A little knowledge . . . . . . is a completely disastrous thing, particularly if it is philosphical knowledge, and particularly if that philosophical knowledge is not counterbalanced by an ample understanding of history. The problem with sweeping surveys of any kind is that it’s very hard to know if you’re being sold a bill of goods unless you know enough about the underlying subject matter.

As a consequence, there is no one more annoying (and in the case of someone in power, more dangerous) than the guy who rarely reads anything and then goes out and reads some moderately intellectual book like the Da Vinci Code, Brief History of Time, Futureshock or some similar sweeping work, and then begins to opine boldly about how it really is or should be on the basis of his newfound theory.

For this reason, and without knowing very much about its specifics, I’m very concerned about Bush’s recent introduction to Natan Sharansky’s The Case For Democracy. The major premise, which Bush has repeated so breathlessly, is that the US cannot be free and secure unless it makes the whole world free and secure. Does not 200+ years of American freedom and independence in a world full of a range of tyrannical regimes–some petty, some grand–not put this premise into doubt? Of course, to draw those connections one must know something of history.

About the time when the witless and episodic neocons like Cheney, Perle, Wolfie and your boy Feith were playing pretend war games in the vein of their mentor Scoop Jackson, along came Sharansky to put Bush over the top.

After being invited and courted like royalty, Sharansky spent extended time with Bush in the WH circa ’04 inauguration. He was able to lobotomize Bush with his refined democratist mantra. That is, introduce democracy with guns or butter and save the world. What a legacy to behold.

Feith et al were simple theorists, and Bush never saw in him or the others any hardened battlescars; yes, he ultimately listened to them, but only because 911 and his warped religiosity had made him sanguinary.

It was Sharansky who allowed Bush the final epiphany-of aggressive democracy being triumphant. How could he resist the ideas of a man who spit upon the Gulags?

I’d like to add that Sharanksy got it right, even if Bush got it wrong.

There’s an ironic investment saying that a long-term investment is a trade that went wrong. The smart money likes to say that when you wind up on the wrong side of a trade, you should admit your error, cut your losses, and keep your capital for other opportunities. That’s exactly what we haven’t been doing since 9/11: we’ve turned an investment intended as a quick profit into a long-term loss that drains our human, political, and financial capital further with every passing day. And continue to rationalize it.

- Take the first step of our long march to global superpower ascendancy.
- Provide for the strategic necessity of securing oil resources (and spring some treasure for all those good sports in the deathware business).
- Most importantly, guarantee the present and future regional hegemony of Israel. And that’s HEGEMONY – not security. That was taken care of some fractured electrons ago.

The problem is, this project is too big a bite for any nation to pull off – no matter how bloated the egos at the wheel. Our master planners have NO foresight. They cannot see the bull charging from down the road.

But it’s this country… America… that’s at risk, after all.

So, in their lights, who gives a damn?