[extropy-chat] can't war protesters do better?

[Al Brooks]

Jeff, this explanation works well as far as it goes, however it is the sort of intriguing amateur psychoanalysis of a fairly complicated individual that I like very much-- so it ought to be mistrusted. It's too pat to reduce someone we don't like to that which we can understand.. 
he wants to prove himself to the world; he wants to prove himself to his father & his family;
he wants to best his father; and so forth.
Besides if Bush is such a little person how can he himself be held responsible for the war? If the smallness of Bush is so remarkable then the war's responsibility would lie with more significant persons than he. The respnsibility would lie with us for being-- as you say-- intellectually & ethically lazy. Perhaps all of we Americans ought to be put on trial at the Hague?

>Put another way, the astonishing "smallness" of the
>man who has come to occupy the most prestigious and
>powerful political position on the planet, and the
>catastrophic consequences for his six billion victims.

>In the article:

>Exclusive: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in
>2000 by Russ Baker
>(http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761)

>Baker cites Mickey Herskowitz, the
>Bush-family-authorized biographer follows:

>Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a
>lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an
>accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he
>saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s
>shadow. 

>Talk about "Global Terrorism".

>The only "success" GWB ever achieved **ON HIS OWN**
>(ie, without the help of his family or their political
>machine) was to spend the greater portion of his adult
>life as a drunk. 

>It seems clear to me that invading Iraq and destroying
>Saddam was emotionally compelling--irresistible--to
>GWB. It allowed him to succeed where his father had
>failed, thus proving GWB the better man. The
>"smallness" of a man who would use the presidency and
>the US military--sacrifice tens of thousands of lives,
>loot the US treasury, and in the name of the American
>people tell the entire world to get fucked, to salve
>his own feelings of inadequacy--exceeds every
>conceivable metric of arrogance and criminality.

>(2) The monstrous and craven Bush strategy for
>political success. Start a war so as to markedly
>increase his political support/power: the "extortion"
>of political power through fear-mongering and
>manipulated patriotism. 

>From the article cited above, a GWB quote:

>" ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is
>to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My
>father had all this political capital built up when he
>drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He
>[GWB] said, ‘If I have a chance to invade..., if I had
>that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m
>going to get everything passed that I want to get
>passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”


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