As soon as the tragedy of 9/11 befell us, George Bush and his mindless minions hit the ground running… towards the long-awaited neocon dream of war with Iraq. Unfortunately, instead of creating a Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East, they jumped head-first into a large vat of concrete. The feeling of stuckness is profound. In today’s Iraq, if our troops clear out an area, it is replenished with insurgents by the following week. We can’t leave (or so we are told), because the civil war will become a regional conflagration. We can’t increase our numbers, because our military is already dangerously depleted. Our very presence helps to rationalize and incite the global anti-American jihad and scourge of terrorism we are there to destroy. We are caught in the middle of a civil war, trying to protect both sides from each other, while they each attack us with abandon.
And yet, there are beginning to be some cracks in the concrete. We are hearing more and more voices talking about options other than this fruitless push to an illusory victory. Some Democrats speak of redeployment to neighboring friendly nations; others offer a plan for dividing Iraq into three municipalities with shared oil wealth. Even Senator John Warner, the powerful head of the Armed Services Committee, has recently stated that we must change direction if things do not significantly improve in the next three months.
This forward movement, downshifting to a deadlocked standstill, and then slowly switching into a retreat mode is described in the US chart by the position of progressed Mars. Mars is the planet of war and of aggressive, outward-directed, dynamic energy that drives through obstacles. In the US chart, progressed Mars has been slowing down in the past few years, reaching its point of total immobility, known as a planetary station, in July 2006, before changing direction and beginning a “retrograde” journey that will continue for the next eighty years. (Because astrology is geocentric, a planet may appear to move backwards in the sky when viewed from Earth, although it is in reality continuing the steady forward movement on its axis around the Sun.)
In these early years, the progressed retrograde movement of Mars will be incremental, gaining momentum only slowly over the years. Between July 2006 and July 2007, for example, the apparently backward movement of Mars will only amount to 23 minutes, not even half of a degree. Nonetheless, it is the beginning of a significant shift. For the US, it is likely to bring a more cautious military posture and possibly a less dynamic and less assertive foreign policy for years to come. It may also indicate more reflection and inwardness, rather than a tendency to act precipitously.
At the moment, however, we are in a multi-year transformation phase that reflects the changing status of progressed Mars. A more circumspect foreign policy is not likely to begin until Bush is out of office, although the mood of the country is clearly already shifting. Unfortunately, planetary indications for 2007 and 2008 suggest a strong potential for the aggressive impulses of Mars to be unleashed. Progressed US Mars currently sits at 18Libra42, and it is around this degree, as well as around 18 degrees of the mutable signs, that there will be considerable stimulation in 2007 and early 2008.
The first thing to note is that during May and June 2007, Uranus will make a station at 18Pisces41.5, a mere 32 minutes from an exact quincunx to US progressed Mars (18Libra42). It is possible that this transit will shake up the stagnant status quo in Iraq due to some unexpected event, either there or elsewhere, igniting momentum in a new direction. Secondly, in George Bush’s chart beginning in April 2007, his progressed Mars will move into a conjunction with his natal Jupiter (18Libra08), which will last through November 2008. This suggests a newly energized Bush, more willing to act aggressively and perhaps recklessly during his final eighteen months in office.
This already energetic, ambitious, and expansive progressed Mars/natal Jupiter (18 Libra) in Bush’s chart will receive a huge boost of agitation and ferocity from transiting Uranus (18 Pisces) in late April and May 2007, late June and July 2007 and February 2008, adding a spirit of unilateralism and defiance to Bush’s attitude. It is not hard to imagine him being quite aggressive during this period on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts. Moreover, Bush’s progressed Mars (18 Libra) will be in an increasingly tight conjunction with the US progressed Mars (18Libra40) from March 2008 through January 2009 and beyond, indicating a strong activation of the US progressed war planet by the Commander-in-chief, with potentially military consequences. Further evidence of an increased war stance by the US in 2008 is found in the Uranus square to the US natal Mars (21Gemini23) from April 2008 through February 2009.
In the more immediate future, the planets of 2007 suggest that the Bush administration will be hit by some very dramatic events beginning somewhere between mid-April and mid-May 2007 that rouse it into a very belligerent stance, likely a prelude to the increasingly military momentum described above that may begin as early as April 2007 and is likely to escalate sharply in the last year of Bush’s term. The very same Uranus transit (18 Pisces) that will be stimulating Bush’s progressed Mars/natal Jupiter conjunction (18Libra08) will be squaring the Inaugural chart Mars (18Sagittarius01). This transit will be quite potent from April 18 through August 5, 2007 and then repeat in February 2008. It will bring sudden, transformative events that upset and anger the Bush administration and rouse it to bold and possibly reckless action. It is worth noting that Dick Cheney’s Mars, 17Sagittarius46, will also be agitated by this transit, suggesting that he too will be very involved, angry, and aggressive during this same period.
Although the possibility of military encounters and belligerent interactions with foreign powers is always a concern with such potent aspects manifested through an administration that has little other repertoire, we cannot also rule out a clash with a newly-aroused Congress, quite possibly the Senate, in 2007. In addition, the very afflicted solar eclipse of March 18, 2007, on the Ascendant in Tehran, gives us an indication that Iran will be facing something very dangerous and difficult in the 2007/early 2008 period. There is no way of knowing how exactly events will unfold, but the indications are powerful that upsetting, unexpected, and dangerous circumstances will begin to develop in the spring of 2007 that are likely to involve a combative and bellicose Bush administration, a newly aroused and energetic Congress, and quite possibly a targeted Iran. The more circumspect shift implied by the US progressed Mars is at present more of a promise than a reality. The tangled mess created by the incompetence and ineptitude of the current administration is setting the stage for a major change in the direction of US policies only hinted at in the present.
