Bush v. The Two Majorities

Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com

President George W. Bush, who is being shadowed these days, and rather ominously, by a suddenly revived Vice President Cheney, confronts two hostil majorities opposed to his Iraq policy. The first is American, growing in power, that demands a U.S. withdrawal from the Iraqi quagmire. The second, also growing, is even more potent: It is the Iraqi majority that wants a quick end to the U.S. occupation of their country. If, indeed, President Bush is determined to flout both of those majorities in pursuit of a phantasmagorical notion of "victory" in Iraq, then the future is grim beyond all measure. The latest news from Iraq—namely, that Bush and Ambassador Khalilzad are trying to micromanage the creation of yet another pro-American coalition government to replace the current regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki—is a sign that the president is truly lost in a fantasy land. The president is making policy for an Iraq that exists only in his imagination, even as conditions in the real Iraq, the one here on this planet, deteriorate ever faster...

continua / continued