God help the United States of America.
An essay (all right, a rant!) responding to a friend's response to Bush's $87 Billion Speech.
Sarah, your comment reminds me of Mencken's "God protects children, drunks, fools, and The United States of America." But I'm afraid the earliest your prayer may be answered is in a little over a year.
In the meantime, here's my rant, from a guy who votes for the losing candidate more often than not:
Being something of a curmudgeonly radical centrist, I believe the situation -- the level of discomfort for Americans -- will have to get even more painful before action is taken to ameliorate it.
My feeling about the Iraq mess is this: Overall the invasion was probably the right thing to do for reasons I won't go into right now. But the Bush administration did it for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, under the wrong auspices, with no understanding of the cost or who would pay for it, and with no people with identified competencies available to them in the case of the contingency we see there today.
J'accuse. But I accuse the Bush administration (particularly the Dr. Strangeloves of the Preemption Cabal) of a botched and bungled job, of sheer gross multiple incompetence and, worse, a triple foolishness.
The competence that Bush I's administration showed in lining up international support was nowhere to be seen in Dubya's run-up to the war: quite the opposite, for international comity was smashed utterly.
Another incompetence seems to grow every week that Saddam Hussein and the instrumental Ba'ath Party leaders aren't caught or otherwise accounted for.
Still another, earlier, incompetence becomes more painfully obvious every month that Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen aren't caught or effectively dealt with.
And, finally, they have evinced total incompetence in terms of symbols and propaganda: No example has been made. We have no Hitler dead in his bunker, no Mussolini hung by his heels. No trials. No closure. No visible progress in enhancing American security. Au contraire, mon frere, we've ended up with millions of people around the world thinking that these murderous mafioso neofascist theocratic thugs are bloody heroes.
It was foolishness to fail to recognize -- or if it was recognized -- to fail to even attempt to rectify any of the above incompetences before the Iraq invasion or belatedly even now.
It has been foolish to impose secrecy and exclusiveness in the operations of the administration: it has condemned us to use only a small fraction of the intellectual resources this country has available, and so constricts our ability to find different approaches to solve problems.
And finally, it was hideously foolish to close one's eyes to how the limitations of our people would get us into such a sticky situation.
To Bush I ask this question: If you didn't even care to know how to do the whole job right, why did you start it in the first place?
But now our work is cut out for us Americans. I regard the Bush administration's continued reticence to account for the cost of our adventures as irresponsible. (I take the reasons for that reticence as a combination of incompetence, philosophical folly and perhaps just selfish meanness on the part of their supporters.) It is sad, as we are there, and now need to properly rebuild Iraq on our own hook before we leave, the amounts are probably justifiable: it costs lots of money to stabilize a fractured society.
Sarah, it's not the -- what? -- $87 billion that bothers me. Rather, the obscure and constrained budgeting process of the Bushies has us entering a new Age of Shoddy. So we end up failing, and failing, and failing again, because of the administration's innate hatred of spending money -- even if it is necessary -- and especially in the amounts needed to do it right. So, is $87 billion this year really enough? Will it be $187 billion next year because half-hearted reconstruction didn't go anywhere the first year? ... and how much the next year? ... and the next? Talk about voodoo economics!
Meanwhile, back at home, the steady demolition of the American estate -- as we've known it pretty much since WWII -- continues apace. Diversions of money from social and physical infrastructure; encouragement of xenophobia (of both strange peoples and strange religions); barriers to commerce, trade and productivity through curtailment of human rights; growth of a non-productive, quarrelling bureaucracy; secrecy and exclusive politics.
I do not like any of this at all. I have no immediate ready solution for this wide-open Pandora's Box, except Hope that in the future something positive eventually can be built on the accumulating rubble.
The one comfort I do think might rescue the situation abroad is the knowledge that the soldiers (particularly the Reserve and National Guard soldiers) over there in Iraq do vote. And even more, they do have a great deal of political influence back home.
But it took 50,000 soldiers killed in Vietnam to change foreign policy, over two administrations, in the late 60's and early 70's. Will it take that many dead Johnnies and the continuing multi-year economic drain due to the Iraq/Iran/North Korea/Terrorism Wars before we even consider the added ways in which we can address the problem of the Alliance of cruel greed with deadly fanaticism?
