The cycle begins anew:

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq’s Shi’ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.

Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration’s original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran’s nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.

And this nonsense from a Harvard professor, no less. Kevin Drum is right. We’re going to hear a lot more of this crap as this one starts to ratchet up.. The clusterfuck that is Iraq has not in the least diminished these people’s capacity for wishful thinking.

Related: Jonathan points to the best comment section post ever, here. Brief excerpt to whet your appetite:

Speaking as a Canadian who is fond of judicious language, I feel that this situation deserves careful and measured thought. So let me just open with:

Is your entire f*cking country on crack??? Are all you Americans out of your cotton picking minds??? Are you completely freaking delusional? Homicidal? Psychotic? Have you lost any shred of a moral compass? WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRUTCH IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!!!!

Sitting here listening to some right winger on the radio tell me what Martin Luther King would have really believed if he’d lived, I am reminded of the time I attended a young Republicans conference ten years ago or so. I had lunch at a table of very pleasant young people, one of whom explained to me in all earnestness that her father had been in law enforcement and had the inside story — the wiretapping and harassment of MLK wasn’t due to any disagreement anyone had with his message, it was due to the fact that outside agitators followed him around and caused all sorts of trouble. Law enforcement was simply trying to protect Dr. King.

Basically, Republicans will fight social progress tooth and nail until it becomes inevitable, then try to claim credit for it. In fifty years, when this nation inevitably has a single-payer health care system, health savings accounts will be long forgotten, and Sean Hannity’s progeny will be braincasting cherry-picked facts which “prove” that the Republican party supported single payer from the very start.

Anyway, if MLK had lived, do you really think the Republican party would embrace him quite so wholeheartedly? Imagine him as a guest on Hannity’s radio show:

HANNITY: Welcome to the show, Reverend. You’ve said some pretty outrageous things about the war in Iraq. Do you think America is a force for good in the world or for evil?

KING: Well, Sean, I think it’s more complicated than that–

HANNITY: Good or evil?? Which is it, Dr. King? Good–or EVIL?

KING: Sean, I–

HANNITY: I’m not going to let you change the subject! This is MY show! Now answer the question — is America good or evil?

KING: Sean, you can’t just–

HANNITY (to engineer): Pot him down — cut his mic. With all due respect, Reverend, I’m not going to let you dodge the question. Why won’t you just admit that you hate America? Why don’t you have the decency to admit that you hate this country and everything we stand for?

Etc., etc.

Update: a reader sends a link to this clip from last night’s Boondocks, with pretty much the same riff. (Just to be clear, I didn’t see the show — I was busy watching Jack Bauer’s latest exploits. That guy sure gets a lot done in the space of an hour, doesn’t he?)

…Rick Perlstein emails:

And wouldn’t you know it, at the time they blamed King for his own assassination.

Reagan after the King assassination: it was just the sort of “great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they’d break.”

Strom Thurmond: “We are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case.”

… Dennis Perrin is working the same beat:

As the British Labour leader Aneurin Bevan put it, reaction loves to wear the medals of its defeats; and you cannot move far in rightwing bloggoland without seeing puffy chests festooned with plastic medals and gaudy ribbon. Judging from some of the reactionary takes on King, you’d think that the late Civil Rights leader was always celebrated as a fine fellow, a decent American, and if the Heritage Foundation is to be believed, a conservative who would, had he lived, doubtless stump for the likes of Bush/Cheney. This is a collective effort of ideological ass-covering. The National Review at the time not only was hostile to King, it editorially supported state’s rights in the South when Civil Rights workers were being beaten and murdered. To much of the American right of the 1950s-60s, King was a commie race-mixing agitator who sought to undermine if not destroy the American system. And when King began speaking out against the Vietnam War and the capitalist assault on the poor, the Liberal Media, which patted King’s head after Selma, turned decidedly against him.