Ten Years After

MSNBC is still yelling from their local rooftops trying to sell David Corn's (the father of Plame-gate) "Hubris, or how Bushitler hornswoggled Hillary and other Democrats into taking out a guy they had been demonizing for eight years straight" (or thereabouts).  In other words, why aren't Bush and Cheney in some international gulag yet.  

Meanwhile squishy beltway RINOs are still blaming the failure of Bushitler to quietly take out Iraq with no casualties on the current media demise of the GOP without explaining how the Tea Party revolution occurred in 2010 or why so many state governors are Republicans, or why John Boehner is the only thing standing between the USA and the Marxist pitchforks.

So ten years after the mother of all battles lurched back into a hot war nothing much has changed, except conventional wisdom, which is that Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake ever in the history of the United States, including Vietnam where over 50,000 men died basically for nothing.  

But ten years later the puzzling question of why Bush and his inner circle never provided more evidence to back their incursion into Iraq does remain unanswered.  When asked, Bush, Condi Rice, Rove, Cheney and the others usually reply with steely resolve--they would do it again.  The world is safer.  So what do they know and why can't they say anything?  Nobody really believes the world is safer right now with Saddam gone because few believe he was even a threat.   But they do. 

So is the truth so steeped in international diplomatic minefields, such as maintaining relations with Russia and China and some secret roles they may have had, or even presumably trusting European allies, that any kind of 'brutal honesty' would cause more harm than winning some kind of domestic political urinating contest?  Or are they all just covering their butts?

Back in 2001 president Bush stood before America and declared an 'Axis of Evil' that was menacing the planet--Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.  He didn't include al Qaeda in that mix per se, but terrorist groups are understood to be useful cats paws for the evildoers.  Now ten years later the Iraqi regime is gone, Iran is still working towards a nuke while their client state Syria teeters on the brink, held up by Russia (the same client state who worked with North Korea to build a clandestine nuclear facility) while North Korea threatens to blow up Seoul, San Francisco, Okinawa, Honolulu and our equipment remaining on the Moon.   Where was Bush wrong, exactly?

Anyway, it's traditionally time for some music.  The title gives it away... to the late guitarist Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, shown in all their hippie glory.  But their socialist-sounding frustrations can cross over...



"Tax the rich, feed the poor, til there are no rich no more".  I always took that as a slap at socialism as in Thatcher's comment that one day you run out of rich people to tax.  But who knows, maybe it was just a general frustration that it's hard to really change anything in this mean ole world.