Hardrock69
11-22-2005, 09:32 AM
http://interventionmag.com/Primary/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=52
George Bush has assumed Caesar-like powers in the name of defending America. The results, however, have been to increase the threat to our national security.
By Scott D. O'Reilly
George W. Bush has made a concerted effort to reassert presidential prerogatives and extend the power of the Oval Office eroded since Watergate. Like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, Bush has skirted the law, sacrificed transparency for secrecy, and undermined democratic deliberative processes in favor of imperial fiat. Unlike his forebears, however, Bush lacks the brilliance and character necessary to make sound judgments and forge successful policies. The result has been the worst of all worlds: Bush has damaged America$B!G(Bs deliberative institutions while simultaneously weakening America through a series of disastrous executive decisions.
An excellent exegesis of the Bush administration$B!G(Bs excesses and deficiencies is provided by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former deputy to Colin Powell at the State Department, in a recent talk given before the New America Foundation. Wilkerson joins a growing chorus of traditional conservatives and establishment insiders, like former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who are taking the Neoconservative cabal in the White House to task for leading America into a series of foreign and domestic disasters.
What is missing in the Bush Administration, Wilkerson argues, is any meaningful process in which dissenting views are aired, debated, and weighed before they get to the president. Thus, President Bush rarely, if ever, gets a comprehensive overview of the problems at hand or a meaningful choice of options. Wilkerson blames former Nation Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice for failing to be an honest, impartial, and independent broker for the president. Rice, Wilkerson contends, sacrificed her objectivity to ingratiate herself with the President, in effect telling the President what he wanted to hear from the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Libby-Wolfowitz cabal, but failing to convey dissenting opinions from other factions in the White House, such as Colin Powell$B!G(Bs at the State Department. The result was an institutional breakdown (reflected in the fact that then Secretary of State Colin Powell was informed of Bush$B!G(Bs decision to invade Iraq only after it had been made).
The decision to invade Iraq is also symptomatic, Wilkerson argues, of a more systemic breakdown: more specifically, the almost complete abdication of Congressional deliberation in crafting, reviewing, and approving foreign policy directives. During the 1950$B!G(Bs, for instance, Dwight Eisenhower followed Congress$B!G(Bs lead by implementing the National Security Act that the legislative branch had developed. Eisenhower reasoned that his role as chief executive was to implement the policies fashioned by the most representative and accountable branch of government.
As a bona fide commander-in-chief (who had planned and implemented D-Day), Eisenhower knew the importance of developing and utilizing effective decision-making procedures. To this end, Eisenhower encouraged competing teams to develop alternative solutions to specific problems, thus avoiding the pitfalls of $B!H(Bgroupthink$B!I(B and the tendency to overlook novel problem-solving approaches. Clinton used a variation of this approach, insisting that at least one top-level administration figure give him the contrary side of any argument or policy he was considering. This reinforced Clinton$B!G(Bs tendency to flip-flop and be indecisive on occasion, but it was an important discipline that probably helped inoculate the Clinton Administration from making reckless decisions.
The Bush Administration has taken a diametrically opposed approach to decision making, a tack one could dub $B!H(Bimperial expediency.$B!I(B According to this philosophy -- taught at Harvard Business School where Bush got his MBA -- leaders must act decisively and without reservation in order to inspire followers. Even if a decision is wrong, it is best to display no regrets or second-guessing lest the troops lose confidence. The worst a leader can do is to act like Hamlet.
Expediency, however, is only a virtue if one is proceeding in the right direction. And Wilkerson identifies another drawback of this approach. Bureaucracies, particularly government bureaucracies, are most effective when they have participated in the process of making decisions they are charged with carrying out. When orders are handed down from on high, bureaucracies that have had little input in shaping decisions invariably have little stake in seeing them succeed. Thus, imperial expediency carries a double risk: it lacks self-correction mechanisms, and courses of action settled on are inherently more brittle.
