Cheney/Bush vs. Baker Commission
CounterPunch, CA Cowboys Differ on Iran Attack
By GARY LEUPP
The reaction to the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report suggests that a showdown is shaping up within the U.S. power elite between two different sets of cowboys. On the one hand, there are the George W. Bush cowboys who want to expand their conquests from Afghanistan and Iraq into Syria and Iran. It’s a natural extension of the Manifest Destiny doctrine that underpinned the conquest of the “Wild West,” the annexation of almost half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s, the “opening of Japan” resulting from gunboat diplomacy in 1854, the Marines’ overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and the establishment of a colonial empire from the Pacific to the Caribbean following the Spanish-American War. Bush and Dick Cheney saw nothing wrong with the Vietnam War (except the possibility that they might be personally involved, since they had other priorities at the time). They really liked the first Gulf War, but were disappointed it didn’t conquer more. Thus Dubya told Mickey Herskowitz, a Houston Chronicle sports columnist helping ghostwrite his autobiography in 1999 that, “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade [Iraq]—if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it.”
On the other hand, there are the Jim Baker-type cowboys who question the feasibility of further conquest at this time, and want to lasso in their wayward buckaroo buddies and rowdy youngins before they get everybody into deeper horseshit in them foreign parts. The Baker cowboys are saying talk to the natives at least, smoke the peace-pipe if necessary, then ride off into the sunset leaving a fort or two behind proudly waving the tattered flag to help save face.
Dubya’s cowpokes say, “No, we don’t talk to the natives in those rich lands, overflowing with milk and honey and petroleum products, that God made for us.” [more]