... the more they stay insane.

Five years after George Bush's reckless decision to invade Iraq, that country is still in a state of violent chaos with no end in sight. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is active in many more countries now than it was five years ago. Osama bin Laden has never been found. The situation in Pakistan, already unstable when Bush's disastrous Iraq adventure began, is deteriorating even more rapidly.

And now, as the Bush administration is clearly laying the groundwork for war with Iran as well, those who counsel against it are being made to resign their positions, just as they were made to resign in the runup to the invasion and occupation of Iraq five years ago.

Sanity is a relative concept. But it's hard to argue that the Bush administration's irresponsible actions with regard to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran have made a bad situation any better in the region. It's difficult to defend those failed efforts as having achieved positive change.

Continuing to insist that wrong moves are right moves, wrong wars are right wars, and wrong policies are right policies in the face of all evidence seems to defy rational logic. It may not be insane, but it certainly makes no sense.

Of course, as the NY Times reports, that doesn't seem to stop George Bush from doing it anyway:

Citing Faith, Bush Defends War Actions

NASHVILLE — President Bush delivered a rousing defense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday, mixing faith and foreign policy as he told a group of Christian broadcasters that his policies in the region were predicated on the beliefs that freedom was a God-given right and “every human being bears the image of our maker.”

In a 42-minute speech to the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Mr. Bush called upon European allies to step up their efforts in Afghanistan, and conceded that recent security gains in Iraq “are tenuous, they’re reversible and they’re fragile.” Still, he insisted his troop buildup there is succeeding.

“The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency,” Mr. Bush said, to a standing ovation. “It is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision.”

[ ... ]

With the nation’s attention turned to the race to succeed Mr. Bush, White House aides say the speeches are a way for the president to frame the Iraq discussion, taking it back from the presidential candidates and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“It’s a way of resetting a little bit,” said one senior White House official. “There was a lot of talk about the surge, and then when the surge worked, it was like, ‘O.K., it worked,’ and then ’08 heated up and people sort of moved on. People need to be reminded of who we’re up against and what the stakes are.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Bush cast the stakes in stark terms, repeatedly invoking his desire to spread freedom and democracy, the central themes of his foreign policy. Those themes are hardly new to American presidents. Woodrow Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, while Ronald Reagan warned that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

But Mr. Bush, most experts agree, has taken the American freedom agenda to an entirely new level, by trying to foster democracy in nations that have not known it before, like Iraq and Afghanistan. Some historians have called it folly, and Mr. Bush conceded in an interview with conservative commentators last year that his critics believe he is “hopelessly idealistic.”

Still, he renewed his case on Tuesday, predicting that liberty will soon be on the march in the region.

“The effects of a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will reach beyond the borders of those two countries,” Mr. Bush said. “It will show others what’s possible. And we undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That’s why we’re doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

[ ... ]

Christian conservatives are an important component of Mr. Bush’s political base, and the broadcasters greeted him so enthusiastically on Tuesday that he laughed and called them “kind of a rambunctious crowd.”

He went on to praise the broadcasters for “standing up for our values, including the right to life,” and pledged to veto any legislation that would reinstitute the so-called “fairness doctrine,” which required broadcasters to give air time to opposing views.

The surge is working? Iraq and Afghanistan are free? Liberty is on the march? Thanks to George Bush's relentless pursuit of public policies that are so strongly based on his own personal beliefs, our brand of democracy is on the upswing all around the world, and a new era of Pax Americana is just over the horizon?

Does continuing to profess that highly personalized view of the world according to Bush really make rational sense when it's so sharply contrasted with the latest news from the very countries that he's claiming to have liberated from their archaic, chaotic chains?

Iraq Attacks Lower, but Steady, New Figures Show
BAGHDAD — Newly declassified statistics on the frequency of insurgent attacks in Iraq suggest that after major security gains last fall in the wake of an American troop increase, the conflict has drifted into a stalemate, with levels of violence remaining stubbornly constant from November 2007 through early 2008.

