The real Bush legacy (not the one he imagines) can be summed up in one word: Squandered.
At the beginning of Bush's first term, the United States had a balanced budget, moderate debt, healthy and well-equipped armed forces, and a dominant leadership position in the world community. And, after the 9/11 attacks, there was unity within the United States and sympathy from abroad.
What did Bush do with all those assets? He squandered them.
Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy has driven up our national debt to record levels.
The invasion of Iraq and the resulting pressure on our armed forces (while also trying to fight a ground war in Afghanistan) has stretched our military to the breaking point and has depleted so much equipment and morale that it would take years to recover even if the war ended tomorrow.
Our continuing use of violence and threats of violence as a solution to all problems, both on an individual level (Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons, "extraordinary rendition," and the use of what the world considers torture) and a national level (Bush now talks openly of using military power against Iran) has completely negated whatever international goodwill that existed after 9/11, and has undermined our role as a moral and diplomatic world leader.
And, the unity that arose after 9/11 was effectively killed by the realization that we'd been manipulated at best (lied to at worst) in Bush's rush to invade Iraq.
Now we're facing real threats, both in a looming recession and continuing fall in the value of the dollar, and in the rise of the power of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we've got nothing to fall back on. Bush squandered the economic and military resources we should have kept for emergencies.
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Friday, January 18, 2008
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
A "Hail Mary" Legacy
George W. Bush is obsessed with his "legacy." Wildly unpopular in the present, he hopes for some respect in the future, despite the many obvious failures of his administration.
Now, with less than 14 months to go in his second term as President, Bush has a new goal: Peace in the Mideast.
No, not Iraq. He's already given up on that one. The Israeli-Palestinian part of the Mideast.
What else are we to make of the Arab-Israeli conference in Annapolis?
Down a lot of points, and deep in his own territory, Bush is going to throw a long one and hope it gets caught by someone.
Now, with less than 14 months to go in his second term as President, Bush has a new goal: Peace in the Mideast.
No, not Iraq. He's already given up on that one. The Israeli-Palestinian part of the Mideast.
What else are we to make of the Arab-Israeli conference in Annapolis?
Down a lot of points, and deep in his own territory, Bush is going to throw a long one and hope it gets caught by someone.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Fort Massacre: Iraq
The movie Fort Massacre (1958), starring Joel McCrea, is usually described as a run-of-the-mill western, but there is a psychological subplot that impressed me when I saw the movie many years ago, and that haunts me still.
Briefly, the movie is about a small group of calvary troops who are caught in hostile Indian territory and are trying to get back to safety. But everything they do, and every move they make, seems to make the situation worse, and instead of avoiding the hostiles and moving closer to safety, they keep having to fight and move further from safety.
The soldiers believe that the problem is with the commanding officer, Sargent Vinson (Joel McCrea), whose wife and child were killed by Indians and who (they believe) is crazy to kill Indians and is deliberately leading them into repeated conflicts with the Indians. In a very memorable scene, Vinson (McCrea) explains that everything he has done was for the right reasons, that he has had rational reasons for everything he did, and that it was just bad luck that things did not go as he planned. And if you have ever seen how charming and sincere Joel McCrea could be, then you'll understand that, watching that scene, I believed him.
The climax to the movie comes when you suddenly realize that Vinson really is crazy and all he ever wanted to do was kill Indians even if it meant the lives of both him and his men.
Now, when I say "crazy," I'm not saying that Vinson was irrational, because he at least appeared to be very rational. What I'm saying is that Vinson did not know his own mind and had not admitted his own feelings to himself and so, when it came to judgment calls that required subjective assessments of risks, Vinson allowed himself to be led into bad choices by feelings and attitudes that he himself might not have been aware of. In other words, Vinson made what might be called a series of "Freudian" mistakes, in which his subconscious was able to affect his conscious decisions, leading to results that his subconscious wanted but his conscious mind rejected.
I don't really consider myself a Freudian, but I have come to believe that there really are very few accidents in life. Most of what happens to us is not the result of chance or luck, but is what at least a part of our mind wants to happen.
The clearest example of this would be an addiction such as alcohol or gambling. As the addiction begins to impose physical, emotional, and financial pain, causing illness, loss of family and friends, and loss of employment, many people think that the addict continues in the addiction despite the pain. A better explanation is that the addict continues because of the pain. Living with the pain of the addiction is in some way more comfortable to the addict than living without the pain, and so the addiction continues until (sometimes) the addict hits "rock bottom" and decides that maybe life without the addiction is not so bad after all.
