Thou shalt not...

Saith the God of George W. Bush:

DON'T STEAL
The government
doesn't want
any competition

(Actually, that was on a bumper sticker I saw on the way to work this morning.)

There's buff and there's buff

Our "president" may not be so buff as the shirtless Vladimir Putin, but has Putin ever said anything so brave as what Bush said yesterday (to those friendly VFW folks), that we shouldn't have gotten out of Vietnam until we'd completed the job (the way he wants us to do in Iraq)? Surely that's its own kind of buff. If Bush had been in charge in 1970 (and Rove had somehow been able to engineer his remaining in charge):

• We might still be in Vietnam trying to "get the job done."
• There'd have been several times the number (58,000) of United States lives lost.
• There'd have been several times the number (350,000) of United States casualties.
• There'd have been several times the number (between one and two million) Vietnamese deaths.
• I'd probably be in jail by now (with a huge number of other Americans) for criticizing and ridiculing the simply ridiculous Bush in public.

Now, that's buff!

On passively accepting evil...

On April 4, 1967 (one year to the day before his assassination), the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in Riverside Church in Manhattan, and among the things he said in a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" was the following^*:

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

This seems to me to echo the sentiment of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321):

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.

While I "believe in" Dante's hell only as a poetic construct (in the stomach-turning "Inferno" third of his Divine Comedy), I do get the message. We are called on to avoid "passively accepting evil" by informing ourselves of it and protesting against it in whatever great or small ways we can.
_______________________
* Brought to my attention by Bob Herbert's op-ed piece ("The Lost Voice of Protest") in today's New York Times.

Bush: The Student-in-Chief?

By way of recommending Maureen Dowd's op-ed piece ("Aux Barricades!") in today's New York Times, in which she says:

It’s unnerving to be tutored by an educator in chief who is himself being tutored. The president elucidating the Iraqi insurgency for us is learning about the Algerian insurgency from the man who failed to quell the Vietcong insurgency.

During his “60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Bush mentioned that he was reading Alistair Horne’s classic history, A Savage War of Peace, about why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers from 1954 to 1962.

The book was recommended to W. by Henry Kissinger, who is working on an official biography of himself with Mr. Horne.

Mr. Horne recalled that Dr. Kissinger told him: “The president’s one of my best students. He reads all the books I send him.” The author asked the president’s foreign affairs adviser if W. ever wrote any essays on the books. “Henry just laughed,” Mr. Horne said.

It seems far too late for Mr. Bush to begin studying about counterinsurgency now that Iraq has cratered into civil war. Can’t someone get the president a copy of Gone with the Wind?

I quote my friend Keith S's comment on the piece:

Hoo-boy! Zing!

My comment to the twig [i.e. Bush] on all his new-fangled book reading...the final exam is over, you didn't pass, stop studying. But it is so typical of this administration. Throw out the baby with the washwater, trip over the baby, fall in the mud, and then try to develop a plan for cleaning the baby without using washwater.

I found the comparison to DeGaulle interesting on many levels. To think that the defacto leader of the French Resistance would think that a guerilla force would recognize defeat and give up...well, I just don't know what to say. It is an impeccable comparison of two people with more ego than intelligence who refused to learn from history, personal or otherwise.

"I do, yeah," explains the Educator-in-Chief

On "60 Minutes" last night, Bush was asked whether he thought he had the authority to send additional troops to Iraq, even with the opposition in Congress. "I do, yeah," he said. "I'm gonna have to keep explaining," he said, after referring to himself as the "Educator-in-Chief."

A moral imperative

I watched Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," last night. I knew what was in it, but I hadn't expected to be moved the way I was by actually watching it. I was moved by Gore's conclusion that it's a moral imperative to do something to try to avert the environmental cataclysm threatening Planet Earth. This means, among other things, that it's a matter of conscience that I go back to commuting to work by way of the local transit system. I'd commuted by bus for some months before my vacation in California in October, but I haven't ridden the bus since.

I'm going to start again on Tuesday. (I'm off for MLK's birthday.)

And, if I intend to continue to blog politically occasionally, it is more important to talk about this issue than about Iraq. Alas, Bush will still be part of the discussion, since the Busheviks have been largely successful at misleading people through their comprehensive campaign to hide the truth—such as a White House official's distorting government climate reports:

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training. [The New York Times, June 8, 2005]

What about Bush?

This just in from The New York Times ("In 2 Pennsylania Towns, Skepticism and Resignation," by Ian Urbina):

CLIFTON HEIGHTS, Pa., Jan. 11 — Hunched over a beer with a crowd of other veterans at the American Legion here, Rocco Polidoro, said he is sure of one thing: President Bush’s plan to send some 20,000 more troops into Iraq will only make matters worse.

“What I don’t understand is who the president is listening to,” said Mr. Polidoro, a life-long Republican who like a majority in this Republican district voted for an anti-war Democrat in the last election. “If vets, military brass, the Baker Committee, the international community and now most voters say it’s time to get out, then in my view it’s time to get out.”

...“It’s one thing to be steadfast and another to be stubborn,” said Rick Lacey, another Republican at the Legion hall who voted for a Democrat in the last election.

