God Save the US From Another Four Years of Dogmatic Certainity

Besides their enthusiasm for the Iraq War, and their willingness to apparently go to war with Iran, there is something else that George W. Bush and John McCain have in common. Both men share an absolute, dogmatic certainty that they are right, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

Here is a recent quote from John McCain about Iraq, as contained in a story by the Associated Press: "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says.I've seen the facts on the ground." Now, of course, what McCain has seen on the ground is what the American military wanted him to see. So we question whether McCain is getting an objective view of what is happening "on the ground" no matter what he says.

Besides the fact that we wonder about the objectivity of what he was shown in Iraq, there is also the issue that McCain sees what he wants to see. Remember when he came back from Iraq the last time he was there and pronounced that a marketplace where he had walked wearing a bullet-proof vest, accompanied by soldiers, and protected by helicopters flying overhead showed the progress we were making in Iraq? Apparently it never dawned on McCain that his vaunted trip didn't show anything other than the American military could keep a United States Senator on a planned photo-op.

This conviction that they are right, no matter what the evidence, is why Bush and McCain agree on Iraq. It is also why the election of McCain would be a disaster for the United States. We would find ourselves trapped for another four years in Iraq, pouring lives and money down a sandy rat-hole while Osama bin Laden watches us bleed like the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan.