…or maybe he’s just rolling over in his grave, now that one of his Manichaean (note: I did not say maniacal) former staffers has bestowed the Reagan mantle on the Bellicose Bibi. That’s right, Reagan, who won the Cold War without firing a shot, is just like Netanyahu, who wants to bomb “evil” Iran into the Stone Age and drag the United States into yet another Middle East conflagration. Whether it’s kicking and screaming or it’s meekly waddling into war, Netanyahu expects the U.S. to deliver. After all, didn’t both Admiral Mullen and Hillary Clinton go to Israel just last year and swear that the U.S. would stand by our ally (ahem – without a treaty of alliance) for “a thousand years” and “forever,” respectively?
As they used to say in the Reagan Justice Department, “Down is Up.” But, more to the point, money talks. And there’s more money in war than in peace for the Beltway phalanx of defense industry lobbyists and their bipartisan ideological allies. To them, Dick Cheney’s (and Vladimir Lenin’s) “permanent war” is nothing but a bountiful, endless stimulus package.
In the 2008 GOP primaries, there were a lot of counterfeit Reagans running around, trying to win the presidential nomination by pleasing the dispensationalist evangelicals and their desire for Armageddon, the necessary preamble for the Second Coming. I’ve always marveled that they would hoist the Prince of Peace on their battle standards. But the Manichees constantly have to keep looking for new devils in order for their mangled metaphysics to survive, and these days, I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket apparently qualifies for their Hitler-Of-The-Month Club.
There is one comforting sign in the midst of the crescendo of war propaganda that engulfs us: they’re desperate. Why else would they roll out Reagan as the Mad Bomber? For the neocons and their dialectic, down is always up — and the check is in the mail.
7:19 am on September 29, 2009
