Madness

"This war must stop now, or it will radicalize the Muslim world, even those of us who are moderate today. It is just one step from there to a clash of civilizations." - Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who leads the world's most populous Muslim nation

That quote comes from Glenn Greenwald at Salon's War Room today:

Trends in the Middle East certainly appear to be headed -- quite precipitously -- in the opposite direction from the outcome President Bush says he is pursuing. Violence is exploding in region, not diminishing -- in Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon and, soon, quite possibly in Syria, Iran and beyond.

And anti-U.S. hostility is spreading even faster than the violence. The U.S. is perceived as an occupying force in Iraq and as the primary enabler of, if not an outright participant in, the Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon. The more war we wage in the Middle East, the more violence we create and the more anti-U.S. resentment we spawn, and thus the further away we move from the president's claimed objectives.

Amazingly, the neoconservatives’ response to the patent failure of their warmongering approach is to urge more of the same, just with more intensity and with less restraint. When the violence they urge produces results that are the opposite of what they claim they want to achieve, their solution is never to reconsider the approach but, instead, to urge more violence and more wars.