I feel like Tom Lehrer did when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. This is getting ridiculous.
Two incidents have almost driven me over the edge:
1) Reminiscent of the Team B analysis which cost us billions in "defense" against a Soviet Union that was going to take over the world (and yet ended up not being able to pacify a Third-World country on its own border), the conservative Center for Security Policy released a report (which authors include Frank "PNAC" Gaffney) recently which claims a "global stealth jihad" against America by a secret Muslim radical "mafia":
The report, titled "Shariah: The Threat To America," attempts to show that, like Marxist-Leninism for the Soviets, the tenets of Islamic law hold Muslims to the task of totalitarian world domination. The radicals in al-Qaeda and the Taliban are only America's visible enemies, while the rest are secretly operating among the moderate Muslim population:
"Few Americans are aware of the diversity and success to date of such efforts to insinuate Shariah into the United States -- let alone the full implications of the mortal threat this totalitarian doctrine represents to our freedoms, society and government. Fewer still understand the nature of the jihad being waged to impose it here."
And of course
the wingnuts are all over it.
So! People like those who lied us into a war in Iraq are now attempting to demonize Islam as the new Red Menace, where we must be paranoid about even moderate Muslims because they could be part of the Seeekrit Conspiracy to conquer the world. Yay. And of course we must be prepared to further militarily resist the "global stealth jihad" to preserve Freedom for the people of the world blah blah yack ack gag seen this story before.
Which brings me to incident #2 (and yes, it gets worse):
2) Lindsey Graham, noted idiot and Iraq warmonger, has decided that two wars in Asia just aren't enough substituting for his Viagra well enough anymore so he wants us to get into a THIRD WAR:
Graham, a military lawyer and a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the first senator to support direct U.S. military intervention in Iran, saying it should not involve ground troops but be launched by U.S. warplanes and ships.
“If you use military force against Iran, you’ve opened up Pandora’s box,” Graham, of South Carolina, told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “If you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, you’ve emptied Pandora’s box. I’d rather open up Pandora’s box than empty it.”
okayokayokay. He doesn't want us to invade, but he does want a massive bombing campaign as well as attacks from ships, which will place American troops in danger of both
Iranian air defenses and
Iranian anti-ship missiles (including the massive Chinese
Silkworm). And presumably "regime change" could be achieved at the point of a cruise missile, by -? Presumably by a massive bombing of targets including Tehran, which would not no way nohow enrage the Iranian people into resisting us but would cause them to see us as liberators:
“From my point of view, if we engage in military operations as a last resort, the United States should have in mind the goal of changing the regime,” Graham said. “Not by invading (Iran), but by launching a military strike by air and sea.”
Such an attack would be aimed not only at eliminating Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Graham said, but at rendering Ahmadinejad’s government powerless.
In order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said, a U.S. attack would be preferable to an Israeli attack because the American military is more powerful and more likely to achieve regime change.
Historically strategic bombing has done nothing but encourage resistance from the people bombed. But Graham knows different! It'll totally work, this time, trust him!
*SIGH*
It worked so goddamn well in Iraq, after all. And Afghanistan.
