In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
I wrote this to the NYTimes columnist Maureen Dowd on Dec. 9, 2002. Rob's post made me think of it, nostalgically. Here it is.
Dear Maureen:
Immediately following the attacks in New York and Washington, as you may recall, Bush disappeared. He wasn't heard from. Rudy Giuliani was all over the site, covered in ash, surrounded by precarious debris and unstable buildings, commandeering his forces and generally keeping an open line to the public and media trying however he could to get a handle on chaos and secure as many lives as possible, at great risk not only to himself but to all rescue operators exposed to what then were unknown dangers. In short, he led. Hate and fear him as I do, he nevertheless acted in the interests of all of us who were there, and all who were watching. When Bush finally emerged from his hidey hole after the coast was clear, he lied about what happened on his lookout and the government's immediate response. We were fed a story. It unsettled me, and gave me a true sense of our vulnerability and his failure to lead under attack. He ran for it. When it was safe, he came to New York and grandstanded with a bullhorn on top of the dead people, swearing vengeance to a cheering crowd, promising things he had neither the intention nor the wherewithal of carrying out. Instead we invaded Afghanistan. I wrote a missive then, invoking the specter of Vietnam, and called it a spectacular failure in moral leadership, and that the war accomplished nothing. It only served the egos of a handful of arrogant men, who lied to those who gave their lives in a spurious cause. The only good thing I can say about that war is that it happened someplace else. Leaving geopolitics aside for the moment, we were lied to consistently by our leaders, the Pentagon Papers proved it, and the consequences were dire, because the myth of war was exposed. It galled the nation. Kissinger featured prominently in all of this. The war ended but the lies continued. Nixon fired his entire cabinet, then resigned in disgrace. The Republicans were fuming. Then Reagan came along and told us it was morning in America, and that was fine with us. It made us patriotic again, and the Republicans were thrilled; in fact they were fired up, because here, finally, was a real leader. He could lie with impunity. No scandal could touch him. Bush pere was at the time head of the CIA and running the South American operation during Iran-Contra, undermining Congress and violating the U.S. Constitution, and even when they were caught lying, it didn't matter. Scandals were a thing of the past. As long as we were invading someone, somewhere, it was all good. After all, we weren't the ones facing death squads in Guatemala, battling Freedom Fighters in Afghanistan (Osama was our novice), or dying in the Middle East (Saddam was our man), or getting blown up in the Balkans (Milosevic was our Bush and Baker boy). Even when it became widely known that Reagan was already in the throes of Alzheimer's, he still was our Great Sloganeer, waving his arm and threatening Russia with a big smile. That was good too. Never mind that the Soviets had an advanced chemical and bioweapons program and a nuclear arsenal available to whoever wanted them for cash -- because Reagan made them broke in an unprecedented arms-race buildup -- and that the Balkans were about to explode, which we helped fuel -- the important thing was to destroy the Evil Empire, and to hell with the consequences. Let them clean up their own goddamn mess. It was the beginning of compassionate conservatism. Tough love. Just say no. It worked like a charm. Bush won an easy victory, and embroiled us in a Middle East war -- in which chemical and biological weapons were used -- but we were lied to about that and it didn't matter, because war with Iraq was fun. It was entertainment. We could watch the official news (as opposed to those messy, controversial Vietnam images) on TV and not worry too much, because we were creaming them. And Saddam Hussein was a dictator, so it was OK to murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They were as good as dead anyway, right? Well, maybe not, but who cares? Important oil was at stake, not like in Vietnam. And if any of our guys and gals got poisoned and sterilized, we sure didn't know about it, the Pentagon made certain of that. But that's okay too, we didn't really want to hear about it anyway. The important thing is that we kicked ass and did the American thing by rescuing our oil -- I mean, Kuwait.
