corrente

Building on what Tom has in his post below (thanks!), Antonio Castaneda of AP found some historians making the point that I was sure was lurking in the history of iWaq (and yes, I’ll spell it that way from here on out just so it’s absolutely goddam clear who’s war this is). The British tried not one, but several elections during their “stay” in iWaq from 1919 to 1958. The Iraqis have a long memory.

See Historians See Similarities Between Iraqi Vote Today, Elections Held Under British Rule - from TBO.com where you will read that

Sunday's vote has been painted as Iraq's introduction to democracy, but elections were held under British control, too. Some older Iraqis may have even participated in the 1954 elections, considered relatively free by some historians.

But the majority of Iraq's old parliamentary elections would not pass today's Western standards, and regardless of how fair the polls were, there was no hope for a true representative democracy in a country controlled by Britain.

"The historical memory (Iraqis) have of democracy is of weak governments that were beholden to the British," said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
"Once there were elections, the British tried to get the governments that they would like," said Nasr. "That ended up completely destroying democracy in Iraq."

Gosh, how short historical memory is. I’m sure aWol will mention that in the SOTU. So, we have similarities between current imperial American actions and past imperial American actions (Vietnam), a new puppet government in Afghanistan that really can’t move much outside of Kabul, OBL still on the loose, and historical precedents to what’s happening in iWaq today with a previous imperial power (Britain). Tom mentions El Salvador, below, as a parallel. I won’t even bother with the Philippines War, but shit, folks…the signs of disaster are everywhere in history and all we get from the media shills and the gummint is butterflies and rainbows. But Social Security? That’s a crisis!

Bushco’s Middle East fantasy goes beyond denial and wishful thinking. This is delusional thinking. See First-person accounts of delusions -- Stanton and David 24 (9): 333 -- Psychiatric Bulletin, where we read that

Reality-testing was not usually part of the process of the development of delusions. It seems that people usually feel no need to question their developing beliefs, and that evidence which might disconfirm them is ignored.

Recovery from delusions is almost always a gradual process, during which the individual passes through an intermediate stage of willingness to question delusions or duality of belief and disbelief. Reality-testing and other strategies to combat delusional thinking may play an important part in promoting and maintaining recovery…

Recovery? Prognosis?