[updated below] [updated again]

Oh man, the press conference today with Bush and his pet puppy dog Tony Blair is frightening for both the sheer inanity of the Administration viewpoint expressed by Bush and the glimpse into the horror of how he apparently views the world and our role in it. (my bold)

Here’s part of what Bush said in a long, rambling semi-coherent response to a quite good question from the press (NBC’s David Gregory, I believe).

In the long term, to defeat this ideology - and they’re bound by an ideology - you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

And, look, I fully understand some people don’t believe it’s possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible.

And I believe it will happen.

And so what you’re seeing is, you know, a clash of governing styles.

For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.

Yikes. Bush actually believes “freedom” is an ideology.

Webster’s give two main definitions of ideology 1. visionary theorizing; and 2. a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture

Oh my, so it seems for Bush that freedom is either “visionary theorizing” or a body of concepts. It hasn’t apparently occured to him that it might be a state of existence itself, a set of practices and conditions within which actual human beings live and thrive.

Taken further, since “they” “hate us for our freedoms” it therefor follows that they hate us for our visionary theorizing. Now the thought of Bush engaging in visionary theorizing is a frightening thought indeed but it is unlikely that Al Qaeda hates us for the possible of that occurring. It’s more likely that they, or even real thinking, caring human beings, might pity us for the possibility that we might have to endure such a thing from Bush. And I find it even more unlikely that they hate us for our concepts about life. But hey, you never know.

What’s really bizarre is that Bush is supporting Israel, and sending weapons to Israel as rapidly as possible, while they are bombing the living shit out of a real, functioning democracy in the Middle East, i.e. Lebanon. They may not be perfect but somehow bombing them to make a point, rather than supporting their herculean efforts to rebuild their country after decades of war and occupation, as a way of convincing them to deal with problems like Hezbullah et al, does not look to be working so well and is no way to support an emerging democracy.

So Bush says, in a response to a question about diminishing influence in the region, that he believes our policies ought to continue to follow the same path that produced that diminishing influence and that doing so is actually a good thing for the region, ignoring the reality that in this case it is creating a situation that sure makes it look like he is the totalitarian who wants to impose his vision on the region and is terrified by what is happening in an emerging democracy.

In my entire life I’ve never seen a US administration policy so incoherent and self-contradictory. I’m not sure which scares me more, that what they say they want to do is so morally repugnant and wrong-headed or that they cannot even manage to actually do what they say they want to do or recognize that it doesn’t work.

[UPDATE]

This is interesting. (thanks to Josh Marshall at TPM)

He’d met Sharon briefly, Bush said, when they had flown over Israel in a helicopter on a visit in December 1998. “Just saw him that one time. We flew over the Palestinian camps,” Bush said sourly. “Looked real bad down there. I don’t see much we can do over there at this point. I think it’s time to pull out of that situation.”

And that was it, according to [Paul] O’Neill and several other people in the room. The Arab-Israeli conflict was a mess, and the United States would disengage. The combatants would have to work it out on their own.

[Colin] Powell said such a move might be hasty. He remarked on the violence on the West Bank and Gaza and on its roots. He stressed that a pullback by the United States would unleash Sharon and Israeli army. “The consequences of that could be dire,” he said, “especially for the Palestinians.”

Bush shrugged. “Maybe that’s the best way to get some things back in balance.”

Powell seemed startled.

“Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things,” Bush said.

It fits perfectly with what Bush said yesterday in the press conference and tends to solidify a feeling I got as I watched that question and answer again late last night. This is what Bush wants, this is his unspoken, unarticulated plan. He wants conflict and he wants strife and he wants the kind of biblical bloody birth looked for by the Endtimers. He doesn’t himself have to be one but I have had the sense that what we call the unwanted and unintended consequence of incompetence is in fact exactly what Bush wants to see because he believes in a bizarre sort of destruction and rebirth for the Middle East and likely for the world as well.

What bothers me most is that his “grand plan” that gets mentioned peripherally by some members of his administration and occasionally by his ardent supporters has never been clearly articulated by him or anyone else. It is a sign of the contempt with which this ruling neocon bunch views the public and may also be a sign of the fear they have of this plan being “misunderstood” and thus thwarted.

9/11 gave them the opportunity to put this plan into motion out of the way of scrutiny and away from the checks and balances of a system designed to prevent just this sort of anti-Jeffersonian adventurism by a deluded leader. This is why they have developed an atmosphere of terror and fear in this country and this explains why they constantly evoke memories of 9/11.

Things like stem cell vetoes, gay marriage and flag-burning amendments, are all designed to keep the proletariat (both supporters and opponents) busy with other things, paying attention to the “off hand” as magicians say, so that the real work of remaking the world in fire can take place out of sight.

This is the true face of evil and the surest example of the banality of evil as exists in the world today, though in this case occuring at the leadership level rather than the loyal bureaucrat level. It is an evil far worse than an obvious and odious tyrant like Saddam, who kills openly and threatens boldly and directly, caring not a whit what others think. It is an evil that wears a familiar face, speaking in familiar terms and pretending brotherhood and friendship while it engages in unspeakable horror “for your own good”.

The ultimate sadistic paternalism, brought to you by Uncle Sam, held hostage by the evil of good intentions.

[update II]

It occurs to me, in reading defenses of the Joe Lieberman arm of the Democratic Party (”We’re better at being warlike than the Republicans and we’d do it right!”) that few of these people really understand the true “vision” of the Bush foreign policy madness because if they did they’d realize just how false their “poorly executed” mantra really is. This war These wars are not poorly executed, they are proceeding exactly as Bush envisions them. He knows this won’t be easy or clean and he sincerely believes, as he said in the press conference yesterday:

it’s an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let’s hope everything is calm - kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

He doesn’t want calm, he sees calm and he literally doesn’t know how to make it work. He dislikes stability and doesn’t see America as a stabilizing influence in the world but as a power broker of change through conflict. This is exactly and consistently the Project for a New American Century outline, down to the last detail, and he’s been executing it since his first selection in 2000. He’s been consistent and he’s been relentless about this. None of this stuff is an accident.

What makes this so profoundly evil is that his higher motivation and grand leadership are causing massive suffering and death that is expanding around the world, with his encouragement and active assistance. It is not much different than the idea of sacrificing virgins or first-born children to appease the gods. Yes, it is somewhat difficult for those who are sacrificed but it is for the greater glory of Dear Leader’s grand vision for a new world, so shut up and like it.

It is why he can be so unaffected by massive suffering and death, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon or New Orleans. They are just labor pains to him.

This is why Lieberman is wrong, dangerously wrong, and the only future for the Democrats, or any party that isn’t Republican, is following the growing progressive movement back into rationality.