FIASCO!!

File this under incompetent leaders of great states, right next to George W. Bush: 

The Paris of today that everyone dreams about was given to us in the 1860s and 70s by this man, Napoleon III, and his civil servant, Baron Haussmann.  His reign began in liberal democratic enthusiasm, progressed to despotism by way of coup d’état, and ended in dismal, utter, spectacular, and mind bogglingly stupid failure. 

He was manipulated into provoking a war with Prussia, convinced he would win in a walkover.  Bismarck, Prussia’s leader, couldn’t have asked for a more pliable victim.  The military catastrophe is chronicled in the first part of Zola’s book, The Debacle.  thousands of desparately hungry, exhausted soldiers marching to and fro over the French landscape, despondent and demoralized as they realize that they are being led by a gang of complete idiots. 

Think of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 without the wild hilarity, and you’ll have a notion of what I’m reading now.  In the film, The Life of Émile Zola, there is a scene early on in which the general staff is incensed at Zola about this book – they are out to get him. 

After the disaster came the Paris Commune, with its murder, insurrection, and brutal suppression.  Then, as time heals all wounds, socialist, communist, and liberal came together across their political differences to slake their thirst for revenge (la revanche!)  against Germany.  Much to the consternation of some leftists, dreaming of international solidarity, the worker’s parties supported France’s lunge into WWI – the time to regain lost territory had come at last.  More lambs to the slaughter.

He kept us safe…

In many letters to editors, I have heard this sentiment expressed in defense of GWB’s miserable record as president:  “No terrorists have attacked us…he kept us safe.”  Well, 9/11 did occur when he was president.  Here is a small gallery of momentos of our safety with W.

Our fearless leader keeps cool, and keeps reading “My Pet Goat” as the attack plays out.  What decisiveness!

   

Our great leader was brilliant during the phony energy crisis manufactured by Enron (remember them?) that nearly bankrupted California.

Once again, Numero Uno was on the ball when Katrina hit, and his valiant lieutenant, Brownie, did a “helluva job.”  Oh well, it was an act of God…

       

WMD?  WMD?  Did somebody say something about weapons of mass destruction..?  Well, he kept us all safe, right?

Well, Bush isn’t the only great leader and visionary we had to guide us these last years.  Now we see the results.  I bet he  and his friends kept their money really safe!

Oh, that stupid Bush!

Yes, I am getting a bit tired of all this Bush-bashing.  Frank Rich’s column in the NYTimes today is a good example.  I agree with everything in it, but really, what’s the point?  Here’s the opening, emphasis added:

WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.

Uh…I’m not sure I get the logic of that clever allusion to Hannah Arendt, but I”m sure Rich’s smart fans do.  Or think they do.  And his references to all of us leads to the old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto:  “What you mean “we” white-man?”  Behind it all, Rich is separating himself and reaping satisfaction with his “I told you so’s” heaped on the Republican right.

Well, if he is going to say “We like …,” he ought to face up to the unpleasant fact that we elected him.  Yes, even those of us who didn’t vote for him!  We live here.  We aren’t renouncing our citizenship.  It’s our country, our society, and it made a big mistake.  If you want to talk about our country in the collective, you have to own up to its failures, too.  It’s like being in a family – the sins of the wayward are, in some sense, your burden, if you are truly a family.

Intellectuals like to harbor the secret thought that if everyone were just smart enough to listen to them, the one’s who are really smart, everything would go fine, but it never works that way.  People are just too…well, let’s say it, dumb! (Or are they not dumb enough?)

Rich isn’t talking about all of us, he’s talking about himself and his friends.  I happen to agree with him completely, but those yahoos who supported Bush aren’t going away, and neither am I.  We’re just going to have to find a way to exist together.

WORST PRESIDENT EVER!

Train wreck …as metaphor, from Wikipedia:

The term is sometimes used metaphorically to describe a disaster that is foreseeable but unavoidable.

I sing to you of the presidency of George W. Bush:

• I sing to you of hanging chads and a Supreme Court putsch…
• Of the black day, September 11th, and a leader caught in the headlights of history I sing…
• Of Hank Kissinger, proposed for a truth-finding commission, a divine oxymoron, I do raise my voice…
• Of bullhorns, and tyrant mayor wannabees, and bloody shirts innumerable waved in flapping breezes unending…
• Of “Swiftboating” skillful, I marvel and sing…
• I sing to you of “Kenny Boy Lay” and Enron…
• I sing to you of Dick Cheney intoning on the free market as emails plot market skullduggery…
• I sing to you of fraudulent yellow cake and weapons of mass destruction unfound…
• I sing to you of smoking gun mushroom clouds, and preemption extraordinary…
• Yea, I sing to you of shock and awe gone shockingly awful…
• Of Abu Ghraib…
• Of Baghdad looting…
• …and of Mission Accomplished I sing…
• I do sing of Brownie doing a “helluva job” in the Crescent City…
• Of torture made legal…
• Of habeus corpus suspended…
• Of secrets unknown and unknowable…
• Of science denied, and malarky made policy…
• Of history denied, I sing…
• Of Ken Delay…of partisan firings unjust…of regulation defanged I sing
• And lo, I now sing of economic meltdown, the fitting finis to a sing-song dirge I do sing…

Let us chant together with Clio, History’s muse:

worst president ever!
Worst President Ever!
WORST PRESIDENT EVER!
WORST PRESIDENT EVER!

McClellan book signing at Walter Reed Hospital

Wouldn’t you love to see that headline? Scott’s new memoir, in which he regrets his involvement in the “culture of deception” that led our country into “an unecessary war” on false premises is getting a lot of attention these days. Imagine – Free first edition copies of his new memoir to be distributed with signatures to recovering and disabled veterans at the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center. Bring your latest artificial limbs, and he’ll sign them too! Those without hands need not worry – Scott will not be offended inf you don’t offer to shake and let bygones be bygones.

