Spiraling into conflict

Following up on the inevitability of Bush doing something stupid regarding Iran, Billmon writes an article called The Spiral Conflict which contains:

William Beeman, a professor of Middle East studies at Brown University, published an interesting piece on the Iran showdown last week. It covers some of the same ground as my two Flight Forward posts, but gets to the punch line a lot quicker:

Iran and U.S. Locked Into Spiral Conflict

Indeed, the danger in this situation could be dismissed if there were other leaders in power. However, in both nations the leadership needs this conflict. President Bush and the Republican party face defeat in November without an issue to galvanize the voting public behind their assertion that they are best able to protect the United States from attack — the only point on which they have outscored Democrats in recent polls. President Ahmadinejad also needs public support for his domestic political agenda — an agenda that is paradoxically opposed by a large number of the ruling clerics in Iran. Every time he makes a defiant assertion against the United States, the public rallies behind him.

This creates what political scientist Richard Cottam termed a "spiral conflict" in which both parties escalate each other's extreme positions to new heights. It is entirely possible that Iran could goad President Bush into a disastrous military action, and that action would result in an equally disastrous Iranian reaction.

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But we also can't overlook the possibility that the President of the United States may have his own celestial agenda here — or, not to put too fine a point on it, that Bush may have lost a few of his religious marbles.

There are degrees of craziness, after all, and while Shrub isn't barking at the moon (at least not that I know about) there have been some worrisome signs recently that his mind has moved into an even more distant outer suburb of reality.

A friend points out that when Shrub took a step out of his portable bunker last month to field a few unscripted questions at the Cleveland City Club, he was asked about his own personal belief in the War of the Apocalpyse. Bush turned his answer into a passionate declaration of his determination to protect Israel from the Iranian "threat."

The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.

And Bush has made it clear — over and over and over again. In fact he now mentions it almost every time he's asked about Iran. To the point where I'm told the leading political mavens of the American Jewish community are getting a little nervous about all this presidential attention.

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Personally, I'd be a little leery of having as my nearest and dearest political friends a group of religious fanatics who've tied their hopes for personal spiritual salvation to the destruction of my people. But Israel's national security elites don't seem to mind. From their point of view, who cares if Pat Robertson is bat shit crazy? The strategic benefits of a political alliance with the armies of Christian fundamentalism far outweigh any drawbacks.

Which is true, but only as long as it can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that the President of the United States doesn't share their maximum program — which, let's not forget, includes the destruction of Israel, even if it is for the greater glory of Christ.

Unfortunately, we can no longer make that assumption with the degree of conviction we would ordinarily like to have about the man with his finger on the button. To say that Bush is an emotionally unstable man under absolutely skull-crushing pressure isn't to say he's gone completely off the deep end and thinks God wants him to start the countdown to the Apocalpyse. But it's pretty hard to ignore the growing signs of megalomania ("I'm the decider, and I decide what's best.") We also know from his personal history that religion is Bush's crutch — his substitute of choice for the drugs of his youth. When a dry drunk who came to Jesus rather than seek treatment starts talking obsessively about protecting Israel from the Iranian Hitler, it seems reasonable to be worried, particularly when he has the world's largest military machine at his instant disposal.

Here's a little Billmon freebie for your reading pleasure:

Washington Post: "Karl Rove quits policy position to focus on midterm elections"

This is like reading that Jack the Ripper has given up his medical practice to concentrate on his night job.