So, is Bush steadfast or stubborn...or so dumb that he doesn't even know that almost everyone else is smarter than he is?

I enjoy working with people who are smarter, quicker, abler, and more intelligent than I am, but I'm still smart enough to tell the difference. It's a national tragedy to have someone in the White House who is so dumb that he can't.

Moyers on Freedom

I just finished reading Bill Moyers's "Message to West Point," published by TomPaine.com on November 29, and I am so moved by what I just read that I feel I must feature it here and urgently recommend it to you to read. The piece contains substantial excerpts from Moyers's November 15 "Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom" delivered at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

As a comment I read somewhere put it, it's amazing that Moyers was allowed to give the lecture at West Point, he was so critical of the way the "bargain between the civilian authorties and the armed services" has been kept. He contends

that the army has, for the most part, kept its part of the bargain and that, at this moment, the civilian authorities whom you loyally obey, are shirking theirs.

"The last time Congress declared war," he said,

was in 1941. Since then presidents of the United States, including the one I served [Lyndon B. Johnson], have gotten Congress, occasionally under demonstrably false pretenses, to suspend Constitutional provisions that required them to get the consent of the people's representatives in order to conduct a war. They have been handed a blank check to send the armed forces into action at their personal discretion and on dubious Constitutional grounds.

Furthermore, the current President has made extra-Constitutional claims of authority by repeatedly acting as if he were Commander-in-Chief of the entire nation and not merely of the armed forces. Most dangerously to our moral honor and to your own welfare in the event of capture, he has likewise ordered the armed forces to violate clear mandates of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions by claiming a right to interpret them at his pleasure, so as to allow indefinite and secret detentions and torture. These claims contravene a basic principle usually made clear to recruits from their first day in service—that they may not obey an unlawful order. The President is attempting to have them violate that longstanding rule by personal definitions of what the law says and means.

I was particularly moved by Moyers's earlier description in the piece of the role of Thaddeus Kosciuszko in the American War of Independence. I'd forgotten most of what I'd learned about Kosciuszko in history classes, including his having been commissioned by General George Washington "to build the original fortifications for West Point." Moyers writes that

One historian called him "a mystical visionary of human rights." Thomas Jefferson wrote that Kosciuszko was "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." That phrase of Jefferson is often quoted, but if you read the actual letter, Jefferson goes on to say: "And of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few and the rich alone."

Go to the TomPaine.com web page and read the excerpts from Moyers's lecture. It is one of the most passionate statements I've ever read, and made with Moyers's usual clarity and elegance.

Don't miss it!

Self-Portrait in a Fun House Mirror

The psychopathology of George W.
Bush should disturb and everyday trouble you;
    Believe him a leader a while,
    Credit the office and his guile,
But believe it now and still and...gu'bble^* you. [* gullible]

The Baker-Hamilton Iraq study group found that the lead Iraqi Army units

lack leadership...lack equipment...[and] lack logistics and support...Soldiers are given leave liberally and face no penalties for absence without leave...They lack the ability to sustain their operations, the capability to transport supplies and troops, and the capacity to provide their own indirect fire support, close-air support, technical intelligence, and medical evacuation.

"Other than that," writes Bob Herbert in today's New York Times, "they're fine."

What is needed now are leaders with the courage to insist, perhaps at the risk of their reputations and careers, that it is wrong to continue sending fresh bodies after those already lost, to continue asking young, healthy American troops to head into the combat zone, perhaps for their third or fourth tour, to fight in a way the public no longer supports. ["The Time Is Now"]

Why, then, can't George W. Bush so insist?

In lieu of our having a Sigmund Freud to answer that by writing up a psychoanalytic report on Bush, I'll hazard a few guesses myself as to Bush's psychology.

First, remember, he's obviously a "true believer." He even seems to relish being "faith-based" rather than "reality-based." He has a strong drive to continue believing in things purely on faith that they are so, despite any contrary "fact-based" evidence—like the people Leon Festinger wrote about in the fifties, who, after the failure of their leader's prediction that the world was coming to an end, redoubled their belief that it would...but not just yet. Bush's own true belief is manifested preeminently in his persistent predictions of our future victory in Iraq. That is, when something you really, really believe seems not to be so, believe it all the harder. ("Absolutely, we're winning," Bush recently said about Iraq.)

Second, Bush seems to have a compulsion to lie to himself (which, of course, comes in very handy in lying to everyone else). For example, according to Paul Krugman in today's New York Times (reporting what he'd read in U.S. News & World Report),

President Bush has told aides that he won't respond in detail to the Iraq Study Group's report because he doesn't want to "outsource" the role of commander in chief.

That's pretty ironic. You see, outsourcing of the government's responsibilities—not to panels of supposed wise men, but to private companies with the right connections—has been one of the hallmarks of his administration. And privatization through outsourcing is one reason the administration has failed on so many fronts. ["Outsourcer in Chief"]

This example is about as good as it gets for illustrating either Bush's gargantuan ability to fool himself or the level of his conscious duplicity. But the latter alternative isn't credible because, if he were that conscious and intelligent, he'd have to realize that his deceit is no longer working and should be abandoned. It is more reasonable to conclude that he just doesn't know how far out in la-la land he is.

