What's Your Worst Nightmare?

I agree with Fred Kaplan in Slate that nuking Iran would be crazy. And because it would be crazy few of us believe it is likely to happen. But as I have blogged, our world has known others with a messiah complex and doing the crazy thing is precisely the intention. Given the way the administration manipulated us into supporting the Iraq war, their continuing disregard for international law, the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress, their seeming disrespect for dissent both within and outside our country, it's hard to feel assured that the unthinkable won't happen just because we think it's unthinkable.

Even for those who are feeling magnanimous and do not believe our leaders totally lied about Saddam and his purported WMD, in the aftermath, the administration itself has admitted that there were many reasons for invading Iraq and toppling that regime. One problem with such after-the-fact admissions is that it lends evidence that our country has broken international law and perhaps committed war crimes. Minimally, with a "new world order" we might have done a better job of spreading our influence in positive ways. Instead we seem to have chosen to instill fear throughout the world. Can we really expect to intimidate an earth population that outnumbers us 20 to 1? And even if we thought we could get away with it (talk about crazy!) would we, United States citizens (we are still a democracy, aren't we?), choose that path?

My take is that the neo-cons saw the elimination of the USSR as a grand opportunity to remake the world to their liking, an opportunity that had never before existed and might never exist again and that any effort, any cost, any damage (mostly done to other peoples) would be justified by the peace and prosperity that would someday ensue. And, lo and behold, Osama did these neo-cons a favor by providing a justification for interventions, and even lower and better to behold, they had a Leader with no desire for mastery of subject matter but who was deeply religious and only too pleased to be given a mission from God. I remember after getting divorced and telling a friend I was unsure what to do and he replied that being once again on my own I could do whatever I wanted. Must be how those neo-cons felt. A whole world open to them, waiting to be shaped. And this is not a fanciful notion; it is demonstrable.

The past year has not shown progress in bringing peace and democracy to Iraq but our leaders seem undaunted. And after all the revelations about the regime overstepping the boundaries of law and the Constitution regarding torture and invasions of privacy, our leaders have not relented, not one little bit. And all that AG Gonzales can offer is that the Fuhrer principle is now operative in 21st century America. I also find the unthinkable unthinkable. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. Perhaps those in DC leadership simply have better imaginations than I, or maybe a looser grip on reality. What I do know is that Bush is doing nothing to reassure us of his peaceful and democratic tendencies; au contraire, he's scaring the hell out of us. Something's gotta give.