Pie in the Sky is Falling

What luck for rulers that men do not think.
--Adolf Hitler

This title is based upon the Jeopardy Before and After category, and it is useful for this entry as several previous pieces have addressed the Pie in the Sky planning of the Department of Defense, and the concomitant Sky is Falling fear-mongering of the GWB White House.

These diametrically opposed ideas provide the basis of the war with Iraq. In propaganda meister's Goebbels' terms, it was a concerted policy to condition the American citizen to accept an unacceptable concept. That is, preemptive, unjustified warfare had to be sold as a desirable and indispensable project.

GWB, Cheney and Rice hawked the Sky is Falling leg on which the project is partly based. A chance to induct the public into this solidarity borne of fear was never missed. The rhetoric is so tired and onerous that it need not be repeated, but the best was Rice's--We can't accept a nuclear explosion cloud over America. No projected image of flags unfurling or Willie Nelson appearances could trump this high-concept imagery. The only thing lacking to make this agitprop complete would be the work of a muralista like Diego Rivera, but this administration doesn't hold much truck with the arts.

The other leg supporting this unprecedented march to war was the Pie in the Sky projections that spewed forth from the Department of Defense neocon mouths (They'll greet us with flowers...but how do you do that when the nearest FTD florist is far away?) The idea was that this would be a cakewalk which would rebuild America's military confidence post-Vietnam. Unfortunately, pie-in-the-sky does not equate to military planning, even when it is the gospel of the Secretary of Defense.

The two policies could be seen as a coordinated administration effort to cow the public on one hand, while calming them on the other, thereby grooming them for a tame acceptance of the war project. It was a shameful mob-mentality ruse to whip them into an attack frenzy with promises of easy victory.

Of course, those ploys give only two legs to the stool, namely, fear and hubris. No wonder it keeps tipping over.