The view from Weimar?

Bob Burnett, writing at Open Democracy, about the deep clulessness of the American public and the Republican strategy to capitalize on our militant stupidity.

The president's persistence has worked with a large proportion of the American public: a poll published on 23 June found that 41% of Americans "believe Saddam Hussein's regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection."

...The Bush inner circle, looking back on the Nixon presidency, sees George W Bush's Iraq posture as a calculated political stance that will have three positive consequences. First, it will pass the final resolution of the conflict to the next president; if chaos prevails, it will be blamed on the forty-fourth president, not on Bush. Second, it will solidify Bush's manufactured image as a single-minded, principled commander-in-chief who never relented in his battle against America's terrorist enemies. Third, it will strengthen the claim of Republicans to be the war party; the sector of American politics that will never countenance surrender, that believes that American military might can prevail in any circumstance given adequate political will. The White House's key figures contend that Bush's conduct of the Iraq war will - in the long run - help Republicans.

Whether the calculation is correct, and the president's Iraq policy helps his party, remains to be seen. What is clear is that Bush's endgame is to continue the war in Iraq at its current level until he leaves office on 20 January 2009.

PAF notes with some concern that this strategy hinges on successfully scapegating anti-war forces, and what remains of the American left, for the debacle in Iraq. In other words, it entails propagating a "stabbed-in-the-back" narrative in order to sustain the mythology of American martial potency and moral infallibility on which the Republicans are staking their future. So we're talking about sharpening the culture of compulsory militaristic hyper-nationalism in an environment where many of the constitutional contraints on executive power have been undermined and civil liberties are eroded.

I'm trying to remember why I called this blog premature anti-fascist.