When President Bush was caught on tape saying to Tony Blair, “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over”, more than a few progressives said to themselves, “Well that’s a trenchant analysis of the situation, Sherlock.” And more than a few conservatives said, “Damn straight”—or as Michelle Malkin put it, “Sometimes, profanity is called for.” Not that in mid-2006 anyone needed more proof that Bush is, depending on your perspective, either a simpleton or an admirably forthright straight talker who cuts to the chase. But as more and more evidence of the administration’s incompetence and hubris is revealed, we are presented with more proof that under George W. Bush, U.S. policies are governed by a strange amalgam of impulse and fantasy.
Given that we’re saddled until 1.20.09 with a President and and an Administration with a penchant for adjusting the “facts” to fit preconceived notions, “seat of the pants” leadership seems very much in character. Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader seems oddly detached from the deliberative decision-making process that characterized the Clinton years, as if thinking and sober reflection were signs of weakness.
Real Presidents DO, they don’t PONDER….
Sadly, the ones paying for this aggressively anti-intellectual leadership style are our men and women in uniform, too many of whom are coming home in boxes because Our Glorious and Benevolent Leaders cannot be bothered to make decisions based on facts on the ground. “What Would Jesus Do?” seems a damn poor basis for making policy decisions, but it seems to be this Administration’s modus operandi. The neo-Conservative world view is too often a fixed and immutable commodity, so when reality doesn’t quite measure up…well, you just change the reality, and before you know it, you’re looking like a @#$!%^& genius. Hey, when you represent “God’s Own Party”, facts are fungible.
As Newsweek told us this week, Bush “still trusts his gut to tell him what’s right, and he still expects others to follow his lead.” One might have thought Bush would have learned by now to view the proclamations of his gut with some suspicion—but then, that would be asking the president to rely on evidence and experience to make conclusions.
And it isn’t only friendly reporters like those at Newsweek who have noted the way policy is dictated by The Decider’s intestinal rumblings. One of the many disturbing pictures that emerges from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is the way Bush’s preference for making decisions not on the basis of facts and analysis but on his “gut” meshed so perfectly with Dick Cheney’s desire not to let facts and analysis get in the way of his visions of empire. The two were perfect partners, and when 9/11 happened, it was like the pins of a combination lock clicking securely into place in Bush’s mind. Everything made sense—there are evildoers out there, and his divinely appointed mission is to smite them. (If you’ve wondered why Bush has such affection for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, all you need to know is that at their first meeting, Koizumi said Bush reminded him of Gary Cooper.)
Or John Wayne. It’s so hard to keep track sometimes, but the end result is still the same. What we’ve ended up with is five-plus years of Cowboy Diplomacy, in which bold, brash statements like “Bring it on!”, or, “If you’re not with us, your with the terrorists!” pass for policy initiatives. Testosterone and muscular, End Times Christianity means that the Administration doesn’t play well with others.
The problem here is that saber-rattling as a means of forcing other, smaller countries to bend to your will isn’t exactly a great way to make friends and create strong, cohesive alliances. In the case of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader, “trusting your gut” too often is code for massaging available facts to fit preconceived notions and talking points on the neo-Conservative agenda. It’s a helluva way to run a railroad, not to mention the government of the most powerful nation in the world.
Is it any wonder why so many countries around the world hate America and everything we stand for? Being the biggest kid on the block is never a prescription for popularity, but the Clinton years never saw us so roundly and consistently despised around the world. Then again, when your answer to virtually every international issue is to threaten the use of American military might, you can’t really expect to be the life of the party, can you?
A few days ago William Kristol, who is as responsible as anyone outside the Bush administration for the neocon dream of creating an empire in the Middle East—which has become the now-familiar nightmare—made clear his preference for military action against Iran, sooner rather than later. And not only that, once we start dropping bombs, the Iranian people will do their part and rise up to overthrow their government. “The right use of targeted military force,” Kristol told Fox News, “could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.”
That Kristol could make such a prediction without getting laughed out of Washington, never to be invited on television again, tells us something about the miasma of inanity and insanity that envelopes our politics like a fog. Being wrong—or being an outright fool, or being possessed of not a shred of morality, for that matter—carries no cost. Only being “weak”—that is, insufficiently enthusiastic about spilling others’ blood—will earn you the contempt of the Washington establishment.
Why? Because that establishment, both governmental and journalistic, is ruled by weenies. They burn to show that they’re real men, that they’re tough and strong and mean, that they don’t cower from a fight, that they’re the ones who get going when the going gets tough. Washington is an arena of institutional and ideological competition, but it is also a throbbing mass of insecurities.
And it’s apparently populated by men trying to compensate for being insufficiently endowed….
We sometimes see it as ironic that those calling for the most bellicose foreign policy are almost invariably those both in and out of government, like Bush and Cheney and Gingrich and DeLay and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, who never served in the military and never got within a thousand miles of combat. But it is not ironic at all; in fact, it is absolutely predictable. Combine a personal history devoid of evidence that one’s manliness has been tested (let alone proven) with an ideology inclined to divide the world into enemies and friends, and you have a recipe for frantic muscle-flexing.
When government is controlled by spineless weenies with various shades of a Gary Cooper complex, you end up with leaders looking for the moral equivalent of a 97-lb. weakling whose face you can kick sand into. What would Jesus do? He’d blow $#!& up and take names. This would certainly explain Iraq…and perhaps before long Iran and North Korea.
Real leaders don’t waste time worrying about what other countries think. They shoot first and ask questions later. THEN they wonder why everyone hates us….
STILL GLAD YOU VOTED REPUBLICAN??
