[NYTr] Bush's increasingly tenuous hold on reality

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Independent - Aug 30, 2007
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/adrian_hamilton/article2906294.ece


Bush's increasingly tenuous hold on reality

by Adrian Hamilton

One explanation for President Bush's rant against Iran this week,
following on from his extraordinary speech comparing Iraq with Vietnam
last week, is that the pressure is finally getting to him. US
presidential history, from Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan by way of F
D Roosevelt is replete with presidents who on grounds of failing powers
shouldn't really have been allowed to go on. Beseiged by events, cast
down by the opinion polls, isolated by the loss of his closest
advisers, it would not be surprising if this particular US President
was now losing it.

It's unnerving for the rest of the world, of course, as Bush's finger
is still on the nuclear button, raising the terrifying prospect that
his vision of nuclear holocaust in the Middle East could be set off not
by Tehran but the US President himself launching an attack on Iran
which then involved Israel with all its nuclear weaponry. It's
unlikely, I know, but it's not something that can absolutely be ruled
out given the way that the White House is now ramping up the
confrontation with Iran.

The more likely explanation for Bush's increasingly apocalyptic tone,
however, is in some ways more worrying. It is that all eyes in
Washington are now exclusively directed to the domestic audience with
the added sting that the White House is under the control of a
president who does not need to seek re-election and has the will to go
down like a western hero, all guns blazing.

Raising the spectre of Vietnam to an audience of veterans  as Bush did
last week  clothes him in a patriotic flag, alongside those on the
right who have always believed that Vietnam was a self-inflicted defeat
not a disastrous war from the start (try telling that to the
Vietnamese, Laotians or Cambodians).

When you bring in Iran you enter even more fertile territory for a
President trying to paint himself as a lone Ranger and paint his
opponents into a corner. There may be few in the US, and even fewer now
in Congress, who want America to launch a new Middle East invasion
after the disaster of the last, but most Americans believe that Iran is
a threat to world peace, intent on developing nuclear weapons and ripe
for regime change. Playing the Iran card wrong-foots your opponents
(look at the problems Barak Obama got into when he urged direct talks
with Tehran) and (theoretically at least) garners domestic support in
reaction to foreign threat.

Domestic advantage doesn't make good policy, however, particularly when
it comes to quite so volatile a situation as the Middle East. The
trouble with demonising Iran is that you play right into the hands of
the most xenophobic and extremist elements in the region. The more
America makes Iran the special object of its fear and loathing, the
more opinion in the Muslim street, Arab as well as Iranian, makes a
hero of it. No wonder President Ahmadinejad  a sort of Hugo Chavez of
the Middle East  laps it all up, countering every accusation from Bush
with deliberately provocative speeches proclaiming US failures in Iraq
and Iranian successes in developing nuclear technology.

Given the state of the country's finances and Ahmadinejad's desperate
firings and contortions in the economic sphere, the Persian populist
would be in deep trouble at home if it were not for the outside
pressure. Like Bush, he needs a foreign threat to keep his head above
domestic water. Nor, for all his posturing on the holocaust and Israel,
is Ahmadinejad in charge of nuclear or foreign policy, where authority
has been deliberately concentrated on much more experienced heads who
have consistently sought accomodation with the West on the
understanding that Washington in return accepts what Tehran regards as
its legitimate interests as a power in the region.

Keep calling Iran names and keep threatening it openly with military
attack and all you will do is to strengthen the hands of those who feel
Iran must develop nuclear weapons, should stoke up trouble in Iraq and
Palestine and clamp down on internal dissent in response. Anyone who
wants change inside Iran, especially those within, have had their cause
painfully set back by a US President who keeps saying he supports them.

Which leaves Britain stuck right in the middle, twisting and turning
much as the Democrats in Washington are. London wants out of Iraq but
doesn't want responsibility for the carnage that might ensue. Brown and
his colleagues would dearly wish a Democrat in the White House but
still have to cope with this Republican with nearly a year and a half
to go. Worse, as they read Bush's latest outpourings, is the knowledge
that this is a President who is becoming more divorced from reality and
more confrontational with each week.