Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>
> Similarly inertia is playing a huge role in our inability to correct our
> relations with Iran and Iraq. One reason the current administration is
> contemplating a huge and costly and circuituitous and very uncertain way
> of fixing them is because it is constitionally incapable of seeing the
> obvious and direct route. Which I think used to be one of the capsule
> definitions of madness.
>
It is very possible that even historians of the future (assuming there's a future) will not reach agreement over the details of U.S. motives in its defense and/or expansion of its empire. (Historians do argue over what drove Rome!) But let's shift the question: Why does the Wall St. Journal Comics Crew push for so hard a line in the Mideast. They are fearful that Bush will get to lenient on the Palestinians and get sidetracked from the serious business of conquering Iraq? Do they believe their own arguments, and if so, what makes sense of those arguments?
This would not be the same question as that concerning Clinton or Bush policy, but it overlaps at least.
Carrol