A rchive Date
[ 22-02-2007 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists/Harris_Michael/2007/02/23/3657388.html
Bush awaiting his spaceship
By MICHAEL HARRIS
Fri, February 23, 2007
I had to laugh the other day when a British journalist compared the Bush administration and its troop surge in Iraq to Marion Keech.
Back in 1954, Keech claimed that aliens from the planet Clarion had warned her that the planet was about to be inundated by a massive flood. They said that a spaceship would land in her suburban Chicago backyard and rescue Keech and her band of doomsday believers.
Keech and company waited for their interplanetary deliverance on the appointed evening but it didn't show up. Not good for the credibility.
But a further communication with the aliens explained all: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light, that God had saved the world from destruction."
Keech's followers carried on as if they were on the way to Clarion in a flying saucer. True believers never have been much troubled by reality. It's called cognitive dissonance. When the facts no longer fit reality, invent new facts.
Enter George W. Bush and his Iraq Believer Cult. It must have been a bit embarrassing that Bush's most loyal ally was, well, "cutting and running," to use the Texas lingo.
Tony Blair had blinked just as George was sending thousands more American troops into the fray. The British PM also laid out a timetable for the withdrawal of all British troops from combat, something George had long warned would only give comfort to the enemy.
So what did the White House say about Tony: The exit of British troops was actually a good news story. Yes, it meant that things were so swell in Basra that security could be safely handed over to the Iraqis.
Here's what the defence editor of the London Times pointed out about the timing of Blair's decision.
"Britain's phased exit from Iraq has begun at an extraordinary time: Security in Basra is worse now than it was three years ago."
According to British military charts, "significant swaths" of Basra are security-coded scarlet, for unsatisfactory. As for British casualties, they have been increasing over the last year, with 10 soldiers killed and 60 wounded since last November.
As for Iraqis, the picture is grimmer than ever, which may be why 61% of them favour attacks on U.S. and British forces, according to polling material cited by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group.
A quarter of the civilian population would starve without government rations and the main water supply, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is hopelessly polluted. Could that be why 2 million Iraqis have fled their own country, and another 1O million have left their homes?
The president's Iraq Believer Cult insists that even though Britain is taking a powder, the coalition is strong. Never mind that Japan has called the White House strategy in Iraq "childish."
Never mind that the government of Italian PM Romano Prodi has just been defeated because of its pro-U.S. foreign policy. Never mind that Denmark will be pulling its troops out of Iraq by August and South Korea by the end of 2007.
As Condoleezza Rice says, the coalition is strong. And it is. Estonia is leaving its 35 troops in place, Kazakhstan won't pull its 27 engineers and Macedonia is still solid with its 40 troops.
Trust them; the spaceship is coming.
Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard weekdays 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA. His e-mail address is mharris@cfra.com
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