The capacity for self-correction is not a characteristic one associates with the Bush Administration. Indeed, a willful disregard for advice and opinions independent of the administration$B!G(Bs narrow circle is their hallmark. Even the views of establishment Republicans, like Brent Scowcroft, have been summarily dismissed with barely contained disdain. For example, Scowcroft, who served under the first President Bush, and who very much represents traditional mainstream conservatism, wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Post shortly before the invasion of Iraq that warned -- presciently in retrospect -- of the perils the administration faced if it pursued its ambitious agenda of attempting to remake the Middle East beginning with Iraq. Scowcroft$B!G(Bs comments were greeted with the same derision that the administration reserved for critics of its decision to unilaterally scrap the Kyoto accords or the ABM treaty; in other words, criticism was interpreted as disloyalty.
Wilkerson points to the Bush Administration's lack of grace as a further factor in its record of failure. No one likes a bully, and the Bush Administration$B!G(Bs gracelessness on a range of issues -- the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld$B!G(Bs dismissal of $B!H(BOld Europe,$B!I(B Bush$B!G(Bs assertion that the U.N. was irrelevant, and the needlessly insulting rhetoric about America$B!G(Bs right to unilaterally scrap international treaties it didn$B!G(Bt like -- engendered a worldwide opposition to the Bush Administration$B!G(Bs policies.
Bush has portrayed himself as a $B!H(Bgut player,$B!I(B someone who relies on intuition and instinct rather than intellect or reason. The results are as predictable as they are miserable. Without rational decision-making procedures with attendant checks and balances, the United States has essentially left its fate in the hands of a small cabal of irrational decision makers. No wonder it is madness to stay in Iraq and madness to leave Iraq.
If you have any doubt regarding the later course, Wilkerson offers a sobering assessment of the repercussions that would follow a precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Iraq that left the country as a failed state and a breeding ground for jihadists. Wilkerson argues that the United States would almost certainly require 5 million men under arms within a decade in order to deal with the chaos in the Middle East and secure the region's oil reserves.
Staying the course in Iraq, needless to say, is hardly more reasonable: a steady erosion of American blood and treasure in an inconclusive and unsustainable contest that will undermine America$B!G(Bs soft and hard power. This Catch-22 is symptomatic of an institutional pathology that infects the Bush Administration, concrete evidence that the Bush Administration left its senses long ago. But unlike the proverbial lunatics running the asylum, they$B!G(Bre running the world.
George Bush has assumed Caesar-like powers in the name of defending America. The results, however, have been to increase the threat to our national security.
By Scott D. O'Reilly
George W. Bush has made a concerted effort to reassert presidential prerogatives and extend the power of the Oval Office eroded since Watergate. Like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, Bush has skirted the law, sacrificed transparency for secrecy, and undermined democratic deliberative processes in favor of imperial fiat. Unlike his forebears, however, Bush lacks the brilliance and character necessary to make sound judgments and forge successful policies. The result has been the worst of all worlds: Bush has damaged America$B!G(Bs deliberative institutions while simultaneously weakening America through a series of disastrous executive decisions.
An excellent exegesis of the Bush administration$B!G(Bs excesses and deficiencies is provided by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former deputy to Colin Powell at the State Department, in a recent talk given before the New America Foundation. Wilkerson joins a growing chorus of traditional conservatives and establishment insiders, like former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who are taking the Neoconservative cabal in the White House to task for leading America into a series of foreign and domestic disasters.
What is missing in the Bush Administration, Wilkerson argues, is any meaningful process in which dissenting views are aired, debated, and weighed before they get to the president. Thus, President Bush rarely, if ever, gets a comprehensive overview of the problems at hand or a meaningful choice of options. Wilkerson blames former Nation Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice for failing to be an honest, impartial, and independent broker for the president. Rice, Wilkerson contends, sacrificed her objectivity to ingratiate herself with the President, in effect telling the President what he wanted to hear from the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Libby-Wolfowitz cabal, but failing to convey dissenting opinions from other factions in the White House, such as Colin Powell$B!G(Bs at the State Department. The result was an institutional breakdown (reflected in the fact that then Secretary of State Colin Powell was informed of Bush$B!G(Bs decision to invade Iraq only after it had been made).
The decision to invade Iraq is also symptomatic, Wilkerson argues, of a more systemic breakdown: more specifically, the almost complete abdication of Congressional deliberation in crafting, reviewing, and approving foreign policy directives. During the 1950$B!G(Bs, for instance, Dwight Eisenhower followed Congress$B!G(Bs lead by implementing the National Security Act that the legislative branch had developed. Eisenhower reasoned that his role as chief executive was to implement the policies fashioned by the most representative and accountable branch of government.
