Bush's Final Target?

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I don't like it when I see analogies between George Bush and Hitler or right-wing activists and the Nazis. "Cheap Shot!" I think. "Exaggerated!" "Useless!" "Where's the beef" of events that could be analogized to the Reichstag fire, the assasinations of inconvenient allies like Ernst Röhm, Kristallnacht, the concentration camps, the genocide of the Jewish population, the invasion of one country after another? As repugnant as the American right is, I've almost always thought that it is more appropriate to compare them to the segregation South than the Nazis.

But one Nazi analogy has lingered persistently with me--the thesis that Hitler finally wanted to destroy Germany itself as a punishment for it's failure in the war. Hitler's

mission, according to [Joachim] Fest, was ultimately nothing more than destruction. Destruction of the European political order, destruction of undesirable peoples and finally the destruction of the German people themselves. Even though the war was lost months if not years before, Hitler persisted in having the remnants of the German army defend Germany and ultimately Berlin. Thousands died daily and the city was turned into rubble not because there was hope of victory, but because the German people had failed in carrying out his fantasy of destroying the world. Fest argues that in those final days Germany itself was Hitler's final target. The German people had to be punished.

Bush administration figures have always defined the Iraq war in terms of a task that they've assigned the American people that are suspiciously like the terms in which Hitler defined WWII for the German people. Much as Hitler assigned the "destruction of undesirable peoples" as the "task" or the "destiny" of the German people, Bush administration figures have assigned the Iraq war to the American people as a kind of task or test. According to Condoleeza Rice, it's "a generational commitment to helping the people of the Middle East transform their region." George Bush emphasized "the resolve of our great nation is being tested" while Dick Cheney believes that the war is a "test of American character."

These statements strike me as having a Hitler-like dimension because they imply that the American people would deserve whatever consequences came to us if we "failed" in our mission as the Bush administration. Whatever we got hit by subsequent to our failure, whether it would be attacks on our shipping, tunnels, or airports, more 9-11's, dirty bombs, or nuclear weapons, it would be our own fault because our failure to carry out the Bush administration's vision for the war on terror revealed fundamental deficiencies in our national make-up.

From the perspective of the Bush administration, evidence of American failure would be all around. Only a third of the American public supports the war while large majorities disapprove of the president's leadership, are pessimistic about the outcome of the war, and believe we're on the wrong track. Even worse, the American public clearly supported the Democrats in the recent showdown over war funding with more than 60% wanting a timeline for American withdrawal from Iraq and majorities preferring that the Democrats manage the war. Rather than showing the "character" and "will" needed to fulfill it's destined mission, the American public is rejecting the messenger just like the ancient Israelites rejected the prophets.

Nobody in the Bush administration has explicitly formulated this indictment, but this kind of thought seems to be the immediate context for the (drunken-sounding) exercise in presidential chest-thumping described by Georgie Ann Geyer (via Digby) below:

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness. Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

What Bush means here is his Democratic "successor" Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Bush must not have much confidence in all of the Republican candidates who have pledged themselves to continue President Bush's strategies in Iraq anyway. That will be part of the American nation's failure as a people, our failure to elect someone as president in 2008 that Bush could see as a worthy successor.

But George Bush seems to have one more card up his sleeve. He can "set Iraq" up so that a Democrat won't be able to withdraw. In other words, Bush can force the situation to deteriorate so badly that even the most anti-war Democrat would be forced to keep a troop presence to fulfill "our country's destiny" of establishing an Iraqi base for the projection of American power in the Middle East.

If Geyer's quote is correct, the surge might be "intended" to be a self-defeating strategy designed to make Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias more formidable and destrucive. That would be treasonable in the sense that President Bush would be enacting policies that with the intention of making our enemies stronger, i.e., aiding and abetting our enemies.

Or perhaps, President Bush can already see that the surge is failing and has decided to let it keep failing as a way to constrain his successor.

Ultimately though, "setting up Iraq" to force his successor to fulfill "our country's destiny" is a way to force the American people to fulfill the destiny he has assigned us. It's George Bush's way of punishing us for not having the "character" to support his mission on our own.