George W. Bush, Hero of Islam

Let's say there are a couple of bad neighbors living down the block from you. One, let's call him Sam, is a real scumbag, treats his family like dirt, and while he loves to talk tough, he never really leaves the property. His neighbor, Max, has a little cooler head and a few friends on the street, but is known to harbor some seething issues.

Now, for a long time, these two antagonize each other, and frankly, it's kind of convenient for the rest of you. You can stoke them against one another like a good Shakesperean meddler, and they burn up their vitriol and don't have time for much else. You can sell one a stick, the other a knife, and keep them relatively contained.

Until you hatch this plan...you're going to evict Sam and clean up his place, making it worthy of yard-of-the-month for that end of the block. Max will be quaking in his boots after such a display of force, and plus you'll have a handy base of operations where you can keep an eye on Max, maybe even kicking down his door as well. Trouble is, you don't get the neighbors on board, but even worse, you don't plan the operation very well, or even accept any advice about the viability of your plan.

Turns out that even though Sam's family hated him, they don't think much of you, and the longer you stay, the less they like you. Now Max, without the containing threat of his neighbor, starts to swagger up and down the block. He knows you can't do much, and it turns out, he can act like a law abiding citizen and there's not much you can do to prove otherwise. Seems the plan didn't work out so well.

This is how Bush, Cheney, and the extremist neocons are have turned Iran into the closest thing Islamic nations have to being a Superpower. While the Arabic and Islamic powers have been known to feud like the tribal Sheiks of old, they have been united in their tacit support for Iran to develop "peaceful" nuclear energy. Maybe this will change if they feel threatened by such an arms race, but one would suspect that Israel and other Western interest are higher on the lists of potential targets.

Rumsfeld helped execute the original strategy of mutually threatening neighbors, so one wonders what he's thinking when he contemplates the fact that America needs to sink at least $3 Billion ($2 Trillion by some estimates, when you consider long term troop support) into managing only ONE side of that equation. For a problem that was, in most experts' opinions, contained to begin with. But that's the problem with these nuts, they don't understand that "contained" can be better than "eradicated" if the latter costs lives and Billions, and isn't likely anyway.

An Islamic "Superpower" with Nuclear capabilities. Congratulations, W. Add this to your list of stellar accomplishments.