Learn To Compete In The War Of Ideas Instead Of Speculating About Bush’s “Real Motivation”

I bet you’re just dying to hear more obnoxious and wild speculation about Bush’s REAL motivation for going to war in Iraq? What…you’re not? Too bad, cause Katherine Van Wormer from Counterpunch has a half-baked piece of conjecture that I’m going to share with you anyway =D,

“…Why did Bush have this thing about Saddam? Why the “detour into an unnecessary war in Iraq?” as the U.S.Army War College recently put it.

“He tried to kill my Dad,” the President once explained. But I believe there was more to this unnecessary war than that. I believe there was a method in Bush’s madness, a method that most likely had as little to do with oil as it did to terrorism. For the answer we need to look deeply in the psyche of the man (inferred from his biography). Earlier several other writers and I likened Bush’s personality characteristics to those of a person who, in AA parlance, is “dry” but whose thinking is not really sober. Grandiosity, rigidity, and intolerance of ambiguity, and a tendency to obsess about things are among the traits associated with the dry drunk. The dry drunk quits drinking, but his or her obsession with the bottle is often replaced with other obsessions. Twelve Step programs help their members modify their all-or-nothing thought patterns which associated with the disease alcoholism. “Easy does it” and “One day at a time” are among the slogans; the serenity prayer, similarly, helps persons with addictive tendencies to curb the tendency to excess.

In Bush’s irrational patterns of thought lie the clues to his single-minded obsession with Iraq. For the explanation for Bush’s vendetta against this one country, we have to look to his biography and to the meaning that Iraq held for his father.

…What a unique opportunity has fallen George W Bush’s way. The prodigal son can not only prove himself to his father but he can show up his father at his own game. Remember that for his cabinet and key advisers, he chose some of the same men from his father’s regime. He chose people, furthermore, who would be favorable to a return campaign, “a crusade” against Iraq. Given his past history and tendency toward obsessiveness, the temptation to achieve heroism through a re-enactment of his father’s war clearly would have been too much for George Bush Jr. to resist. To accomplish his mission he would have to throw caution and international diplomacy to the winds, lie convincingly to the American people, threaten allies, bully members of the United Nations, but in the end he would be able to dress in full military regalia and declare “mission accomplished.”

Now, I could certainly tear into Von Wormer for this piece of drivel and without question, she’d deserve it. However, I’d like to make a larger point about all these cockamamie theories about Bush’s “REAL” motivation for invading Iraq. We’ve heard it’s all about the oil, empire, getting revenge for Saddam’s attempt to assassinate W’s father, pure politics, etc, etc, etc, they’re all completely ridiculous & by their very nature unprovable.

But, what I find to be most notable about all these “motivation theories” is that they require their devotees to be totally ignorant of how the Iraqi invasion actually came about or are hypocrites who are simply pretending to have no idea about what’s going on.

I say that because these people act as if they believe that Bush made a decision to go to war and then pressed some sort of magical button that summoned a war machine to do his will. To the contrary, Bush managed to get 80%+ of Republicans, 60%+ of the American people, the overwhelming majority of conservative pundits, a majority of Congress including more than half of the Democratic senators, and the leaders of numerous foreign countries to all support a war in Iraq.

Now, if Bush’s motivation was nothing more than “let’s get their oil” or “I want revenge for daddy,” how in the world did he convince so many other people to go along with him? You can engage in baseless speculation about Bush’s “real motivation” all day long, but the reality is that Bush and an army of conservative pundits built support for an invasion of Iraq with solid, real world, arguments that held up so well that a majority of Americans still support the invasion even though we haven’t found any WMD yet.

So, why are still seeing speculation about Bush’s “real motivation”? It’s because the people doing the speculation are for the most part, intellectual cowards with impotent arguments, who know they can’t win the debate over the war on terrorism. So instead, rather than fight on in a losing cause, they sit on the sidelines and carp about “Bush’s real motivation” instead. It’s the equivalent of a kid who gets beaten in a game of dodgeball saying, “I wasn’t really trying” and it’s the mark of someone who’s anti-war, but can’t compete in the war of ideas.

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