to maintain Balkan or Israeli/Palestinian stability

Laura Rozen quotes the LA Times to explain why the instability in Serbia and Kosovo is a direct result of Bush administration incompetence.

"Far from stabilizing the region, as the Bush administration had forecast, the move by Kosovo has launched a period of volatile uncertainty."

As a former US diplomat involved in the Balkans commented to me today, "There simply is no serious US leadership at this point on Serbia and Kosovo. It is being handled three or four levels down in the bureaucracy."

Then Laura quotes Melman & Raviv explaining why the right-wing Israeli government's use of assassination of terrorist leaders hasn't worked.

"Israel’s experience shows that assassination – or what Israel terms 'targeted killing' – is a double-edged sword. The policy only pays off in a few special cases. When a state deals with a terrorist group that is basically a 'one-man show,' chopping off the snake’s head by killing the leader can neutralize the group – so that can be justified in cost-effectiveness terms. But when a country encounters a highly motivated, solidified and structured terrorist group, killing its senior members proves to be counter-productive. The dead are soon replaced by members who are sometimes more skillful and more determined."

The common thread between the two stories is hands-off attitude of the Bush White House. They have ignored the Kosovo - Serbian situation until it has now blown up in their face, and they have allowed the Israeli right-wing extremist government free rein in its handling of the Israeli - Palestinian problems. In both cases the Bush administration ignorance and failure to get involved is causing greater problems internationally. That refusal to act is further demonstration of the foreign policy incompetence of the Bush administration.

If you don't regularly read Laura Rozen's blog War and Piece you are missing some of the clearest explanations of current events on-line.

Conservatism failed? Do it again with twice the effort. (Failure assured.)

Booman has provided an excellent summary of the efforts and results of the Bush - Neoconservative approach to the Middle East.

First the administration did everything they could to undermine Barak and help Sharon get elected. Then they stood by and clapped as Sharon dismantled the Palestinian Authority. Then they pushed for Palestinian elections, publicly backed Fatah, and watched Hamas sweep to victory. Then they gave a green light to a disastrous invasion of Lebanon. And this led to a total victory of Hamas in Gaza.

Now the Palestinians are divided, Israel is weak, and the prospects of a peace process lie in ashes. How can this administration 'refurbish' a peace process that lies in cinders? Is this 'realism'?

We have 'liberated' the Arab Shi'ites of Iraq and backed a Shi'a dominated government there for the last four years. Our new strategy is to make a 'political-military alliance with the dominant Sunni Arab powers -- especially Saudi Arabia'?

This is what the Bush - Cheney administration has done so far. Their ideologically-based and reality-free efforts have all failed and mostly made things worse than they were before.

This is an administration which emotionally mirrors its leaders. They do not self-analyze or accept the criticism of others. They know that what they are doing and have done is correct, so failure has to be the result of sabotage by liberals, spies or other enemies while criticism of what they know to be "right" is just another tool their enemies use to prevent them from acting.

They know they are "right" in what they do, so they attribute what they do to "Conservatism." In case one of their own, like Bush, is clearly established to have screwed up things badly, they can reject him by claiming that he failed to remain a conservative. The proof is that things got screwed up, and since conservatism is perfect and cannot fail the reason things got screwed up is that Bush (or whoever the failure of the day is) failed to remain a conservative.

The result is that they do not learn from their failures. They can't. They never acknowledge failure.

So when their efforts fail, the response is to return to "conservative principles" and redouble the effort. Somehow doing the same thing over again but twice as big and with twice the effort is going to succeed when it failed previously.

This is an innate human characteristic of ideologically-based organizations in which individuals are promoted to senior power positions based on their ideology rather than their demonstrated competence on the job. The Communists running the Soviet Union continually failed in economic, political and social efforts for exactly the same reason. Each time the application of Communist ideology failed to solve some pressing problem, they searched for a scapegoat, blamed him for failure to apply true Communist ideology, and instead of working to find the source of the problem they again attempted to apply Communist ideology, but which greater effort. The result was that they ran their society into the ground.

The very idea that conservatives label "Liberalism" means to reject failed ideologies, identify failures when an outcome is not good, then find real solutions and try again with different procedures. There is no "Liberal-based movement" and never will be. "Liberals" (as conservatives label them) are actually just people who are willing to identify problems and try to solve them on their own basis rather, identify failures and attempt to reword the solution when the failed parts are identified. This requires that failures be recognized and responsibility for those failures be ascertained.

