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I've been reading the right-wing media's take on the Spanish election, and I have to say it's left me with a stronge sense of disconnect -- what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance.
On the one hand, I agree with much of the strategic analysis -- like, for example, Robert Kagen's anxious piece in the Washington Post. On the other hand, I'm amazed, and more than a little impressed, by the ability of so many conservative pundits to evade the inescapable conclusion: That the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq has been a complete disaster for the United States -- a disaster enormously magnified by Bush's willfully destructive attitude towards our former European allies.
In the past, I've called it the worst strategic blunder since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But at this point I'd go further. It may have been the worse strategic blunder since Wilhelm II dragged Germany into a two-front war in 1914. And while the outcome ultimately may not be as catastrophic (we can only hope), the causes of the fiasco are quite similar. Like Kaiser Willy's Germany, Bush's America has gone out of its way to turn friends into enemies. And in this, at least, it has succeeded.
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