The Eternal War President

Following up on my post about BushCo repeating the same old lines (lies) about why we had to attack Iraq, only this time it's about Iran, I see that Bush is still at it. Glenn Greenwald has written an article pointing this out and concludes that Bush is serious about another war... to salvage his party's political goals. Greenwald warns that to prevent this, the Dems have got to jump "on this debate in as straightforward and unambiguous a manner as possible -- offensively".

The similarities between what the President said about Iraq in the months before our invasion and what he is saying about Iran now are too glaring to miss. They seem to be intentionally repeating most of their rhetoric, almost verbatim, complete with the same incoherence (if Iran is such a crazed, Nazi-like regime, how can we ever trust that they have given up nuclear weapons development? And even if they do that, they still "sponsor terrorists," and thus must be "held to account" under the "Bush doctrine"). Don't all of those premises make regime change via war not an option, but an inevitability?

[...]

The President is saying the same things about Iran and Syria as he said when he induced the country to follow him into the disastrous war in Iraq. When he did so regarding Iraq, he said Iraq was a "unique" threat in order to assure Americans that there would not be a series of similar wars. But a series of more wars exactly like Iraq -- but more difficult, more dangerous, more draining -- is exactly what the President is now making clear he intends to bring to this country. It is reckless, destructive war mongering that is going to drag the country into more inflammable, interminable conflicts, and drain America even further of its resources, weaken it immeasurably, and make us more vulnerable on every level.

[...]

If Americans are vigorously opposed to the war in Iraq, as they are, does anyone think they want to replicate that disaster in more Middle Eastern countries? The White House's only chance to salvage this election is to have it center around war debates, but that presents a big problem for them -- the only war they have is politically unusable because it's so unpopular, so they have to create new ones in order to obscure the old one. That new-war strategy is a highly risky one to try to impose on a very war-weary country. They can get away with that only if Democrats let them, which will happen if Democrats are tepid and uncertain and defensive about whether they want the menu of new wars the President is threatening.