Not one, but TWO LIHOPS in 2001

Please consider the following:

Remember how Israel/Palestine exploded into violence throughout the spring and summer of 2001? It was horrific -- people were dying there daily, sometimes a dozen at a time. I watched it unfold with growing horror, completely confounded by the complete silence of the Bush administration as these events unfolded. There were no statements, there were no actions taken to have any part in the growing violence there.

According to Suskind, Paul O'Neill says that there were two topics in the first Cabinet meeting -- Israel and Iraq.

On Israel, Bush said it was time for the US to disengage from the conflict in Israel Palestine. He said that he had a good feeling about Sharon, and that maybe it was a good thing for Israel to show determined force against the Palestinians, and force some sort of end of things there. (Powell argued against this, but Bush rejected his analysis).

Think about it.
) By officially disengaging from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and allowing violence to break out there horrifically in the summer of 2001, Bush was calculatedly allowing chaos there in order to have the American people so sickened by what was going on there that they would be willing to give a green light to the harsh military solution Sharon was proposing to pacify the Palestinians once and for all.
NOW HEAR THIS: Bush LET Israel explode into horrific violence in 2001. He did NOTHING to stop it. Powell had urged him to intervene, but he refused. He LET it happen.

On the LIHOP we're more familiar with
2) He *knew* that America would not get behind a military program as ambitious and costly as the PNAC program to transform the Middle East, unless SOMETHING happened that would make Americans feel personally vulnerable. Therfore, in my humble opinion, he KNEW those Al Qaeda sons of bitches were planning something in America, and he let it happen. He needed it to happen. And did.

As a result of the revelations by Clarke and Suskind/O'Neill, Bush has HAD to reveal in recent days that he was already engaged in designing a "comprehensive plan to eradicate terror for ever. This, we know, is the PNAC program.

I believe that Bush's official policy of disengagement from Israel, which resulted in horrific violence, was intentional, and that it was only part of the strategy to begin implementing the PNAC plan that he entered office intending to execute.

as a result of his "disengagement". That was one of the first things he did that made me really angry.

the 2nd LIHOP, but I kind of agree with you on the 1st one. It's really awful how he disengaged like that. Granted, Arafat should have negotiated in good faith while Clinton was still in office.

LIHOP works for me -- it explains a lot, but as you say, it is a theory, and has not been proven

Incompetence, short-sightedness, pigheaded refusal to deal pragmatically with reality, misplaced focus and priorities -- I believe these also offer a plausible explanation.

i guess i just find the 2nd option more likely. last night's press conference only made it seem more likely to me.

Bush chose as his advisors people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Frum etc.

He had also been tutored by them on world affairs and global policy starting in 1998, when he began to understand he as destined to be President. I believe that they molded his world view.

This leads me to believe that he entered office with a policy that was based on the PNAC program to transform the Middle East by means of military operations.

That it has failed miserably, and is doomed to fail ultimately, indicates that there is a lot of ideologically driven stupidity and incompetence to go around.

But of course -- it could be that there was no LIHOP, and that Sept 11 was the result of bungling, and that it was not part of a plan, but was integrated into the previous PNAC program. Those guys were DROOLIING in the aftermath of Sept 11, because they saw the fallen towers as their opening to their opportunity to initiate their program of radical transformation.

your last paragraph is the crux of the issue. It will have to be proven that it was more than bungling before most people will be convinced. And so far, most of the evidence is extremely circumstantial or of the tin foil hat variety.

refusal to deal pragmatically with reality, and misplaced focus and priorities amount to some form of dereliction of duty, some form of nonfeasance, if not misfeasance? Luckily were a fair election held today, the opposition just might have a slim chance to make it close enough for the Supreme Court to once more select the winner.

Anyone with half a brain, (I'm hoping that includes Bush) knew Sharon had a lot to be bitter about, and would take a "military" solution.

Sharon once stood aside for a massacre himself, he knew what he was getting permission for.

And BushCo intended to use Israel's hardline example to justify their own longterm plans.

The thing with this kind of killing, there's no way to call it even and let's go home when home is the argument in the first place. Ask Ireland. And the corpses just pile deeper and higher and minds that might have been malleable harden to cement.

Bush could have stopped this one, too.

Well, that's just ducky.

After decades of unceasing, grinding violence and despair, a political solution to the Irish problem was worked out by all parties during the Clinton administration. It has held for years.

I think it would be prudent for people to have a look at those Irish negotiations, and try and analyze what they did right, and apply it to the Middle east and elsewhere.