It seemed so straightforward. America had suffered an atrocity which left everyone frightened, paranoid, perplexed, and easily malleable. There was an easily identifiable group to direct public antipathy against the "Arabs." Saddam Hussein was a serviceable villain, crude, vicious, and with a proven track record as the heavy.
Flags were waving everywhere, and God, that ever-obliging doormat to ambitious politicians, had been roped in to inveigh us to defeat his evil self, Allah. By now, we should be in a full blown war frenzy, ready to lay down our lives for Dick Cheney, and clamoring for the military to draft our kids first. Our allies, awed by the spectacle of a unified America rising in righteous wrath, and clearly the aggrieved party, should have backed America all the way.
Except it doesn't seem to be happening. At a time when Putsch should be ramping up on a platform of "rally round the flag, boys" only the barest majority of Americans, 52%, see any justification for attacking Iraq, and then only if it's done with permission from Congress and the support of other nations. Without those, support drops to 21%.
Twenty one percent is the political equivalent of "no support at all". Give Charlie Manson $150 million to blow on campaign materials, and you could get that many to vote for him for President. If he was running against Putsch, he might win and lose in the Supreme Court later.
It wasn't supposed to work out this way, but it has. Putsch is going to be talking to the allies over the next week by phone, trying desperately to drum up support from anyone other than lapdog Tony Blair or co-instigator Ariel Sharon. But Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of America's closest friend, Canada, is openly skeptical, allowing that he's willing to hear Putsch out, but making no other promises. If he can't get support from Canada, he certainly isn't going to get any from Europe. `I will see what he has to say, I will listen and we will decide,'' Chretien told reporters. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Even Blair, facing a revolt in his own party and a growing tide of dissatisfaction from the British people, might have to back away.
Putsch managed to get Kuwait to sign on. Gosh! Who would have imagined the emirs of Kuwait wanting to see Saddam Hussein deposed? But even the Kuwaitis had to think it over for a bit, first.
The admin had to back away from the lofty pronouncement that they didn't need to secure a declaration of war from Congress, because Congress already gave Pappy permission to attaq back in 1991. Polls showed that a full 80% of Americans begged to differ with him on that, and now he's talking about getting some kind of resolution from Congress. Even with the weak and timid Democrats in the Congress, he might not get it.
The polls tell the story: the most recent ones from Pew and NBC and CNN show him losing support at a steady point a week, with Pew showing him at 60% approval. Not only is that a full 31 points below his peak immediately after 9/11, but it's lower than Clinton had at any point during his second administration. (In September, 1998, he hit 61%, at a point when the public still thought the Congress might have an actual case for impeachment). Only 41% of voters think he deserves re-election in 2004.
The bandwaggin' definitely isn't following Putsch while he calls upon the great Christian armies of America to smite the Musselmen of the Babylonian Orient. Even the Christian right, which is willing to believe that Ann Coulter is moral and honest, or that Reverend Moon exemplifies Christian American values, is looking at Putsch askance and saying, "WHY do you say we need to kill this guy?"
There's plenty of reason for skepticism over Putsch's plan to avenge Pappy and "restore Democracy" to Iraq. (I keep thinking of Mandy Patinkin in "The Princess Bride" "Saddam, my name ees George Walker Son of a Bush. You keel my father. Prepare to die!"
We started out by restoring democracy in the weakest and most backward nation in all of Asia, Afghanistan. My, that worked out well, didn't it?
I see in today's paper that there was a car bomb in the capital, Kabul, that killed 25 people and injured dozens of others. And one of Hasim Karzai's bodyguards tried assassinating hm an hour or so later, only to be gunned down by some of the other Karzai guards, who just happened to be members of US Special Forces. Oh, no, Karzai's not OUR puppet, oh noooo....
Even the Taliban, the vilest excuse for a government you can imagine, did a better job of ruling that benighted land than the US puppet regime is doing. At least they put a dent in the opium and child-sex-slave trades. Even with Special Forces, I doubt Karzai is going to last very long. Afghanistan tends to be a little bit rough on puppet rulers of foreign invaders. Ask the Soviets. Oh, wait, they're all gone now, aren't they?
If we can't control Afghanistan, just what in the hell are we going to do with Iraq, assuming we can successfully topple Saddam?
The general population is beginning to get suspicious of why Putsch has suddenly lost interest in catching Osama bin Laden, and is suddenly trying to blame Hussein for 9/11. Even if the government never made a very good case against OBL, there's plenty of reason to believe he was the mastermind behind 9/11. For one thing, the NSA intercepted an Al-Qaida phone communication in which one operative reported "good news" the first airplane crash and reported there would be a second, as happened nine minutes later. There's plenty of reason to believe Saddam wasn't involved, not the least of which is that the more-or-less secular Saddam fears the zealot mullahs that OBL represents.
But CBS is reporting that Rumsfeld decided that the phone call intercepted was too vague and didn't mean anything, and blamed Saddam.
That, in itself, meant little. Saddam was my first suspect in the first hours after the collapse of the towers, and I didn't have access to any intelligence material. But Rummy did, and it apparently made a good circumstantial case to blame Al Qaida. It did NOT, however, implicate Saddam Hussein in any way. Rumsfeld nevertheless is still claiming that Saddam was behind the attacks now.
The American public agrees that Saddam is a perfect shit, and won't mind seeing him go, but they aren't quite ready to suddenly change their minds on who killed three thousand people on 9/11 just to suit the whims and political expediencies of the administration, and that's proving to be a problem for that group. They can't catch OBL, and want people to forget him. They have Afghanistan (sorta) which is why they attacked in the first place, and now they want control of some of the other oil resources in the middle east. The trouble is, the American people want justice, not oil.
The majority of Americans feel that Putsch has not made a compelling case for invading Iraq. And the more he waggles the flag and pounds the bible in support of his cause, the more adamant the public becomes.
We may end up embarking on the greatest military misadventure in our history anyway. The Democrats in Congress are easily bullied, and the people handling Putsch really want that oil in their hands. They certainly don't care what the people of America think.
We went into Vietnam and Korea with popular support and watched things turn sour anyway. Iraq is a bigger and more powerful opponent, has friends including, apparently, Vladimir Putin and the public support just isn't there.
The American people are finally paying attention. And that's the worst thing that could happen to Putsch.