A Plague On Both Your Houses

Getting Out of Iraq - Not a Mistake, but still Wrong

George Bush and his power hungry cronies Cheney and Rumsfeld (can you say Three Stooges - "Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard") got us into a war on false pretenses. It turns out they were at best wrong and at worst lying about the existence of WMD, which at the time was THE reason for going to Iraq. Anybody with a single cell left in the memory portion of their brain knows that the war on terror and ousting an evil dictator are mere excuses developed after the fact, probably by Karl ("The Genius") Rove. The same genius who brought you "how to win an election with a negative margin" and other political hits.

All of that is nice history. It is good for the democrats to win the next election. It makes for great sound bites on things like trust, and misleading the American people, and look where the republicans have got us. It has, however, absolutely no relevance to the state of the war today or whether or not we should leave. As much as people say it does, they are wrong. The problem is not only are we there, but for better or worse WE got the Iraqi people into this mess and we are responsible.

What do you think will happen if we pull out and in Vietnam like fashion reduce our troop strength to nothing? Do you believe that Iraq will be better for it? Do you believe that the Sunni insurgents or the Shia militia will similarly reduce their activities? Do you think that Iraqi's will not continue to die? My prediction - Iran will step in. They will shut down the media, they will wipe out the Sunni population and they will take over Iraq. The existing government will probably invite them. They will stabilize the Country and become the most powerful nation in the Middle East. Is that what we want? Another scenario would be a continuation of the status quo without the US and the emergence on one side or another of a Saddam-like dictator. Is that what we want?

Like it or not, we have be put in the unenviable position, thanks to the Three Stooges, of being responsible for the good people in Iraq. We can not desert them. If we do, we will be compounding the mistake made by Bush and we will be responsible for even more death and destruction. In my view we should give David Petraeus what he wants and let him do his job. Then we will be able to get out, but not for a while and not without further loss of life. Loss of life that was unnecessary before but is now made necessary by the venality of this administration.

    Technorati : Bush, Bush Administration, Cheney, David Petraeus, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Karl Rove, Middle East, Radical Islam, Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein, Shia, Sunni, Vietnam, WMD, corruption, democrats, elections, international terrorism, politics, power, president, terrorism, war
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Corruption, Torture and the problem with Bush

I wrote the following comment to some brilliant remarks by Scott Horton at the University of Mississippi published in Balkinization

What disturbs me most about this is that it confirms what I have been thinking about corruption in the Bush Administration. Corruption in the usual sense and the old fashioned sense of "rot." This administration is rotting because for years its belief in its own infallibility has not been checked.

As we all know the Constitution is about checks and balances. The Constitution was, in my view, put in place to stop exactly the kind of abuses the Executive branch has committed over the past six years at least. The problem is that the system has not worked because the legislature simply abdicated its power to the executive. Power corrupts and because of their power the Executive has become corrupt.

The reason power corrupts gives us guidance as to why this administration has become corrupt. Corruption can be defined as moral depravity. Moral depravity can be defined as doing what one wants because one can, without consideration for the morality of the act. Power allows one the ability to do what you want and allows one to avoid the consequences. The temptation is simply too great.

I believe that to this day Bush, Cheney et al. believe they are right. They want to take the actions they deem necessary. Until now they have been able to take those actions with impunity. They have ignored the morality of the actions because they believed the actions were in some sense in the country's best interest. Therefor they have become corrupt by taking actions that in any other circumstance they would recognize as immoral. They took those actions because they could.

Our founding fathers recognized that governments have a general tendency, if left unchecked, to tyranny and corruption. They intended the Constitution as a protection against those conditions by dividing the power bases within government so that the branches would battle each other and check each other from gaining too much power. When two branches join each other against the third, the balance tips too far. In the McCarthy era which spilled over into Vietnam, fear (at that time fear of communist domination of the world)generated the necessary alliances that pushed us toward the abyss. In this era fear again (of international terrorism and radical Islam)has pushed us toward the abyss. Roosevelt was right, all we have to fear is fear itself.

    Technorati : Bush, Bush Administration, Cheney, Congress, Constitution, Islam, McCarthy, Power, Radical Islam, Roosevelt, Scott Horton, Vietnam, communism, corruption, executive, executive branch, founding fathers, international terrorism, morality, terrorism
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Corruption in the White House

Webster's Dictionary defines "corrupt" as morally degenerate and perverted, depraved; characterized by improper conduct; putrid, tainted; adulterated or debased by change from an original or correct condition.