This realism-based approach differs sharply from the continual attempts to apply some on-size-fits-all ideology. It starts with recognizing failure and ascertaining responsibility for that failure. The Cheney - Bush - NeoCon adventure in Iraq is such a failure, and the responsibility for that failure lies squarely on George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the conservative-dominated Republican Party.

Until and unless the conservatives recognize and publicly acknowledge their own responsibility (and that of the Imperialist and militarist conservative ideology) for the failure of the Iraq adventure they cannot be accepted as part of the solution.

More from Booman:

The real 'realism' is that we have utterly failed in our Mideast policies, and we better start facing up to the consequences. Permawar is not the answer. We don't have the money.

We need to start planning for a future where we do not dominate the Middle East. This will involve significant economic risks...especially for the availability of cheap and readily available energy. It also suggests that Israel should start getting serious about a permanent, sustainable accommodation with the Palestinians and their neighbors. Keeping a few of their most ardent and unquestioning supporters, like Joe Lieberman, in the U.S. Senate is not going to be enough to sustain an acceptable level of security. We cannot continue to take on the blowback risks and international hit to our moral standing that our support for Israel currently entails.

That's 'realism'.

The Middle East now and tomorrow

Steve Clemons provides a short summary of how bad the situation in the Middle East currently is, and where it might go.

What I see evolving in the Middle East today is a regional Cold War manifested through regional contests between Iranian and Saudi proxies with hot moments.

Even though Israel is a regional nuclear and conventional superpower, it has little long term viability unless it either comes to terms with its moderate Sunni Arab neighbors or convinces the US or Europe or other major security patrons to fully and politically acquire Israel as one of their own domestic states.

I spent Monday in Los Angeles and met an insightful next generation Arab-American thinker, Sama Adnan, who told me he believed that there was something like a mathematical equation in the Middle East that few Americans -- Democrat or Republican -- understand. He said that democracies or more self-determining populations in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East were impossible as long as the Palestinian-Israeli standoff over Palestine's state status remained unresolved.

He said that if true democracies governed in any of these states, then those democratic movements would focus on their outrage that Israel was continuing to illegally occupy Palestinian territory. The more totalitarian governments in the region are bulwarks against a popular will that is focused on grievances involving Israel. The only way to create a more liberal and stable order in the Middle East, according to this young observer, is to deliver on Palestine -- develop an effort towards regional confidence building between Israel and other states -- and then try to encourage incremental change in the region.
[Emphasis mine - Editor WTF-o]

The right-wing Israeli Likud demands the kinds of military right-wing control to prevent the predations of Palestinian terrorists. That demand for control was what instigated last year's (failed) attack on Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon more than any specific incident just as the demand for military control is behind the constant attacks on terrorist leaders (with the attendant and politically counterproductive collateral damage.) The Wall between Israel and the West Bank is another such soon-to-be-proven-a-failure right wing effort to control their enemies instead of talk to them ans work with them. If those efforts at control were going to work, Israel would still have troops in Gaza and still be in control there.

Not that the Palestinians would be easy to work with. They also have a lot of grievances to work out, and no reason to trust Israelis. Without mutual trust, there will be no solution. Military attacks and walls do not build mutual trust.

If the problems were only located in those sad lands of Palestine and Israel the rest of us might just wash our hands of the idiocies those people are perpetuating on each other. But it isn't so limited. The problems in Israel/Palestine are either the source of the problems festering out into the rest of the Middle East or they prevent the resolution of major international problems in the Middle East. If the Middle East were not siting on top of large pools of oil that the short-term thinkers running our government thinks we need, we could still ignore the problem. In the long term, however, the problems in the Middle East have to be solved.

Clinton came very close to resolving the worst of the Israeli-Palestinian problems, so naturally the Bush people refused to go near those issues,probably for fear of being seen to be less competent that Clinton. Now that we know for a fact that the Bush administration is not only less competent than Clinton (and every other Presidential administration the U.S. has ever had,) what's the bushies remaining excuse for not attempting to do something about the problem?

Even incompetents can try.

More about the Hamas victory in Gaza

This started out as a comment over on the M.J. Rosenberg thread at TPM Cafe. But one idea followed another, and it actually jelled into something I wanted to post here. So here it is.

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The talk coming out of Gaza today looks like the leaders of Hamas have gotten what they were fighting for there, then suddenly realized that there is going to be another dawn after the day of victory and the portents for that new day do not look good. When you have spent a long time digging holes to live in and occasionally poking your head up to shoot, and suddenly the shooting stops, there is very suddenly a new and broader perspective than was possible while the bullets flew.

