George W. Bush is God

An interesting article in today's Washington Post focuses on something Bush said in a CNN interview on September 24, and is repeating while on a West Coast fundraising trip: he believes that when we look back on our current situation, it will be "just a comma" in the history books.

The problem is, he's right. It COULD be that what we are doing now is assuring our future. It's possible Bush's approach to implementing a strategy to maintain access to petroleum resources will turn out to be correct. I don't know how many people -- even in Washington, and even some Republicans -- think that way, but it is possible.

Unfortunately, all evidence seems to be to the contrary. Sure, lots of people voted, but one has to judge an election by its fruits. If you're searching for positive results, Iraq isn't the place to start looking. Sectarian violence is at its highest levels ever, our troops continue to be primary targets for insurgents and the oil isn't flowing. The elected Iraqi offiicials obviously have either no real power or no real motivation to deal with their problems (not least of which is having the world's überpower hanging out in the backyard), and we seem unable or unwilling to commit the resources required to get things working. It may be that no one, not even the people of Iraq themselves, have what it takes to make the country function as a democracy. Because there are really no plausible justifications for why things are going so poorly in Iraq, Bush is left with two options. He can a)lie (which he has happily done in the past) and say things are getting better, or b)ask us to trust him. Which is pretty much where he's come to with the "comma" argument. "Really," he's saying, "it's all going to be alright. We're going to look back on this and regale our kids with stories about how much gas cost during the war, until they're as bored with us as we were with our parents when they talked about ration coupons in WWII." W, in other words, asks us to take him on faith. To believe what he says and do what he says, even if logic and common sense point to other conclusions.

Fortunately for him, lots of Americans see faith as an important and positive aspect of their lives. They associate having faith with goodness and community and eternal life. The hard core right (especially the religious right, which are on one level one in the same, since no right-wing politician can do anything but profess strong faith and a tie to one church or another as long as it isn't a mosque) have gone so far down the rabbit hole justifying the myriad ways GWB has violated American and conservative values in order to enrich and empower himself and his cronies that they can no longer see the light of day.

Will they continue to blindly follow George and his buddies down the rabbit hole (only to find that it leads to a world of stunning beauty for the elite -- to which they lock the door behind them) simply because he says "trust me, I'm right."? I'm very worried that the answer is "hell, yeah."