quasify

I wouldn’t be the least bit sad if Dick Cheney dropped dead of a heart attack or OD’d with a stripper in his lap, but I’m extremely glad the vice-president wasn’t hurt in the assassination attempt in Bagram. The last thing we need is another world-wide demonstration of violence begetting regime change. Given our country’s recent behavior, we’ve been fortunate to have only home-grown assassins knocking off our leaders; the precedent this would have set had it been successful would have been destabilizing to an extreme.

That said, this type of episode can only feed the anger and paranoia that fuels the heart of the Bush administration. Given their track record of misdirected responses, this attack (claimed by the Taliban) will likely be co-opted and used to justify an unrelated aggression on our part. It remains to be seen if we’ll attack Iran, but if we do I can’t help but believe this episode will be part of the internal motivation for the VP.