The problem we have is very simple.  No matter HOW many geniuses propose policies, no matter HOW good they are, they are simply trumped by Mad King George’s Special Advisor: God.

Since MKG thinks he is doing God’s work and God is talking to him, all other advisors and facts are irrelevant.

Obviously, Mad King George is insane.  His band of Merrie Fascists, led by the Chief Twin Fascists, Cheney and Rove (“Braniac”—I like that!), see his madness as the perfect means to achieve absolute power—power for its own sake and to allow them to eventually accumulate “More wealth than you can imagine.” “I dunno. I can imagine quite alot.”

I know, I know, just saying Mad King George is insane isn’t enough.  The evidence is overwhelming.  According to Woodward, nobody is allowed to disagree with him.  Nobody is allowed to report negative things.  Nobody is allowed to discuss how his plans are failing. When he is questioned by the press, he sputters, lectures and doesn’t answer the question and acts like the questioner is an idiot and a traitor.  Of course, his answer is just a re-hash of his tired old talking points.

We get bogged down in foreign policy and the minutiae. It’s all very simple.  Foreign policy is guided by two principles: Geography and National Security (that sadly, badly mis-used word).  Even in our time, with international terrorism, these are true.

Long ago, I learned some basic truths about foreign relations: If you put two nations next to each other one of three things will happen.  1) the stronger nation will dominate 2) if neither is stronger they will be at odds and eventually fight or 3) there is a larger outside threat to both of them that forces them to stick together.

That’s it. That’s all you need to know about foreign relations—and you build on it.  Like all computers can be built from a simple language of ON/OFF (binary), so foreign relations analysis are built by these points.  World War I, World War II and the European Union show these EXTREMELY well.

The extraordinary mistakes made by MKG and his MFs are all based on their TOTAL lack of understanding of these simple rules.  Ambition and the immoral willingness to spend other people’s lives to pursue anything other than REAL threats to our national security have started more wars and caused the failure of more tyrants than you can imagine.

It’s not hard to motivate the American People to go to war.  But there’s a catch—you need to tell them the truth or it will bite you in the ass.  It has to be obvious there is no alternative. World War II was a case where we had, at one point, 6 MILLION men at arms.  Viet Nam failed because it was NOT a real threat to us—when the Gulf of Tonkin was revealed to be an excuse, it started falling apart.  Afghanistan had the support of 99% of the American people, and most of the rest of the world.  We even had a GOLDEN opportunity to re-establish relations with Iran—they WANTED that and they HATED the Taliban—until MKG’s idiot “Axis of Evil” speech. 

But Iraq was nothing but a lie.  Jimmy Carter called for us NOT to invade just before Mad King George issued the “Shock and Awe” attack orders.  And so it’s failing. 

I’ve never understood why the people in power had so little understanding of the obvious.  Geography determines the needs of foreign relations.

Intellectuals have always had what William Gass calls a “wistful lust for power,” and why should the Elite 400+ be an exception to this rule? Imagine: to actually have some kind of influence on public affairs! Why let all those third-rate Beltway policy wonks have all the fun?

Of course, it gets mighty lonely in those ivory towers, so why blame a few delusional academaniacs who ocassionally want to stray from their cloistered cells into what hoi polloi amusingly call “real life.”

After all, the Bush administration (and the Republican Congress) has always been so willing to listen to dissenting views on its policies. The haven of free-market capitalism is also a haven for the free market of ideas, unless those ideas come from an “enemy combatant,” which these days could mean just about anyone.

More important, when intellectuals actually achieve real power, it benefits everyone.
None of the Poindexterish creme de la creme ever compromises their ideals. Lenin freed the Russian people from the czarist yoke, and luminaries like Macnamara and Kissinger did so much to improve the lot of us rabble, not to mention those heathen dwelling in Southesat Asia. And then there’s brainiac Karl Rove and brilliant neocon mavens like Bill Kristol…

But surely the Princeton Project on National Security has outdone its predecessors in the depth and rigor of its insights. “The post-9/11 policies pursued by President George W. Bush have been too simplistic—even counter-productive—for the challenges facing the U.S. in the 21st century”? Wow, what an epiphany! What bold and original thinking! Pure genius, I tell you!

But wait, there’s more. More diplomacy, less military power? Great! Less go-it-alone cowboyim? Fantastic! More cooperation among democratic states? Stunning, the range and complexity of the thinking here! 

Except. . .I’m getting a kinda deja vu moment here, maybe because my neighbor’s 16-year-old daughter has been saying pretty much the same thing for years now. Talk about out of the mouth of babes (I mean that in the non-Mark Foley sense). Maybe not with that inventive “PAR” acronym thrown in but, you know, basically the same stuff. Geez, and, like, far as I know, she’s never even been to Princeton. Smart kid, though—-actually watches FreeSpeech TV and Keith Olbermann rather than just MTV Cribs or whatever.

So: think she’s just one uh them there prodigy types? Think maybe there’s room for her on that Princeton panel?

We have completed one hell of a good job by our very very competent USA White House egocentric Occupants .......

          contributing to

          S P R E A D I N G

  TERROR AROUND THE WORLD,

  TRAINING THE TERRORISTS WANT TO BEES!

  And all for the little sum of 2 BILLION a

  week.

  Now that is PERFORMANCE, isn’t George?

pink elephant locator 26276 you hit it right on! I think all of you did! My suggestion is don’t always take Israel’s side on everything so blatantly disregarding a few hundred million arabs in the process! And being completely biased in our foreign policies as such! In diplomatic terms we are “putting all of our eggs in Israel’s basket”. I’m sure they don’t mind. The fact they use our bombs to do what they do and put us in their problems is now our problem! Are we happy? It’s all part of the plan. Oh I forgot they’re on our side since we’re christians and they renounce christ and the new testament! Just ask the christian coalition! After all at one time both sides looked to us for mediation, i.e. camp david. Do you think that would happen now?

According to BBC poll, most of the world populace including those in EU, have unfavorable opinion of US under the current administration.

Clearly the foreign policy went terribly wrong and in need of overhaul. Then again, Bush is unlikely to listen to anyone outside of his small group.

It would be quite a different world indeed if the strategy had been to capture Bin Laden and bring him before a world court. A world of difference.

We will never have a rational US foreign policy as long as both parties are falling all over themselves to grovel to Israel, militantly pursuing Israel’s interests at grave expense to our own security and prosperity.

What little democracy there is in party competition for votes is thus avoided as the elites define what they want and impose it on both parties in the name of bipartisanship, because “politics ends at the water’s edge” and “nobody should play politics with foreign policy, with issues of war and peace.”

I could have told them THAT!

Sounds like the same old crap in a slightly different bucket to me.

With all that brainpower behind it, I hope the project doesn’t miss the most obvious change needed to America’s foreign policy: Stop letting the oil and defense industries run the United States.

You mean “new grand strategy,” not “grand new strategy.”