The Bush administration is all these things. It is morally degenerate because it has decided that its own power allows it to do as it pleases. That is the very definition of moral degeneracy. It is characterized by improper conduct. Look at the Justice department, the FBI, disregard for the law in the spying cases, disregard for justice in the cases of political corruption and in the border patrol cases, disregard for the truth. It has been debased from its correct condition in the sense that it has brought disrepute on the Executive Branch and the Presidency. In asserting its power and following the political path led by Karl Rove it has ignored the key function of the President, to lead, politically and morally. What Bush has failed to realize (and he is certainly neither the first nor the last in this failure) is that leadership is an exercise in persuasion of followers, not in power over them. During the recent years of Republican hegemony over our political system, this failure was not recognized because there was no conflict or confrontation. Bush's popularity may have waxed and wained but nobody challenged him. The tacit agreement with congress seems to have been, you don't veto the pork and we won't challenge you on policy. Now that the Dems have come into there own, all of a sudden there is conflict and confrontation. All of a sudden Bush has to answer to a higher power. He doesn't like it (can you tell?). His ham handed attempts at power grabs, his corruption, now have become obvious.

I have often said in an attempt to believe he is not truly venal, that George suffers from being a spoiled brat. He sure acts like it. His mannerisms are those of a spoiled little kid. He whines. He gets miffed. He is stubborn and loyal to those who pander to him. In a time when the world is in crisis and very dangerous, he is exactly what we don't need. He is a person who reacts rather than acts and he is a person who is guided by emotion rather than rationality. In fact his success as a populist is based largely on these characteristics. We now see that they have been bad, are bad, and will be bad for the country.

That is not to say that the loyal opposition is much better. Although they are attempting to keep him in check, they are also pursuing a reactive agenda. Watch out, lest we get the worst of all possible worlds.

    Technorati : Border Patrol, Bush, Bush Administration, Congress, Corruption, Justice Department, Karl Rove, democratic party, democrats, executive branch, government, justice, politics, populism, power, president, republican party, republicans
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George Bush is an Idiot

I used to believe that our President was intelligent, well intentioned, even thoughtful, if misguided. I used to think he had a brain cell and was a good person. I no longer believe he is either intelligent or well meaning. Or, if he is well meaning, he is the poster child for the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." His presidency is an abject failure and I believe his legacy will be as one of the worst presidents in history. His presidency may be one cited in the not to distant future as the one that began a great decline in America's leadership in the world. His domestic policy is non-existent. What has he done? No child left behind continues to leave children in the dust and America continues to trail most developed and some developing nations in education. Health care costs continue to be out of control. Our health care is controlled fully by insurance companies. I ask you, if you were given the choice of all the various people, including yourself, to control your health care, would you choose bookies? That's what you get when you choose insurance companies. Spending is outrageous, the deficit is the largest in history and by most measures is being spent far too much on ridiculous pet projects of the Republican congress, although no doubt the democrats will begin to gorge themselves on the uncontrolled trough of public money. His administration is mocked as corrupt and inept. Karl Rove is known throughout the world as the slime ball political hack pulling Georgie's strings. Dick Cheney is right behind. Then there are crises and emergencies where leadership is given the opportunity to shine. Can you say Katrina? The immigration problem and our relationships with Mexico are a mess. The drug and human traffickers rule the border, yet Bush and his minions make nice with Mexico and bend over backward to maintain "good" relations, often at the expense of our own border patrol agents and others. "Illegal" immigration is basically no longer illegal encouraging contempt for the law on the one hand and anger and frustration on the other.

What haven't I talked about? Oh yeah. International Relations. The war on terror - losing. The war in Iraq - losing. The war in Afghanistan - trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The similarities between Iraq and Viet Nam become clearer every day. Troops are demoralized. Atrocities rear their ugly head. Intelligent leadership is ignored. When intelligent leadership is given attention, its needs are met half way (see David Petraeus and the "surge"). Politics rules military policy and our troops and the country we are "defending" suffer. Our goals are unclear. The reason we got there is unclear. Politicians try to blame each other. Protesters line the streets. The country is divided. The troops are ill treated when they come home, or worse their plight is ignored. If it were not for the fact that almost every American has good feelings and pride for our troops, I would think I was cast back 35 years in a time capsule.

George Bush is a fool. Hopefully we can get somebody in the next election with a brain cell and hopefully the democratic congress can at least put a check on his idiocy. I would rather nothing got done than this guy's policies. If a democrat is elected president, then I fully hope that a republican congress, or a divided senate and house emerge. We have learned over the last eight years, too much power on one side of the aisle leads to corruption and ineptitude.

    Technorati : Afghanistan, Bush, Bush Administration, David Petraeus, Iraq, Karl Rove, corruption, democratic party, democrats, foreign policy, immigration, politics, president, republican party, republicans, terrorism, victory
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