I would suspect that Hamas in Gaza has been fighting mostly as individual cells or small units without much central leadership. The centralizing functions that have been performed have been either support to civilians or providing weapons and food to the fighters. There may be some strategists at work in Gaza Hamas, but their effects have been limited recently. Day to day fighting and survival were the top priorities.

Now, suddenly, the fighters are getting the chance to lift their heads out of the foxholes and look around them. The shooting has stopped, but what they see is not very pretty. Just feeding the million-and-a-half population of Gaza is extremely uncertain, and to do that they are going to have to depend on the kindness of some of the very people they were shooting at yesterday.

I don't think that it is much of a positive statement about Hamas that at the last second when disaster looms they try to stand up and yell "King's X". The Grant of Amnesty to Fatah Leaders (none of whom are in Gaza anymore) is good PR, little else. So is the call for Alan Johnston's release. I'm not sure that even meets the absolute minimum to be expected from the newly empowered Hamas-in-Gaza.

That said, this is a good time to try to get them to the table while preventing a disaster that every Muslim nation in the world would consider genocide. Starving the Palestinians in Gaze is simply not a rational strategy.

But the take-over of Gaza by Hamas is a signal to all sides that the time for talking has arrived. Any idiot (*cough* Cheney - Neocons - extremist and Likud Jews *cough*) who show up with guns and threats at this time clearly don't want any solution at all.

Hamas has won what is clearly a Pyrrhic victory. They will really win only by the grace of their enemies. But the right-wingers (American and Israeli) have been badly embarrassed, and to recover their sense of "face" they are going to refuse to acknowledge the Hamas victory and attempt to step on the throat of the Hamas Palestinians and force them to acknowledge how wrong they are. That would be a stupid move, but certainly the kind of logic that heney and the NeoCons used to get America to invade Iraq. [Their logic - Always use force to gain compliance. Talk doesn't work. Which is true for mouth-breathers whose idea of talk is "Do this or I'll slug you." Read Krauthammer and William Kristol.]

Making something positive out of this change in the Israeli - Palestinian conflict will require that Hamas be brought in to the table of the powerful and melded with Fatah to provide a negotiating partner, while keeping the American and Israeli right-wing idiots from salving their wounded pride. Any Israeli who begins to thread this needle successfully better watch his back - literally. Unfortunately, there is no American in a position of power who is capable of contributing to the solution, especially with Cheney and the NeoCons still very active and conducting the kinds of bureaucratic terrorism that John Bolton is famous for. Even without those impediments, Condi Rice simply isn't capable of contributing. [Maybe if she were bribed with shoes? Naw, she's still not up to it. No matter how she is motivated, the capability is not there.]

In any case, this is a real potential turning point. It could get somewhere. But the enemies of success don't like that, and the window won't remain open more than about one Friedman Unit.

That's my opinion from here in the sticks of Texas, anyway.

Who gave Gaza to Hamas? Bush, Cheney and the NeoCons are largely at fault.

One of the most significant events in the Palestine/Israel situation has just occurred. The results of the election which the Palestinian government of Fatah was forced into have come to fruit. Fatah has been kicked out of Gaza and the extremist Islamic Iranian-backed Hamas has taken over. As M. J. Rosenberg describes the situation:

Gaza has fallen to Hamas. Abu Mazen's Fatah is on the run. Unless a United Nations force (like UNIFIL) steps in, a sliver of territory with a population of 1.4 million, a short drive from Tel Aviv will become a dagger aimed at Israel's heart and perhaps even an Al Qaeda staging ground. A humanitarian crisis of horrific proportions is a certainty.

Yep. No one needs to negotiate with the Islamists or their Iranian and Syrian backers, and the Palestinians are their own worst enemies, so just fence then away and every time one of them gets out of like and bombs those he considers the oppressors, just oppress them harder. Then just ignore the nasty beggars. They'll go away. Don't believe that? Continue reading Rosenberg's excellent analysis of what happened. Here is a key point he makes:

...it is not difficult understanding how Hamas won the legislative elections in 2006. This is another ugly part of the story. First we demanded that the Palestinians hold elections (Abbas didn’t want them), then we dispatched monitors to certify sure they were “free and fair” which they were, but when we didn’t like the election results we rejected them and promised that the Palestinians would “pay.” Almost immediately Members of Congress rushed to stop almost all forms of aid not just to Hamas-run institutions but to the Palestinian people at large.

There was another way we might have gone. We could have welcomed Hamas’s participation in the election as a sign that Hamas was implicitly accepting the Oslo framework (which it was), insisted on the complete cessation of violence, and then used carrots and sticks to encourage the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority to mend its ways. But we offered no carrots, just sticks. And we didn’t even make much of an effort to strengthen Hamas’s arch-enemy, President Mahmoud Abbas, with Congress hastening to impose redundant and insulting conditions even on aid that was to be sent through him.

