The hardest thing about being smart

One of my favorite movies is Bandits (2001). The reason why I like it so much is because all of the main characters in the movie have some kind of personality disorder and its funny. My favorite line from the movie is when Billy Bob Thorton says: "The hardest thing about being smart is that you pretty much know what is going to happen next". You'll have to watch the movie to see what that's about because I want to talk about something else.

You would hope that the people in charge of national defense would be smart enough to predict to a reasonable extent what will happen if they take a certain course of action. Others were smart enough to predict that Iraq would descend into civil war if Saddam Hussein was removed from power but Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were not. Bush also predicts that if we don't fight the terroists over there we will have to fight them on US soil. I am not sure if Bush uses that as a scare tactic to justify the occupation, if he really believes it, or both. But I think he is wrong.

However, the longer the US stays in Iraq, breaking down doors, raping women, torturing prisoners and killing civilians (commonly called collateral damage) the more terrorists we will make and the more likely that Bush will be right.