*"Two full-blown crises, in Lebanon and Iraq, are merging into a single emergency. A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay."
*"The only beneficiaries of this chaos are Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr..."
*"This combination of combustible elements poses the greatest threat to global stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis..."
*"...there is little public sign that the president and his top advisers recognize how close we are to a chain reaction, or that they have any larger strategy beyond tactical actions."
*"American policy has had the unintended, but entirely predictable, effect of pushing our enemies closer together."
*"Without a new, comprehensive strategy based on our most urgent national security needs -- as opposed to a muddled version of Wilsonianism -- this crisis is almost certain to worsen and spread."
Richard Holbrooke is absolutely correct. The misjudgments, miscalculations, arrogance, ignorance and incompetence displayed by our BushCheneyAllen Republican "leadership" the past 6 years has almost no parallels historically. And, 5 years after 9/11, we are certainly NOT better off, safer, or unified. Under the BushCheneyAllen Repubilcans, we have no plan to defeat terror and to secure our nation. Under the BushCheneyAllen Republicans, we are adrift and, ultimately, weak.
In that context, the vote Tuesday in Connecticut was 180 degrees different from the White House spin about Democratic disarray. Instead, the Connecticut election was a vote for changing course AWAY from Bush Republican futility, incompetence, inaction and weakness.
Same thing with the nomination of Jim Webb in Virginia. That choice sent a very similar message that it's time for smart, serious, strategic leadership in Washington, not the muddleheaded, counterproductive, tactical bumbling we've seen the past 6 years under the supposedly "strong" (hahaha) Republicans. If what Republicans have shown us the past 6 years is "strength," I'd sure hate to see "weakness!"
Whether we're talking about international policies, as Holbrooke is, or domestic policies (out of control spending with soaring debt and deficit, Katrina failures, education incompetence, fuel costs, environmental disasters, etc), the single solution is change.
The current leadership has shown that it will not change it's own policies and behaviors and there is no chance that they'll suddenly "get it".
So the only way to change things is to vote them out of office. Is that a 100% guarantee that things will be fixed? Of course not. But given that there is a 100% guarantee that things will NOT be fixed with the current leadership, change is the only answer.
And this should have a strong appeal to everyone. It's not just the Democrats in Connecticut who want change. Democrats want it. Moderates want it. Even a good number of Republicans want it.
So let's make it happen. Change.
Bush et al believe the Rapture and Armageddon are coming so everything they do (or don't do) works unconsciously as well as consciously toward that end. I mean, That END. Rumsfeld and Cheney don't believe that claptrap, they believe themselves to be realists in a hostile world where America must 1) secure oil resources to preserve our life style and enable our military, and 2) create an "American century" of capitalist progress like a new Rome. So everything they do assumes war in one fashion or another.
As for GVOT (Global War on Terror), it is largely a fiction which allows Bush on the one hand and Cheney on the other to pursue their above-stated goals, notwithstanding news about plots to blow up airliners...
Thus our real enemies and our real problems (water, economy, education, globalization, environment, health etc) are unaddressed. Trying to unsnarl this Bush Mess, call it a B.M., will be a gargantuan task. It will require true leadership, cooperation by really everyone else in the world, and... well, lotsa money. That's even to come out alive. But we must make the attempt.