It was all fun and games, politics as usual. Meanwhile, Hamas looked better and better to a people whose salaries were not being paid, thanks to the US sponsored international boycott of the PA, and whose schools and hospitals were collapsing.

Today it is almost amusing to contemplate the professions of horror on the part of right-wing Israelis (and their neocon friends) who scream “bloody murder” about an outcome they helped effect and actually welcome.

The name of their game was, is, and always will be making sure that Israel has “no partner” with whom to negotiate. Their worst fear is of Palestinians like Mahmoud Abbas who is a credible negotiating partner.

Sure has worked well, hasn't it? I'm sure that the NeoCons and Dick Cheney are delighted, while I wonder if anyone has bothered to mention the bad news to Bush. Bush gets testy with underlings who dare give him bad news, and it's really not like Bush has a clue regarding what to do. Does he dare create an Israel - Palestinian Czar to turn it over to as he has just done the Iraq - Afghanistan twin disasters with "Czar" Lute? Might not be all that bad an idea, but how much of the Presidency can Bush offload onto other people because he can't figure out what to do? At some point it becomes logical to simply bring in a real President who is up to the job himself.

But anyway, the question is still on the table? Who lost Gaza? Whose fault is THIS disaster?

The Palestinians, of course. But hardly theirs alone. As Nahum Barnea, Israel's finest journalist, put it today in Yediot Achronoth, "The US and Israel had a decisive contribution to this failure. The Americans, in their lack of understanding for the processes of Islamization in the territories, pressured to hold democratic elections and brought Hamas to power with their own hands…. Since the elections, Israel, like the US, declared over and over that "Abu Mazen must be strengthened," but in practice, zero was done for this to happen. The meetings with him turned into an Israeli political tool, and Olmert's kisses and backslapping turned Abu Mazen into a collaborator and a source of jokes on the Palestinian street."

The failures to which Barnea refers didn't start with the Palestinian elections either, not by a long shot. Back when Hamas was just a gleam in Sheik Ahmad Yassin’s blind eye, Israeli right-ringers were implementing a strategy to eliminate the authority of Palestinian moderates by building up religious extremists. These Israelis (some very high in Likud governments) believed that only supplanting Arafat’s Fatah with Islamic fundamentalists would prevent a situation under which Israel would be forced to negotiate with moderates.

M. J. Rosenberg continues with his excellent analysis, which you should go read.

Remember that time seven years ago when then-President Bill Clinton was able to get the Israelis and Fatah to sit down together and nearly agree to settle the Israeli - Palestinian problem? It was torpedoed by one man, Yassir Arafat. With a solution that close, Arafat could have been dealt with but it was time for Bush to take over the Presidency.

Bush and the NeoCons wanted much grander solutions, which included invading Iraq and setting up a demonstration state that showed how free elections (the form is what democracy is all about, isn't that so? Rule of Law? Traditions? Unimportant!) and a free-market small-government economy could bring the Muslims out of the Dark Ages and into the Modern World.

So the Bush administration dropped the ball on things that Clinton considered important and workable, like resolving the Israeli - Palestinian conflict and preparing to prevent terrorist incidents, and instead embarked on what is now clearly known to be the most disastrous series of foreign policy blunders in all of America's history. So we got 9/11, the occupation of Iraq, and now the total collapse of rational Palestinian government. Oh, yeah. We also got an expensive and still non-working white elephant called the Missile Defense System.

When you combine the idiocies of conservative free-market ideology with the ignorance of and refusal to learn about the cultures you intend to transform, then you ignore the experience of the Generals who tell you how things work while you go off headlong into an unneeded and unwinnable war, and give this entire witches-brew over to the tender mercies of the extremist wings of the Republican Party to finance and steal money from, the makings of the current disasters in American domestic policies, economic, taxation and the almost entirely Bush-made disaster that has overtaken the Middle East become clear. This mess that the Republicans have created will take generations to recover from, and historians will be looking back in horror for centuries.

It has been an educational period of time. After Nixon - Agnew - Kissinger I thought I understood how bad the Republican Party could be if placed in power. This administration has shown me that my imagination just couldn't reach the depths of depravity and ignorance the Republicans have gone to in reality. And just think. A lot of us have been permitted to watch the Republican train-wreck unfold, live and in color.

I think I would have preferred to go to Cleveland, thank you. Or gone to see a slasher movie that I could have walked out on.