Psychopathic Instability

Atrios links to this post from Josh, and gets close to the truth of the matter, but not quite.

Our country is being run by psychopaths. I don't know what to do about that.

That part is right. These guys are psychopaths.

Here's what Josh says to inspire this observation:

The world has sat by for six years and let Hizbullah's anamolous position in south Lebanon be Israel's problem. Whether their response was wise or just, I'll set aside for the moment. It's not about totalitarianism or Afghanistan or Iraq, at least not in an operational sense, or dingbat fantasies about Freedom and Terror. But there do appear to be forces in Washington -- seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade -- who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve. Condi's mindless 'birth pangs' remark wasn't just a gaffe -- or perhaps it was a gaffe in the Kinsleyan sense of inopportunely saying what you really think. That seems to be the thinking -- transformation through destabilization.

Josh's theory is that the neo-con program is to create turmoil and anarchy in the Middle East by destabilizing pretty much every regime that's not Israel, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, and by virtue of superior firepower, impose the neo-con vision.

But Atrios is right. These guys really are psychopaths. The fact is they really don't give a shit about how things actually end up in the Middle East. All they care about is power. The program is to create enough fear in the minds of the American electorate that we keep returning them to power.

All those casualties in the Middle East? Civilian, military, our side, their side?

Collateral damage to the cause of maintaining the right wing power base.