Another Amazing Speech…

What a week for speeches it’s been. The Pope, Bush, Chavez, and Ahmadinejad have all made their headlines. Now Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, has made a surprising announcement. He said today that after 9-11 the Bush Administration told him “Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,” unless Pakistan joined the US in the War on Terror. Wow.

The White House and the State Department have declined to comment on the accusation. The US Intelligence Director at the time, Amitage, categorically denies making the threat. Is it possible Bush issued a sophomoric threat? Yerp. Is it possible Musharraf is making it up? Most certainly. Does it matter? Not really, Bush is screwed either way. No surprise his administration has no comment, anything they say might make it worse.

Why is this a lose-lose scenario for the Bush Administration? Because if it’s true, it’s pathetic. Bush had to threaten a Muslim country with nuclear destruction to get them to join the War on Terror? Kind of puts a certain Iranian President’s threats to wipe out Israel in an interesting perspective, nu? And if the president of Pakistan is just making it up, Gee, possibly Bush’s strongest Muslim Ally is throwing him to the wolves? And Musharraf makes points all around, he has nothing to lose. Clever man.

This highlights one of the many stupid aspects of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Bush basically bet the farm in Iraq, he called in every chip he had to pull it off. Including apparently threatening one of the West’s best friends in the Muslim world. By doing so, he put his foreign policy in a situation where he had no options if things didn’t work out as planned. And our enemies, which basically includes every nation on Earth (International relations is as cut-throat as it gets, how could it be any other way?) have ample opportunity to take advantage of our paralysis.

Many of the people who were against the invasion of Iraq were against it because it was wrong, or it was illegal, or Bush lied, or they hated bush, or whatever. Not me. I was against the war because it was stupid. The War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq have so paralyzed American foreign policy that now our friends are scoring on us. Thrillsville. Or as the wise alien said in the classic Sci-Fi film Plan 9 From Outer Space: “You see! You are stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

The invasion of Iraq was a dumb idea. I will be revisiting this theme in future blogs. Apologies in advance. Hmm, I wonder if anyone else has given a speech while I was writing this…