The misbehavior or risky behavior of many children (and adults) can also be understood more clearly if you understand that the risk-taker might not view the consequences of failure as such a bad thing. A child who shoots a spitball at a teacher is not necessarily discouraged by the possibility of punishment, and in fact might be encouraged to misbehave, because the punishment itself (or the attention the punishment brings) may be part of what the child desires. Similarly, other kinds of unnaturally risky behavior can be the result of a mindset that feels some possible emotional benefit in what what the rest of us would call failure.
Okay, here's today's scary thought. What if everything that has gone wrong in Iraq was not really the result of bad intelligence, poor planning, or unexpected events. What if what we are seeing in Iraq is what George W. Bush really wants, subconsciously but not consciously.
Why would President Bush want such a thing, even subconsciously? We can't answer that question without first knowing why he was an alcoholic (which is pretty much conceded even by his supporters) or why he used cocaine (which is pretty much denied by his supporters, most of whom are in denial about a lot of things). But if you assume that many of Bush's decisions may be affected by some self-destructive desire to fail, then many events during his administration begin to make more sense. The failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina, the lack of attention to (and subsequent reversal of) what had been a successful invasion of Afghanistan, and even Bush's inattention to the famous August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S."), which lead to the 9/11 attacks themselves, are all part of a pattern.
It is also telling that, as Bush's post-invasion strategy for Iraq has clearly failed, his response has been to take more risks, ignoring the advice of the Iraq Study Group, committing more troops to Iraq, and pushing for a confrontation with Iran. Bush is like an addicted gambler on a losing streak who is nonetheless sure that his luck will change at any moment and then everything will be okay. And, just as an addicted gambler will not stop until the house refuses to extend him any additional credit, Bush will not stop until the House (and Senate) refuse to fund his military gambles.
At the end of Fort Massacre, Sgt. Vinson dies but most of his troops live. That is not the way Fort Massacre: Iraq will end. Tens of thousands of our troops (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) will have been killed or maimed, but the commanding officer will walk away unscathed, physically and (so far) politically.
Briefly, the movie is about a small group of calvary troops who are caught in hostile Indian territory and are trying to get back to safety. But everything they do, and every move they make, seems to make the situation worse, and instead of avoiding the hostiles and moving closer to safety, they keep having to fight and move further from safety.
The soldiers believe that the problem is with the commanding officer, Sargent Vinson (Joel McCrea), whose wife and child were killed by Indians and who (they believe) is crazy to kill Indians and is deliberately leading them into repeated conflicts with the Indians. In a very memorable scene, Vinson (McCrea) explains that everything he has done was for the right reasons, that he has had rational reasons for everything he did, and that it was just bad luck that things did not go as he planned. And if you have ever seen how charming and sincere Joel McCrea could be, then you'll understand that, watching that scene, I believed him.
The climax to the movie comes when you suddenly realize that Vinson really is crazy and all he ever wanted to do was kill Indians even if it meant the lives of both him and his men.
Now, when I say "crazy," I'm not saying that Vinson was irrational, because he at least appeared to be very rational. What I'm saying is that Vinson did not know his own mind and had not admitted his own feelings to himself and so, when it came to judgment calls that required subjective assessments of risks, Vinson allowed himself to be led into bad choices by feelings and attitudes that he himself might not have been aware of. In other words, Vinson made what might be called a series of "Freudian" mistakes, in which his subconscious was able to affect his conscious decisions, leading to results that his subconscious wanted but his conscious mind rejected.
I don't really consider myself a Freudian, but I have come to believe that there really are very few accidents in life. Most of what happens to us is not the result of chance or luck, but is what at least a part of our mind wants to happen.
The clearest example of this would be an addiction such as alcohol or gambling. As the addiction begins to impose physical, emotional, and financial pain, causing illness, loss of family and friends, and loss of employment, many people think that the addict continues in the addiction despite the pain. A better explanation is that the addict continues because of the pain. Living with the pain of the addiction is in some way more comfortable to the addict than living without the pain, and so the addiction continues until (sometimes) the addict hits "rock bottom" and decides that maybe life without the addiction is not so bad after all.
The misbehavior or risky behavior of many children (and adults) can also be understood more clearly if you understand that the risk-taker might not view the consequences of failure as such a bad thing. A child who shoots a spitball at a teacher is not necessarily discouraged by the possibility of punishment, and in fact might be encouraged to misbehave, because the punishment itself (or the attention the punishment brings) may be part of what the child desires. Similarly, other kinds of unnaturally risky behavior can be the result of a mindset that feels some possible emotional benefit in what what the rest of us would call failure.
Okay, here's today's scary thought. What if everything that has gone wrong in Iraq was not really the result of bad intelligence, poor planning, or unexpected events. What if what we are seeing in Iraq is what George W. Bush really wants, subconsciously but not consciously.
