What if?

Dr. Tom writes:

More Rumsfeld:

"We could choose to pretend, as some suggest, that the enemy is not at our doorstep. We could choose to believe, as some contend, that the threat is exaggerated.

"But those who would follow such a course must ask: what if they are wrong? What if at this moment, the enemy is counting on being underestimated, counting on being dismissed, and counting on our preoccupation," Rumsfeld said.

Yeah, well--what if we've heard all this before, and it turned out to be a lie? What if Iran is right to count on our preoccupation, seeing as how we're, well, preoccupied? What if--and you'll forgive them this, I'm sure--our credibility's a tad low with our European allies right now, and they aren't willing to gut their economies and societies by turning themselves into Fear States?

Or--I suppose we could "choose to pretend": we could choose to pretend that the administration should be believed when it makes statements like this. We could choose to pretend that the administration knows what it's doing. We could choose to pretend that Donald Rumsfeld is not insane. We could choose to pretend that we would be greeted as liberators by the Iranian people. We could choose to pretend that we haven't been down this exact same road four years ago, the exact same steps, the exact same phrases, the exact same speeches by the exact same people. We could choose to pretend that the president hasn't already made up his mind about attacking Iran. We could pretend our military is capable of doing it.

We could pretend we care. We could pretend that our citizenry's most noble response--there were many less noble ones--wasn't "let the authorities handle it." We could pretend that our president isn't inept. We could pretend that anything short of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showing up at the UN with a nuclear missile shoved up Colin Powell's ass is justification for war.

And despite what we think we've "learned" over the past couple of years, I suspect we will pretend all of these things. Children like to pretend, and we've allowed ourselves to become a nation of children, our moods ramping constantly, from acquisitive and temporary joy to dumb fear to inexplicable temper-tantrum.

"Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child." Cicero said that, and he was a pretty smart guy, but I think even he would have a hard time imagining a nation that doesn't know what happened three or four years ago well enough to see it recurring, by the letter, today. If we can't remember that, we're not only children, we're retarded children, and we require assistance with our daily living. Eventually, history shows, someone will provide that--a firm hand to take care of us.

I'm sure we'll be immensely pleased.