‘In today’s America there appear to be several articles of faith on which people will brook no debate: One is that the U.S. military, the most destructive organizational force in human history, is capable of crushing any and all resistance. This faith is, of course, false. U.S. forces in the Middle East are failing not due to a shortage of destructive might, but because of the limits imposed by the moral level of action.

The U.S. military could theoretically depopulate the entire region, even turn the desert into glass, but any who ordered such visible barbarity would be a short time from their own fall from grace. As a consequence, the barbarity has to be held below a certain threshold so that a separate faith, the people’s faith in America’s innate goodness, is not tested.

That these two articles of faith are contradictory and mutually incompatible suggests one will fail soon. Either U.S. forces are routed in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. government barbarity boils over all thresholds in a hellish nuclear attack on non-nuclear Iran, or both.

What did you expect? False faiths are evil, after all.’

Where Will You Be When The Boat Capsizes?

elsewhere …..

‘The outlines of Bush's "New Way Forward" or "Great Leap Forward" or "Long Walk Off a Short Pier" in Iraq is now fairly clear. It has three general thrusts: a large increase in troop numbers; a direct assault on the forces of Motqada al-Sadr; and, if possible, an expansion of the war beyond Iraq's borders through a military strike on Iran.

The troop increase is now certain (if indeed it had ever been in doubt). In the past few days, with the nation distracted by the Christmas holidays (and by the ever-phony and genuinely idiotic  "Christmas Wars" eating up media airtime), the Bush Faction has carried out a quiet coup – or perhaps a counterrevolutionary purge – in the military ranks. Top generals who openly opposed increasing the U.S. occupation force in Iraq have either announced their retirements or else have been compelled to crawl and eat their words in public recantations. (This moral cowardice is even more remarkable when you consider how weak, stupid – and deeply unpopular – is the "commander-in-chief" who has somehow overawed these stalwart soldiers. One can only imagine that some sort of blackmail must be involved.)

The generals were the last possible obstacle to the war's precipitous escalation; the national Democrats have already signaled their willingness to countenance a "surge" (the Orwellian propaganda term that has been adopted wholesale by the corporate media to describe the vast expansion of the war). Even those Democrats who have appeared to speak out against it have, almost invariably, couched their objections in weasel-wording terms devoid of any actual oppositional content. "I won't support a surge unless it's part of an overall plan to bring our troops home sooner," is the standard formulation, although the "boldest" among them will sometimes tack on a specific date: "bring our troops home by 2008" or some such. But of course, any escalation of the war will be presented precisely as a strategy to bring the conflict to a speedier end; thus most Democrats will latch onto that spin and – grudgingly or enthusiastically – go along. In any case, it's certain that the Congressional Democrats will not put up a concerted, united effort against an escalation.’

Bush's Great Leap Forward

meanwhile …..

‘But Iran's leaders – the real leaders, not the herky-jerky blusterer now serving as the nation's president, who has, Bush-like, just been slapped down by his own electorate in local elections – are not as stupid as Bush and his minions. They are not likely to give Bush an excuse to attack their country and kill hundreds or thousands of their people. So in the end, if Bush wants to strike Iran, he will have to do so unilaterally, with either the flimsiest of pretexts or with cooked intelligence, as in the Iraq invasion (or – why not be bipartisan? – with outright lies about an Iranian attack, à la the "Gulf of Tonkin incident").

And so there we have Bush's "Great Leap Forward." The first two prongs of this strategy seem guaranteed: there will be an escalation of the war and an attack on Sadr. The third thrust – expanding the war beyond Iraq – seems increasingly likely, but perhaps, at the moment, more of an option to be held in reserve, to be brought out when the first two elements inevitably begin to fail and there is, finally, nothing left for them to do but shoot the moon and see what happens.’

Bush's Great Leap Forward