Why would President Bush want such a thing, even subconsciously? We can't answer that question without first knowing why he was an alcoholic (which is pretty much conceded even by his supporters) or why he used cocaine (which is pretty much denied by his supporters, most of whom are in denial about a lot of things). But if you assume that many of Bush's decisions may be affected by some self-destructive desire to fail, then many events during his administration begin to make more sense. The failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina, the lack of attention to (and subsequent reversal of) what had been a successful invasion of Afghanistan, and even Bush's inattention to the famous August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S."), which lead to the 9/11 attacks themselves, are all part of a pattern.
It is also telling that, as Bush's post-invasion strategy for Iraq has clearly failed, his response has been to take more risks, ignoring the advice of the Iraq Study Group, committing more troops to Iraq, and pushing for a confrontation with Iran. Bush is like an addicted gambler on a losing streak who is nonetheless sure that his luck will change at any moment and then everything will be okay. And, just as an addicted gambler will not stop until the house refuses to extend him any additional credit, Bush will not stop until the House (and Senate) refuse to fund his military gambles.
At the end of Fort Massacre, Sgt. Vinson dies but most of his troops live. That is not the way Fort Massacre: Iraq will end. Tens of thousands of our troops (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) will have been killed or maimed, but the commanding officer will walk away unscathed, physically and (so far) politically.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Torture Lite
Recent stories in the New York Times (see Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations (October 4, 2007) and Debate Erupts on Techniques Used by C.I.A. (October 5, 2007)) make it clear that the Bush administration does not want to allow any meaningful public debate on the proper treatment of detainees.
In August of 2002, the Department of Justice produced what has come to be known as the "torture memo," which concluded that deliberately inflicting pain on a detainee was not "torture" unless the pain was equivalent to "organ failure" or “even death.” According to the NY Times, there was also a separate memorandum that described specific approved techniques.
The "torture memo" was officially withdrawn by the Department of Justice in 2004, after the original author (John Yoo) had left the Department, and after news of the content of the memo had become public. The Department of Justice then put on its website a very sanctimonious opinion titled "Legal Standards Applicable under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A" that declared torture to be "abhorrent" and explained the meaning of terms such as "severe pain," but only in the most general way and without ever referring to any specific way of inflicting pain.
That much has been public knowledge for some time. What is news is that in 2005, after Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General, the Department issued a new, secret memorandum, again approving the infliction of physical and psychological pain. According to the NY Times, this new memorandum specifically approved not only the use of slapping, cold temperatures, sleep deprivation, loud music, and waterboarding, but allowed these techniques to be used in combinations. So it might be possible to slap around a detainee, put him in a 50 degree cell for a few hours with "music" so loud he couldn't sleep even if he could stop shivering, and then, if he does fall asleep, wake him up for some waterboarding, followed by more slapping.
(Incidentally, the NY Times and other sources continue to refer to waterboarding as "simulated drowning" or "making the subject think he is drowning." Let's be clear. Someone subject to waterboarding really is drowning. They cannot breathe, and will suffocate unless the waterboarding stops. The only difference between waterboarding and the cruel, crude, medieval practice of "dunking" is that, during waterboarding, no water can get into the victim's mouth or nose. Big deal.)
Okay, so combinations of slapping, cold temperatures, and waterboarding might not be "torture." But then Congress upped the ante, enacting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and making it a crime for detainees to be subject to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Well, guess what? Then the Department of Justice declared (secretly) that the same things that they had decided weren't torture weren't even "cruel, inhuman or degrading." According to the NY Times, another secret memorandum was issued by the Department of Justice in late 2005 that reached that very conclusion.
And now, many members of Congress are upset to learn that the Department of Justice has a practice of issuing memos saying that the laws Congress has enacted don't mean what Congress thought they meant and without telling Congress that. (Which Congress should have expected, given that Bush had attached a "signing statement" to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 saying that he would ignore the act if he thought he had the constitutional authority to do so. See "Clarification" in this blog.)
And the response by the White House? White House press secretary Dana Perino refused to identify or discuss any specific techniques but declared that "any procedures that they use" are "tough, safe, necessary and lawful." (The "tough" I believe.)
So there you have it. Congress can pass any law it wants regarding "torture" or "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," and those laws don't really mean anything because the lawyers in the Department of Justice (who are appointed by the President, remember) get to define what is meant by "torture" and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" and the President doesn't need to tell us (or Congress) what these definitions are.
In August of 2002, the Department of Justice produced what has come to be known as the "torture memo," which concluded that deliberately inflicting pain on a detainee was not "torture" unless the pain was equivalent to "organ failure" or “even death.” According to the NY Times, there was also a separate memorandum that described specific approved techniques.
