October surprise?

Gary Hart has come to the conclusion that part of Karl Rove's October "surprise" will be an attack on Iran:

It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.

Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times. And we do not have a government much concerned with our national character. If anything, our current Administration is out to remake our national character into something it has never been.

… It does not involve much imagination to understand the timing. The U.S. is poised to adopt a Congressional regime change of its own in November. A political strategy totally based on fear can offer few other options to prevent this. Besides, occupation by Democrats of even one house of Congress in January would make this scheme more difficult (one would certainly hope).

Further, time for super-power military conquest may be running short in the emerging age of fourth generation warfare. "...the age of Western military ascendancy is coming to an end." ("No Win," Andrew Bacevich, The Boston Globe, August 27, 2006).

The consequences? The sunny neoconservatives whose goal has been to become the neo-imperial Middle Eastern power all along will forcast few. But prudent leaders calculate all the risks, and they are historic.

These include: violent reaction throughout the Islamic world; a dramatic increase in jihadist attacks in European capitals and the U.S.; radicalization of Islamic youth behind a new generation of jihadist leaders; consolidation of support for Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and a rapidly spreading malignant network; escalating expansion of anti-American sentiment throughout the world, including the democratic world; and the formation of WWIII battle lines between the U.S. and the Arab and Islamic worlds.

In more rational times, including at the height of the Cold War, bizarre actions such as unilateral, unprovoked, preventive war are dismissed by thoughtful, seasoned, experienced men and women as mad. But those qualities do not characterize our current leadership.

For a divinely guided president who imagines himself to be a latter day Winston Churchill (albeit lacking the ability to formulate intelligent sentences), and who professedly does not care about public opinion at home or abroad, anything is possible, and dwindling days in power may be seen as making the most apocalyptic actions necessary.

The second October "surprise" may well be that Osama is dead. Steve Soto thinks that Bush may already have known this:

Remember Bush's Freudian slip yesterday in his appearance with Musharraf, when he said "if" we find Bin Laden, and then he corrected himself to say "when"? (Both the Times and the Post have now scrubbed the quote from their web stories) We now may know why.

Bin Laden may have died in late August, in Waziristan, from typhoid, just before the Bush Administration encouraged Musharraf to negotiate truces with the local tribesmen that in effect removed the pressure from Al Qaeda.

The Reuters story today has the somewhat humorous dismissal of this possibility by a western diplomat in Saudi Arabia, on the grounds that if the Saudi intelligence services had this information as speculated, they would have given that information immediately to the Bush Administration rather than the French intelligence service. The French government has yet to deny that their intelligence service has in fact received this information from the Saudis.

So we heard one tough speech from Bush earlier that resurrected Bin Laden just in time for another election. Then suddenly, about the time this information could have made its way secretly to the Americans from the Saudis, Bush stops talking about Bin Laden when he realizes he may never get the guy now and claim credit for doing so. And then yesterday, the slip about "if" we get him.

There's certainly a bit of reading between the lines in that one, but we know the Bush crowd is not beyond keeping something like this secret until the right moment to "introduce the new product." That's why I fear the Democrats relying too much on the "why haven't you caught bin Laden?" tactic. Bush is likely to say, "But I did. Look here is his dead body."