At Least 24 Killed as Two Bombs Strike Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Two powerful explosions in suicide attacks minutes apart rocked the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday, killing 24 people, the Interior Ministry said.

Telecom Tower Burned in West Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A telecommunications tower was set ablaze in western Afghanistan, a police official said Wednesday, the latest such attack since insurgents warned phone companies to shut down the towers at night.

Bomber Kills 5 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq’s Capital
BAGHDAD — A man walked up to a group of American soldiers on foot patrol in an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad on Monday and detonated the explosives-filled vest he was wearing, killing five soldiers and wounding three others and an Iraqi interpreter who accompanied them.

Bomb Hits Canadian Troops in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan Wednesday, killing a passing civilian and wounding one soldier.

Iran’s Religious Conservatives Expected to Solidify Power at Polls
TEHRAN — With eight days before Iran’s parliamentary elections, there is little doubt that religious conservatives will tighten their grip on power, pushing aside some of the veteran politicians who helped found the Islamic Republic 29 years ago.

Given such a sharp contrast between the world according to Bush and the world as it really exists in the Middle East, there clearly is little room in the former for those rational enough to insist on living in the latter. So this last news item hardly comes as a surprise in the context of the administration's constant threatening to add another unnecessary and unwinnable war to the mix at a time when we can least afford to act irrationally in the region:

Mideast Commander Retires After Irking Bosses

WASHINGTON — Adm. William J. Fallon, the commander of American forces in the Middle East whose outspoken public statements on Iran and other issues had seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

Admiral Fallon had rankled senior officials of the Bush administration in recent months with comments that emphasized diplomacy over conflict in dealing with Iran, that endorsed further troop withdrawals from Iraq beyond those already under way and that suggested the United States had taken its eye off the military mission in Afghanistan.

A senior administration official said that, taken together, the comments “left the perception he had a different foreign policy than the president.”

[ ... ]

Admiral Fallon, 63, took over the Central Command only a year ago, becoming the first admiral to become the top officer there. In a statement issued by his headquarters, he acknowledged that “recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president’s policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts” across his region.

In his statement, Admiral Fallon said, “I don’t believe there have been any differences about the objectives of our policy” in the Middle East. Indeed, many of his public statements have fallen within the range of views expressed by Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But there was no question that the admiral’s premature departure stemmed from what were perceived to be policy differences with the administration on Iran and Iraq, where his views competed with those of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, who is a favorite of the White House.

When rational worldviews are overridden by highly personal beliefs driving risky public policies, liberty is at risk and democracy is endangered. The Bush administration has consistently shown a distrust of dissent and a refusal to look beyond its own erroneous assumptions. That's what led them to lie us into a disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, and to look at the prospect of endless war in the Middle East as something sane people can believe to be an idea worth pursuing positively.

And that's what led Senator Kerry, one of the strongest proponents of a rational American foreign policy and a safer, saner approach to dealing with the dangerously unstable countries of the Middle East, to respond to the news of Admiral Fallon's premature resignation by pressing Congress to pose tough questions about whether Fallon was dismissed for voicing dissent against a rush to war with Iran:

Congress needs to determine immediately whether Admiral Fallon’s resignation is another example of truth tellers being forced to the sidelines in the Bush Administration. His departure must not clear the way for a rush to war with Iran.

Admiral Fallon has been a voice of common sense and truth in an Administration where candor has been in tragically short supply. He was correct in warning that we diverted resources from Afghanistan to fight a war of choice in Iraq, and correct in warning of the risks of a rush to war with Iran.

Over these last seven Bush years, we’ve seen those who toe the company line get rewarded and those who speak inconvenient truths get retired. We know that George Tenet got the Medal of Freedom for “slam dunk” evidence on non-existent WMD’s and General Shinseki got retired for telling the truth about the troop levels needed in Iraq.

The looming question now is whether the cost of Admiral Fallon’s candor was his job.