The "torture memo" was officially withdrawn by the Department of Justice in 2004, after the original author (John Yoo) had left the Department, and after news of the content of the memo had become public. The Department of Justice then put on its website a very sanctimonious opinion titled "Legal Standards Applicable under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A" that declared torture to be "abhorrent" and explained the meaning of terms such as "severe pain," but only in the most general way and without ever referring to any specific way of inflicting pain.
That much has been public knowledge for some time. What is news is that in 2005, after Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General, the Department issued a new, secret memorandum, again approving the infliction of physical and psychological pain. According to the NY Times, this new memorandum specifically approved not only the use of slapping, cold temperatures, sleep deprivation, loud music, and waterboarding, but allowed these techniques to be used in combinations. So it might be possible to slap around a detainee, put him in a 50 degree cell for a few hours with "music" so loud he couldn't sleep even if he could stop shivering, and then, if he does fall asleep, wake him up for some waterboarding, followed by more slapping.
(Incidentally, the NY Times and other sources continue to refer to waterboarding as "simulated drowning" or "making the subject think he is drowning." Let's be clear. Someone subject to waterboarding really is drowning. They cannot breathe, and will suffocate unless the waterboarding stops. The only difference between waterboarding and the cruel, crude, medieval practice of "dunking" is that, during waterboarding, no water can get into the victim's mouth or nose. Big deal.)
Okay, so combinations of slapping, cold temperatures, and waterboarding might not be "torture." But then Congress upped the ante, enacting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and making it a crime for detainees to be subject to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Well, guess what? Then the Department of Justice declared (secretly) that the same things that they had decided weren't torture weren't even "cruel, inhuman or degrading." According to the NY Times, another secret memorandum was issued by the Department of Justice in late 2005 that reached that very conclusion.
And now, many members of Congress are upset to learn that the Department of Justice has a practice of issuing memos saying that the laws Congress has enacted don't mean what Congress thought they meant and without telling Congress that. (Which Congress should have expected, given that Bush had attached a "signing statement" to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 saying that he would ignore the act if he thought he had the constitutional authority to do so. See "Clarification" in this blog.)
And the response by the White House? White House press secretary Dana Perino refused to identify or discuss any specific techniques but declared that "any procedures that they use" are "tough, safe, necessary and lawful." (The "tough" I believe.)
So there you have it. Congress can pass any law it wants regarding "torture" or "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," and those laws don't really mean anything because the lawyers in the Department of Justice (who are appointed by the President, remember) get to define what is meant by "torture" and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" and the President doesn't need to tell us (or Congress) what these definitions are.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
All the President's Enablers
With Alberto Gonzales now gone, Karl Rove gone, and most of the others who came to Washington with Bush also gone (e.g., Harriet Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, Daniel Bartlett, and Andrew Card, to name a few), who is going to continue to tell President Bush what he wants to hear?
Both in his public speeches and in published accounts of more private conversations (such as are recounted in Woodward's State of Denial), the President consistently presents himself as locked into his view of reality, indifferent to facts contradicting those views, and unappreciative of those who wish to present those adverse facts and alternate views.
George W. Bush has spent most of his career cultivating a dependable stable of sycophants and replacing them now may be difficult because, believe it or not, a successful career in politics and government service usually requires having some independent judgment. So, finding people who are (a) qualified, (b) willing to mindlessly support the President's tunnel visions, (c) likely to be confirmed by the Senate, is not going to be easy.
So Bush is going to have to begin dealing with bad news and conflicting views from new appointees within his administration. Either that, or he will further isolate himself from real political issues and make himself even more irrelevant than the usual lame duck President.
My guess is that it will be the latter, and I simply hope he doesn't hurt more people (such as American troops in Iraq) than he really needs to while he remains fixated in his righteousness.
Both in his public speeches and in published accounts of more private conversations (such as are recounted in Woodward's State of Denial), the President consistently presents himself as locked into his view of reality, indifferent to facts contradicting those views, and unappreciative of those who wish to present those adverse facts and alternate views.
George W. Bush has spent most of his career cultivating a dependable stable of sycophants and replacing them now may be difficult because, believe it or not, a successful career in politics and government service usually requires having some independent judgment. So, finding people who are (a) qualified, (b) willing to mindlessly support the President's tunnel visions, (c) likely to be confirmed by the Senate, is not going to be easy.
So Bush is going to have to begin dealing with bad news and conflicting views from new appointees within his administration. Either that, or he will further isolate himself from real political issues and make himself even more irrelevant than the usual lame duck President.
My guess is that it will be the latter, and I simply hope he doesn't hurt more people (such as American troops in Iraq) than he really needs to while he remains fixated in his righteousness.
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