For the last seven years, Republicans have poked the real pain we felt on 9/11 to convince us that small nations who weren't involved in those attacks would be an "existential" threat to the United States if they got hold of even a handful of nukes--even though we have 10,000 warheads enough to destroy every country on earth several times over.
However, the Bushies and McCain's false promises of support to Georgia to get them to attack Ossetia to provoke a Russian response may undermine their "War on Terror" propaganda in a couple of ways:
* Reminding people that Russia has over 10,000 nukes makes the supposed threat from Iraq and now Iran getting a handful of nukes look hollow and pathetic, like a cop shooting a kid because he saw a slingshot in his pocket.
* Reminding people that brute force is not always a viable choice to get what you want. Essentially, foreign policy is like chess, requiring the ability to think of your opponent's reaction and your counter-moves several steps out. The Bush administration has been like a caveman, beating the chess board with their club.
But in the case of Russia, that won't work since they can hit back.
And since our options are limited because they can retaliate, that tells you how much of a threat Iraq was when we invaded them. If they had been a real threat, attacking them would have been gambling nuclear retaliation (like we risk with Russia). Bush invaded precisely because they COULDN'T retaliate outside of Iraq.
The current situation reminds me of the end of the first Gulf War. Papa Bush did an excellent job of convincing everyone Saddam was another Hitler, but when he left him in place at the end of the war for what looks more and more like good reasons, the public was disgusted at the difference between the propaganda that they believed and the realistic action the president took.
Will the public again be jarred back to reality and realize that Republicans were mostly exploiting our fear and grief by exaggerating threats unrelated to 9/11 and using their "War on Terror" to pursue other goals like securing control of Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea oil reserves?
Or will we shift back to fearing the old Russian boogey man without wondering why the terrorist one looks so pathetic by comparison?
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