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Spengler: Bush's October surprise - it's coming
EFLOne hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War. Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October. One factoid encapsulates Bush's opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80% of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59% said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as "not yet", for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. President Bush earned overwhelming support by toppling Saddam Hussein, a caricature villain who appeared to threaten Americans, but earned opprobrium by committing American lives to the political rehabilitation of Iraq, about which Americans care little. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is the sort of villain that Central Casting once sourced for studio film productions in Hollywood. No more than Napoleon Bonaparte could stay away from Russia can Ahmadinejad abandon Iran's nuclear ambitions. He represents a generation that has bled for its country and its sect for a quarter-century and now has come into its maturity and must demonstrate its mettle. The Revolutionary Guards of 1979 now are middle-aged men who now at last have a chance to lead. Ahmadinejad has salted the regime's middle ranks with thousands of men like himself. America's discomfiture in Iraq provides Iran with an opportunity to restore its regional greatness, the last one for centuries, if not millennia. If Iran stands down as a prospective nuclear power, it faces a rapidly graying population, declining capacity to export oil and discontent among rural folk and the urban poor. The promise of the Islamic Revolution will have melted into mediocrity and cynicism, and the generation of Ahmadinejad will have turned out a damp squib. To be very precise, I am not accusing the White House of manipulating the Iranian issue for political purposes. On the contrary, if the US president thought only in terms of political consequences he never would have risked so much on the Quixotic quest for Iraqi democracy. Still, Bush has the opportunity to shift the subject away from the unpopular campaign to improve the politics of the Middle East, and back to the extremely popular subject of killing terrorists. He believes (and I am long since on record agreeing) that Washington will have to put paid to Ahmadinejad before very long, and there is no reason not to look for a political benefit as well. Just as in the 2004 elections, the Democrats will have a losing hand if the White House orders force against Iran. Americans rally behind a wartime leader; the one exception was Vietnam. America's engagement with Iran would resemble the Bill Clinton administration's aerial attack on Serbia rather than the Iraq wars, for there is no reason at all to employ ground groups. God takes care of drunks, small children and the United States of America. Improbably, destiny has a surprise in store for George W Bush. Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-04-10 |
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