Dubya And Ronnie's Crackpot History

Near the end of “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward (around page 420 or so), former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft is told that Dubya aspired as president to be more like The Sainted Ronnie Reagan than his father, referred to by Scowcroft as “41.”

Putting aside the shameful disrespect that this shows to a man (Sr.) with whom I frequently disagreed (though, as a combat veteran and someone who served for years in our government, he is nonetheless worthy of more than a small measure of gratitude), I think this helps to explain the pathological behavior of the current occupant of the White House.

I’m thinking of this because of this administration’s utterly delusional comparison of a mythological aftermath in Iraq that could somehow resemble our current commitment to South Korea (noted here, and I know I said something about this earlier). This, as we know, is typical propaganda for a failed regime that is doing all it can to hold onto power.

And besides, didn’t Dubya try comparing Iraq to World War II previously here, along with some other inanity about the Iraqi congress and this country's first constitutional convention? How many more prior wars is he going to summon in an effort to justify this tragic enterprise?

This is in keeping, though, with the tactic of his admired predecessor, who once called the Contras who fought the Sandinistas in Nicaragua “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.”

Well, according to Human Rights Watch (and noted here), the Contras were guilty of the following…

• Targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination.
• Kidnapping civilians.
• Torturing civilians.
• Executing civilians, including children, who were captured in combat.
• Raping women.
• Indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian houses.
• Seizing civilian property.
• Setting alight civilian houses in captured towns.

And now, some twenty years after the fact, we have a president pretending to be something like “Reagan Jr.” once more making absurd historical claims about his war of choice.

I guess the apple doesn’t fall that far from the ideological tree, does it?

Update 6/7/07: Speaking of military history, God Bless The Onion (h/t Daily Kos).