Third, his self-image seems to be grandiose on a historic scale, ranking right up there with the Roman emperor Caligula, who nominated a horse for the Senate. Bush has pronounced himself "the Decider." Walter Kerr said of someone, "He had delusions of adequacy." Bush's delusions go way past adequacy. How many times has he said "I understand" this, that, and the other thing? He has called himself "the War President," "the Commander in Chief," "the Education President." He hailed himself the glorious "Mission Accomplisher," landing on an aircraft carrier in a scenario worthy of a Leni Riefenstahl extravaganza. And who else could give a trusted adviser the nickname "Turd Blossom"? Bush even seems to fancy himself some sort of reincarnation of Harry S. Truman, believing that history will ultimately prove him right about Iraq. And wasn't Truman the president who had the sign on his desk, "The buck stops here"? As already mentioned, Bush is "the Decider." And, oh yes, he talks to God.

The self-image thing may be the kicker. I suspect that Bush's personality, for all his look of affable self-assurance in public, is quite fragile. After all, he's the perennial C student, the failed baseball club owner and oilman, the son less expected by his parents (than Jeb, "the smart one") to amount to anything. To paraphrase what Winston Churchill said about Clement Attlee, Bush is an immodest little person, with much to be modest about. At his core he may be perilously vulnerable, his self-portrait a desperate device constructed of exaggeration upon exaggeration to fortify and protect him—an instance of the classic Freudian "mechanism of ego defense," the reaction formation: adopting an untrue, opposite belief to avoid the anxiety of seeing the true one.

The result is that Bush uses his true belief and his self-deceit as indispensable tools for maintaining his fictional self-portrait.

If he starts to crack, we may be in for a spectacle not seen since the year 41 in Rome (or at least since Masterpiece Theater produced a dramatization of Robert Graves's classic novels, I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which featured John Hurt's inspired performance as the title character's nephew.

To paraphrase Moses Hadas...

...Bush might have said to James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton after receiving a copy of their report on what to do about Iraq:

Thanks for sending me a copy of this; I'll waste no time reading it.

Moses Hadas is said to have written such a reply to an author who sent him a copy of his book.

Who does care what it's called?

On Sunday, Frank Rich wrote about whether the conflicts in Iraq should be called "civil war" ("Has He Started Talking to the Walls?" The New York Times). His concluding statement was:

Civil war? Sectarian violence? A phase? This much is certain: The dead in Iraq don't give a damn what we call it.

On the way to that conclusion, Rich had remarked:

Whatever you want to label what's happening in Iraq, it has never impeded our freedom to dote on the Olsen twins.

I don't know who "the Olsen twins" are, but I understand Rich to be referring to Americans' absorption in their popular culture and their own lives, despite what might be going on in Iraq. I don't think that they give a damn what the conflicts are called either.

Could this happen? Yes, theoretically...

The following letter, written by Gary Livacari—and appearing on TomPaine.com on December 1, 2006—posits a remarkable and "impossible" (but nevertheless intriguing) set of circumstances:

Re: Iraq’s Reality Bandwagon

In all sincerity, the only way out of this mess is if, in the face of continuing calls for Bush and Cheney's impeachment, they are convinced to resign for the good of the nation by the republican hierarchy. This would make Pelosi president and she would be under immense pressure from the left wing of her party to withdraw the troops immediately.

Obviously, this calls for a limerick. Give me a few minutes. I'll compose one while I'm installing a bathroom exhaust fan.

Ah! Better yet, you compose one. I'll insert it into this post later, along with the one (or more) I come up with.

12/7/2006. Inspired by Southern Writer (serving, I guess, as a sort of muse), I just wrote:

Hey now, wouldn't it be preziosi
If both Bush and his Bela Lugosi
    Resigned their post
    Or gave up the ghost
And the presidency fell to Pelosi?

And, now that I've gotten off the dime, Serena Joy has written:

It is a limerick, for true,
Bush and Cheny, Moristotle does rue.
    If they gave up the ghost,
    I'd propose a toast
To a whole new motley crew.

And I say:

Thanks, Serena, for the valiant entry,
To my own verse apt and complementary.
    May Bush and his pawn
    Forever be gone
And nevermore claim they're landed gentry.

Mirror Image

Michael R. Gordon reported in The New York Times on November 28 "that American officials worry that a small group of advisers from the Shiite Dawa Party that [Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-]Maliki is surrounded by may skew the information he receives."

Or, to quote Maureen Dowd, writing November 29 in The New York Times:

Mr. Hadley bluntly mused about Mr. Malaki: “His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shi’a hierarchy and force positive change. But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”

It’s bad enough to say that about the Iraqi puppet. But what about when the same is true of the American president? ["Turning on the Puppet"]

Or, as Paul Krugman concludes his December 1 op-ed piece in The New York Times:

Luckily, we’ve got good leadership for the coming economic storm: the White House is occupied by a man who’s ideologically flexible, listens to a wide variety of views, and understands that policy has to be based on careful analysis, not gut instincts. Oh, wait. ["Economic Storm Signals"]