Sarah, your comment reminds me of Mencken's "God protects children, drunks, fools, and The United States of America." But I'm afraid the earliest your prayer may be answered is in a little over a year.
In the meantime, here's my rant, from a guy who votes for the losing candidate more often than not:
Being something of a curmudgeonly radical centrist, I believe the situation -- the level of discomfort for Americans -- will have to get even more painful before action is taken to ameliorate it.
My feeling about the Iraq mess is this: Overall the invasion was probably the right thing to do for reasons I won't go into right now. But the Bush administration did it for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, under the wrong auspices, with no understanding of the cost or who would pay for it, and with no people with identified competencies available to them in the case of the contingency we see there today.
J'accuse. But I accuse the Bush administration (particularly the Dr. Strangeloves of the Preemption Cabal) of a botched and bungled job, of sheer gross multiple incompetence and, worse, a triple foolishness.
The competence that Bush I's administration showed in lining up international support was nowhere to be seen in Dubya's run-up to the war: quite the opposite, for international comity was smashed utterly.
Another incompetence seems to grow every week that Saddam Hussein and the instrumental Ba'ath Party leaders aren't caught or otherwise accounted for.
Still another, earlier, incompetence becomes more painfully obvious every month that Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen aren't caught or effectively dealt with.
And, finally, they have evinced total incompetence in terms of symbols and propaganda: No example has been made. We have no Hitler dead in his bunker, no Mussolini hung by his heels. No trials. No closure. No visible progress in enhancing American security. Au contraire, mon frere, we've ended up with millions of people around the world thinking that these murderous mafioso neofascist theocratic thugs are bloody heroes.
It was foolishness to fail to recognize -- or if it was recognized -- to fail to even attempt to rectify any of the above incompetences before the Iraq invasion or belatedly even now.
It has been foolish to impose secrecy and exclusiveness in the operations of the administration: it has condemned us to use only a small fraction of the intellectual resources this country has available, and so constricts our ability to find different approaches to solve problems.
And finally, it was hideously foolish to close one's eyes to how the limitations of our people would get us into such a sticky situation.
To Bush I ask this question: If you didn't even care to know how to do the whole job right, why did you start it in the first place?
But now our work is cut out for us Americans. I regard the Bush administration's continued reticence to account for the cost of our adventures as irresponsible. (I take the reasons for that reticence as a combination of incompetence, philosophical folly and perhaps just selfish meanness on the part of their supporters.) It is sad, as we are there, and now need to properly rebuild Iraq on our own hook before we leave, the amounts are probably justifiable: it costs lots of money to stabilize a fractured society.
Sarah, it's not the -- what? -- $87 billion that bothers me. Rather, the obscure and constrained budgeting process of the Bushies has us entering a new Age of Shoddy. So we end up failing, and failing, and failing again, because of the administration's innate hatred of spending money -- even if it is necessary -- and especially in the amounts needed to do it right. So, is $87 billion this year really enough? Will it be $187 billion next year because half-hearted reconstruction didn't go anywhere the first year? ... and how much the next year? ... and the next? Talk about voodoo economics!
Meanwhile, back at home, the steady demolition of the American estate -- as we've known it pretty much since WWII -- continues apace. Diversions of money from social and physical infrastructure; encouragement of xenophobia (of both strange peoples and strange religions); barriers to commerce, trade and productivity through curtailment of human rights; growth of a non-productive, quarrelling bureaucracy; secrecy and exclusive politics.
I do not like any of this at all. I have no immediate ready solution for this wide-open Pandora's Box, except Hope that in the future something positive eventually can be built on the accumulating rubble.
The one comfort I do think might rescue the situation abroad is the knowledge that the soldiers (particularly the Reserve and National Guard soldiers) over there in Iraq do vote. And even more, they do have a great deal of political influence back home.
But it took 50,000 soldiers killed in Vietnam to change foreign policy, over two administrations, in the late 60's and early 70's. Will it take that many dead Johnnies and the continuing multi-year economic drain due to the Iraq/Iran/North Korea/Terrorism Wars before we even consider the added ways in which we can address the problem of the Alliance of cruel greed with deadly fanaticism?