Actually, it’s our tit, it seems. Hey, hey, ho, ho, how many American deaths did Georgie sow?

Almost all his Middle East handholding palsie-walsies abandoned their promises to keep oil prices in check, at $40 and $50 and $60 a barrel. They didn’t even bother lying after that. Isn’t it amazing how quickly ideology and diplomacy can get abandoned in favor of unchecked greed? Yet they still tell the lie that a bunch of hiding terrorists represent the quote-unquote greatest threat to our country.

They are the greatest threat to holding a security blanket that keeps us safe from the boogerman when we sleep. But the odds of death by terror attack ranks down their with death by infected toenails. And living forever should rank a little lower than being able to obtain some pleasures and comforts while we’re living.

Some disagree. If you can’t work 80 hours a week, sacrifice every pleasure, endure every kind of abuse and insult for 50 years, well then, you really don’t deserve anything at all, especially socialized air to breathe. You weren’t born in the right place or to the right family? Then it sure must suck to be you.

Bush was warned what would happen if Saddam was toppled and the blend of existing ideologies festered in a quagmire of economic neglect and mismanagement. Secular strongman dictatorships can be undeniably brutal and worthy of opposition, but the extremes of all out war are not the only way to topple tyrants. And democracies don’t magically grow everywhere like Jack’s beanstalk beans did.

Iraq is a complete Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Axis of Stupid clusterfuck. And even at that, let’s look at things through a lens of reason and see if there’s better ways forward. Consider, from that article:

“To understand it (the Quds Force) as just a terrorist group, as the U.S. does, is not helpful,” said Rasool Nafisi, a Washington-based Middle East analyst. “It is a very important, almost second tier of Iranian international diplomacy.”

The Iranians’ longstanding goals include pushing United States forces out of Iraq, perhaps encouraging a broader American retreat from the Middle East and securing a Shiite-dominated Iraqi regime that’s friendly to Tehran and can’t threaten a repeat of Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran, which started a devastating eight-year war.

Hmmmm… Iran would prefer to have a friendly neighbor on its border. How extreme! And it doesn’t like the US involvement that previously armed Saddam for the purpose of waging war with Iran…. how can they not trust our government today? So Iran’s interest is to reduce and eliminate threats to its security. And that’s supposed to be considered radical and dangerous? All they want is a Canada next door. If we really want to effectively oppose that, we could have told them about the risks of hockey and spared a lot of dying and expense.

Look, as adults, we can perfectly well understand that it’s not exactly that simple. But Iran is surrounded by a lot of nations hostile to its interests. Some are Arabs opposed to Persians. Some exploit the Sunni vs. Shia schism. Israel exploits that, too, preferring to keep Muslims divided to lessen the dangers of Muslims uniting to eliminate Israel. And just as Israel’s interests in doing so are understandable, so are Iran’s interests understandable. And the whole freaking globe wants control of Iran’s oil and are willing to exploit everyone involved to gain it.

War is hardly the best or only answer to work through competing interests to gain a calm coexistence for all. In the Middle East, war has proven repeatedly to simply provoke more war.

And in the meantime, national treasuries are drained, profiteers on all sides enrich themselves while impoverishing the majorities in every country, including ours.

It is greed that’s the most threatening ideology in the mix. Saudi, Iranian, Iraqi and American greed is doing in the majority in every country, and let’s not forget that China, Russia, India, Japan and Europe are also competing for control over the oil and each has its share of greedy bastards willing to sacrifice the best interests of the many for the excessive enrichment of the few.

So long as this prevails and people are persuaded to defend themselves against boogermen at any cost, the greedy bastards will prevail, to our mutual detriment.

Face up to the fact that limited resources can only be stretched and enhanced so far via scientific achievement, to accomodate the growing global population. And if we don’t start grasping that and seeking reasonable ways to share, the ultimate course we chart is a diminished quality of life for succeeding generations or a few powerful nations offering some small gains for their people in return for a number of those people willing to engage in perpetual war. Which is every bit as brutal as Saddam and any other tyrant, ethically.

Civilization either can or cannot be, and the perpetual war strategies of the Axis of Stupid is a surrender to the notion that civilization is a mythical concoction composed of blood and misery that grants temporary lulls and maintains the delusion that we’re wiser than an ant swarm overrunning a dung beetle.

We might have wisdom capability, but Iraq and our current economy remain the clearest demonstrations of how poorly we’ve been utilizing that. And let’s not dwell on that because LOOK OVER THERE AT ANOTHER BOOGERMAN! And the guys doing the pointing usually carries the sharpest daggers, their own unquenchable greed.

Try to remember that every time the megamillionaire corporate toady John McCain points at the TERRIBLE DANGER of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And realize, too, there are some adults around that were right about Iraq who still are displaying a preference for a wiser way.