Well, I guess the devil made him do it…

Master of Stupid

Thomas Friedman, the idiot savant is at it again.  Today, in the New York Times, in a column called “Intercepting Iran’s Take on America,” he has written a “satirical” column on what the leaders of Iran must be thinking about us, including:

First, 9/11 has made America afraid and therefore stupid.

It is, I believe, at least the second time he has voiced regret over the 9/11 induced “stupidity” of America’s body politic.  Hmmm…interesting.  As I recall, he was one of those who was rooting for the war in Iraq, saying we had to act “a little bit crazy,” etc. to root out the terrorists.  When it comes to stupidity, he should speak for himself only.  I won’t say he’s as bad as David Brooks who frequently sounds as if he just arrived from Mars, but he is remarkably shallow and glib.  Basically a journalistic shill for the powers that be…for the moment.

Victory Strategy Anyone?

There is a lot of talk about how W has no “exit strategy” for Iraq, and, of course, how he had no strategy at all when he invaded. On the other had, supporters of the war, like McCain, say we must not “lose Iraq,” or did he mean China?…ooops, he’s not that old! Others say we are on track for successs, for victory, i.e., Victory! Just give the ’strategy’ a chance to succeed.

I have to wonder, what is the Victory Strategy? That is, how will we know when we have won, and what will we do then? Do the supporters of the war honestly think, if they have their way, that we will win and leave the country a stable parliamentary democracy, in one piece, that will be friendly to the US and hostile to our enemies, and won’t require the presence of tens of thousands of American troops funded by billions of dollars a year? Is that the Victory Scenario? It was six years ago, but now?

Or do they imagine that after another three or four years like this one, and untold piles of cash, Iraq will have a nominal central government that appears to keep the lid on secessionist fighting, and that has reduced sectarian atrocities to an “acceptable” level, mostly because various regions have been “cleansed” so that they are ethnically homogeneous? And that we will continue to pour money into the place and maintain large numbers of troops there so it doesn’t blow apart or get swallowed by Iran or Turkey? This seems to be the best that they can hope for.

And if this best-case Victory comes about, what is our “strategy?” What do we do with this victory, this ally, this burden? I guess we just maintain our presence there indefinitely, like in Korea. This is what some call “projecting American power.” Others call it Imperialism, but whatever you call it, the return on investment seems rather paltry.

General Pyrrhus, shown in the picture, knew about this bind. And he usually won his battles! He is said to have remarked after one of them, “Another such victory, and I shall be ruined.”

Steady On, Now Lads!

Yea, it looks pretty grim, it does! No matter, let’s keep piling on the bodies. Worked for our granddads in the Great War, WWI. We weren’t making progress – loosing hundreds of thousands of men in the space of a few hours to gather up a few yards of mud onto our winning side, but we kept on. Some fellow wrote a sentimental poem, “In Flanders Fields,” seemed like a tribute to the poor grunts in the trenches, but it was really a call to arms against those who wanted to try and negotiate a peace, so we kept on, lost a few million men, and probably made things worse in the long-run. And what was the argument? “We owe it to the dead.” Do the dead care? Do the dead, crowding up the Elysian fields really need the company of more soldier corpses? Same argument came up during the last great conflict, the point of which our army had forgotten, Vietnam. Can’t pull out, can’t show weakness, it will embolden our enemies, we’re fightin’ for our lives, can’t let down those who have died. Now the USSR is gone, China is going capitalistic, and the South Vietnamese, bless ‘em, want nothing more than to be our good buddies and trading partners. But, we should have kept on…

So today, when a decorated veteran (no, not Kerry!) calls for a pullout, cites the grievous mis-handling of the war, the false intelligence, the fact that our presence makes us a target that inflames the situation. When he points out that we are accomplishing NOTHING positive, when he asks, “Does our administration HAVE a strategy?” we are given rejoinders such as: “We owe it to those who have sacrificed (no, not Cheney!) to keep on [dying]“. “We will not cut and run.” No, we will stay and die for no good reason, much more sensible. Well, I’m asking for volunteers from the administration to be the last man, or woman (c’mon Condi!) to die for a mistake.

Fuck up, and move up…

Pardon my language, but that pithy, Vietnam-era expression that is the title of this post is the first and only thing that came to mind today when I saw the news about President Bush’s picks for the Medal of Freedom: Bremmer, Franks, and…ta da…Mr. SlamDunk Tenet!! I wonder if Mr. Wolfowitz was miffed that he didn’t get the bauble, but he is a sort of backroom, low profile guy, perhaps.Well, the image above of the old parable, The Blind Leading the Blind (Breughel) seems apt here. Perhaps they were not so much the blind leading our non-sightful leader, as the willing-to-see-nothing leading the blind. Does it matter in the end?

I find it hard to understand how people can think that this Iraq ‘adventure’ is going well. Even if you supported the policy in the beginning – why? I dunno. – it seems pretty obvious that these guys are making it up as they blunder along. Are the Iranians laughing into their sleeves as they view the prospect of turning their arch enemy, the Iraqi state, into a satellite via the mechanism of US sponsored elections in which the Shiites dominate? They couldn’t defeat Saddam in a throwback to WWI slaughter, but they just might help to dismember Iraq ‘peacefully’ and then gobble up a good bit of it. Did anyone in the Administration consider this possibility during their ‘planning?’ Is this what they want?

Man, if you’re going to play Rex Imperator, you’d better be ready for the long haul. Not that I support that, but at least I’d know they were thinking.