As a bona fide commander-in-chief (who had planned and implemented D-Day), Eisenhower knew the importance of developing and utilizing effective decision-making procedures. To this end, Eisenhower encouraged competing teams to develop alternative solutions to specific problems, thus avoiding the pitfalls of $B!H(Bgroupthink$B!I(B and the tendency to overlook novel problem-solving approaches. Clinton used a variation of this approach, insisting that at least one top-level administration figure give him the contrary side of any argument or policy he was considering. This reinforced Clinton$B!G(Bs tendency to flip-flop and be indecisive on occasion, but it was an important discipline that probably helped inoculate the Clinton Administration from making reckless decisions.
The Bush Administration has taken a diametrically opposed approach to decision making, a tack one could dub $B!H(Bimperial expediency.$B!I(B According to this philosophy -- taught at Harvard Business School where Bush got his MBA -- leaders must act decisively and without reservation in order to inspire followers. Even if a decision is wrong, it is best to display no regrets or second-guessing lest the troops lose confidence. The worst a leader can do is to act like Hamlet.
Expediency, however, is only a virtue if one is proceeding in the right direction. And Wilkerson identifies another drawback of this approach. Bureaucracies, particularly government bureaucracies, are most effective when they have participated in the process of making decisions they are charged with carrying out. When orders are handed down from on high, bureaucracies that have had little input in shaping decisions invariably have little stake in seeing them succeed. Thus, imperial expediency carries a double risk: it lacks self-correction mechanisms, and courses of action settled on are inherently more brittle.
The capacity for self-correction is not a characteristic one associates with the Bush Administration. Indeed, a willful disregard for advice and opinions independent of the administration$B!G(Bs narrow circle is their hallmark. Even the views of establishment Republicans, like Brent Scowcroft, have been summarily dismissed with barely contained disdain. For example, Scowcroft, who served under the first President Bush, and who very much represents traditional mainstream conservatism, wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Post shortly before the invasion of Iraq that warned -- presciently in retrospect -- of the perils the administration faced if it pursued its ambitious agenda of attempting to remake the Middle East beginning with Iraq. Scowcroft$B!G(Bs comments were greeted with the same derision that the administration reserved for critics of its decision to unilaterally scrap the Kyoto accords or the ABM treaty; in other words, criticism was interpreted as disloyalty.
Wilkerson points to the Bush Administration's lack of grace as a further factor in its record of failure. No one likes a bully, and the Bush Administration$B!G(Bs gracelessness on a range of issues -- the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld$B!G(Bs dismissal of $B!H(BOld Europe,$B!I(B Bush$B!G(Bs assertion that the U.N. was irrelevant, and the needlessly insulting rhetoric about America$B!G(Bs right to unilaterally scrap international treaties it didn$B!G(Bt like -- engendered a worldwide opposition to the Bush Administration$B!G(Bs policies.
Bush has portrayed himself as a $B!H(Bgut player,$B!I(B someone who relies on intuition and instinct rather than intellect or reason. The results are as predictable as they are miserable. Without rational decision-making procedures with attendant checks and balances, the United States has essentially left its fate in the hands of a small cabal of irrational decision makers. No wonder it is madness to stay in Iraq and madness to leave Iraq.
If you have any doubt regarding the later course, Wilkerson offers a sobering assessment of the repercussions that would follow a precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Iraq that left the country as a failed state and a breeding ground for jihadists. Wilkerson argues that the United States would almost certainly require 5 million men under arms within a decade in order to deal with the chaos in the Middle East and secure the region's oil reserves.
Staying the course in Iraq, needless to say, is hardly more reasonable: a steady erosion of American blood and treasure in an inconclusive and unsustainable contest that will undermine America$B!G(Bs soft and hard power. This Catch-22 is symptomatic of an institutional pathology that infects the Bush Administration, concrete evidence that the Bush Administration left its senses long ago. But unlike the proverbial lunatics running the asylum, they$B!G(Bre running the world.