Then our economy tanked. Did it have anything to do with rising international corporate greed and crimes, the triple deficit spending that was a legacy of Reagan and his so-called voodoo economics, and our balance of trade? Or the S&L bailouts? Or the gazillion-dollar unpayable third-world loans made by Citibank et al.? Or even the inflation from the Vietnam war, for which all of us are still paying? None of that mattered until Bush said the magic words, "No new taxes." Well, say good-night, Gracie. That finished him. Nine percent unemployment, stagflation and recession didn't help. Some chickens had come home to roost. We still had the Japanese economy, though, and along came Clinton, with more fairy tales. Everything was good news with Clinton. Here was a leader who was actually offering something, with bragging rights. He took credit for all of it. The stock market rose to dizzying heights, and we were amazed. We were giddy. Twenty-two-year-olds could suddenly retire. Manhattan became a playground for millionaires overnight. The fact that millions were dying in genocidal conflicts in Kosovo and Rwanda made us concerned -- but not too much. There was that unfortunate bungle in Somalia, but we swept that under the rug. There were some really scary biological and nuclear incidents in Eastern Europe (and some here as well) for which there were the usual cover-ups, but in the end the lie sufficed. What mattered is that after a century of world wars, cold war, Southeast Asian conflicts and dilly-dallying in the Middle East, the United States was finally at peace, and now we could concentrate on domestic agendas close to our heart, such as welfare, health care, education, etc. Nation-building became a dirty word. Then a bomb went off in the World Trade Center in New York. That was fucked up. Some of us were close to that, and it was as if all hell broke loose. Every firetruck in the city was there, you could hear the sirens for miles and miles around. But that turned out to be the work of some kooks, who couldn't even do the job right. We nabbed them quickly, and found out they were fanatics of Osama's, who somewhere along the line turned against us. Some people in high places told Clinton he really ought to take the guy seriously, but the president couldn't be bothered. Best to ignore a problem; it will likely go away. For a politician, anyway. Don't fuck with a good thing, right? The important thing is to give the illusion of caring. That way, people will vote for you the next time. Bush seems to have learned this at Clinton's knee. Anyway, the going never got tough, but Clinton got going, the Republicans made sure of that. They were launched on a crusade, to redesign government (i.e., smash our founding institutions of checks and balances and constitutional protections), and they had the money and the political clout to do it. Plutocracy was in the air. Suddenly we were all convinced that what the country really needed was an administration of C.E.O.s, and Bush was our man. That he was a stooge is beside the point; he has good people. That these were the same fossils from a bygone era with outdated views and a cold war mindset is beside the point as well. No one gave a mind to an unstable Middle East, a collapsed balkanized superpower, the emergence of terror states with nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals, and superempowered angry fundamentalists. What matters most is stealing all the candy out of the store, and the job still isn't done. That the market lost $8 trillion in less than two years doesn't matter either. Neither does your grand-daddy's recession. Neither does the fact that your campaign contributors are all crooks who rigged our capital markets, deregulated everything, and stole everybody's retirement; these are the ones who must be rewarded, with cabinet posts and policymaking and legislative authority, so that no one goes to jail and the system never gets fixed. After all, the fix was in from the beginning; why change the status quo? And we're here with the blessing of the American people, because now we're at war, and this is serious. You can't trust a Democrat in a situation like this. What we really have to do -- as far as homeland defense is concerned -- is to lock in permanent tax cuts and make sure that no one gets a job in the near future. Anything we do now is too late anyway; can't use monetary policy anymore, fiscal's a bust. Hey, it's not our fault. And to prove it, let's fire the Secretary of the Treasury and his minion, as a show of faith. It's the genius of politics. He had nothing useful to say. "Ask not what your President can do for you, but what you can do for your President." We is us. Us is them. Next comes Medicare and Social Security. Remember that domestic agenda so near and dear to our hearts, and what I said about nation-building? Well, so long Charlie. This is war. Somebody has to pay for all those future occupations, and it sure won't be our allies like the first Iraq war. This one is for keeps. That's why we need the tax cut, so you can pay for our war. Meanwhile, even though al-Qaeda got away, regrouped, and is now threatening us with more attacks, we toppled the Taliban, and what's more important, we're going after Saddam, who is a much greater threat. Too bad Bush's own CIA director warned him (and us) two days after the "We're going after Saddam" speech that he does possess weapons and has no recourse but to use them; in fact, Tenet unwisely (for him) pointed out, there is a great likelihood that Saddam would NOT use such weapons if we DO NOT attack, because weaponized smallpox doesn't discriminate, and it's a winner-take-none scenario: everybody loses. He wants to stay in power, to a ripe old age. Faced with certain death, however ... Well that was a career ender for George Tenet. I just read yesterday that Bush wants to create a new cabinet post that would combine the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Now there's a leaderly solution. Bureaucratize all the committees into lots and lots of little committee feifdoms, so that NOBODY takes the blame when the smallpox hits. Oh, and by the way, the vaccines don't work. That's another lie -- one that could well bite us in the ass. These are vaccine-resistant weaponized strains developed by the Soviets and sold to terrorists. But we need to invade right away, especially because we know he's got them and has the ability to deploy them. This is called being a strong leader, making the tough decisions.
My question is, when the shit comes down -- and I'm talking about shit that will make 9/11 look like a dummy run -- will Bush and Co. do a vanishing act? Judging from the way these peerless C.E.O.s managed their own companies -- by changing legislation, stealing all the money and running their companies into the ground, employees be damned -- I'm not at all sure these people are acting in the national interest, in fact I'm the opposite of fearless, I'm plain scared.
- Michael 12:22 AM - [PermaLink] -
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