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Leave aside the growing doubts and dissent about Iraq, the explosive problem facing Bush is how to manage the emotional distress of his bellicose supporters. The White House propaganda performed brilliantly during the run-up to war, producing varying rationales for invasion that floated past us like soap bubbles (as each bubble popped, another came along to replace it). But, now that Americans are getting randomly shot and maimed, domestic opinion about the nature of this "triumph" is taking on a darker flavor, including a thirst for vengeance.
On C-Span radio the other morning, I heard a Vietnam combat veteran earnestly worrying that our troops in Iraq might be "hand-cuffed." He had heard a rumor about rubber bullets that upset him. Another caller made the point more angrily "For every American who gets killed, they should take 20 Iraquians (his term) and hang them from lamp posts." This, he explained, is how the Klingons from Star Trek would handle it.
Then I got an email from a right-wing friend, a learned man with a Ph.D. in history: "We need a tough-minded Patton or MacArthur in full dress uniform...Follow the Roman rule: haul those people off in slavery and burn down the country...For every ten Americans slaughtered, burn down whole villages."
If it takes hold in the right wing blogosphere, then we can officially declare the humanitarian excuses for invasion as null and void. While in my undisclosed location I haven´t had much desire to waste my time reading the latest nonsense coming from all the blogs orbiting planet Instahack, so please bring anything along these lines to my attention.