Bush Is Out Of Control

In 1963 I was in the army going through my basic training at Fort Ord California. We had a fellow in our platoon, Johnson was his name, that had I real problem marching in step. We seldom made it anywhere but that the sergeant would bark, Johnson god damn it left, left, left right left. Johnson was a good sort. Everyone liked him, but he made it difficult to get where we were going without a stumble or two along the way. We always reached our goal though in spite of Johnson. George reminds me of Johnson, but the George version of Johnson would be screaming that the rest of us were out of step with him. He would be bullying his friends trying to get them to march at his cadence. If bullying didn't work he would try bribery the result would of course be chaos.

The U.N. is irrelevant says the administration, and they're right, but they are wrong about the reason. They claim is that the U.N. is irrelevant because it doesn't agree with the U.S. on the issue of Iraq, but it is the U.S. that is making the choice to bypass the U.N. It is the U.S. that will make the U.N. irrelevant, but why? If the threat from Iraq were imminent that would be one thing, but no one really believes that. Everyone recognizes that Iraq may become a threat in the future, but are not much of one today. If the argument were that the U.N. has shown that they are nothing but appeasers and can never make the right decision that would be a reason to discount them. The U.N. is slow and unweildy and deliberate to a fault at times but willing to act in the face of imminent threats. One need look no further than Iraq in 1991. The whole world participated. George Bush is admired by the right for his resoluteness, but he has demonstrated that resoluteness is exactly what he lacks. He called for regime change last summer, after having locked the Secretary of State in a bunker somewhere. He then appeared to come to his senses and suggest that all Saddam had to do was disarm, but it was all a cheap trick. Face it disarmament without regime change would never satisfy this adminsistration, and that was the big lie repeated over and over. It is the lie George repeated again at his recent press conference. It is the lie some in America and the World continue to believe the lie of disarmament. Bush is right you could never be 100% sure. Well I don't want to spoil the party, but you can change the regime and still not be 100% sure that you've removed those who would commit terror. It would have been better if Bush had just stuck to his lie, Saddam is months away from a nuclear weapon, I'm sorry we cannot wait. That would have caused damage to the world, it would have I think been a mistake but the path he has followed will be far worse. He wavered pretended to be satisfied with disarmament, pretended to make the world a partner, all the while knowing no matter how much it appeared Saddam was cooperating he could and would come back to the argument that he can't be trusted, that we must have regime change. Bush is an absolutist; he wants certainty. As Hans Blix said in a recent news conferecne to a reporter who pushed him on the issue of compliance with 1441. "you'll find that there are many questions in this world that shouldn't be answered with yes or no. " He's right circumstances change it is necessary to adapt to the changes. So Bush plays his game, and inevitably the lies and obfuscations begin to see the light of day. The claims of Iraq gassing their own found to be suspect. The aluminum tubes really were not meant for a centrifuge. The purchase of uranium from Africa was a fraud. The U.K. dossier was a joke. The world paid attention to the reports the inspectors provided. They disliked being duped. So they resist, and the world is in crisis not because of terror but because of American arrogance in the person of George Bush, of Donald Rumsfeld, of Richard Perle, the list is a long one. The administration says all they have to do is support us and all will be well, but that would be even worse. It would truly make the U.N. irrelevant. How can you be relevant if you buckle under the pressure of the worlds new bully. How can the U.N. be taken seriously if all the U.S. has to do is bully, and bribe and the world goes along. So the tragedy that is about to occur is not Iraq, but what it will do to the world. How it will affect the future of the U.N. How it will affect future relations between the major powers. The real loss will be a world that works together as partners, not one bribed and bullied into compliance. A bully is not a leader, a liar is not a leader, George Bush has failed both us and the world by not being a leader. Perhaps it was more than we could have hoped for, perhaps he is simply in over his head. Did you see the look on Ari's and Condi's faces at the recent press conference? A plan any plan would have been better than his insincerity, his waffling. The cynical game he played. The failure is manifold he not only failed us internationally but failed us at home. He, and I think rightly was opposed to a separate department of Homeland Security, but looking at polls and unwilling to take the hits he was receiving at the hands of the Democrats he waffled again. Rather than fix the FBI, the CIA, Immigration and other departments that should be solving the worst of the security flaws he buckled. He saw an opportunity not to create a Department of Homeland Security, but to institutionalize fear in our country. Fear he would use to steal our civil liberties. Fear he would use to deflect our attention from other important issues. So again not only did he shirk his international repsonsibilites but he shirked his responsibility to the citizens of the United States. He may win the battle, but the damage he will cause may well be catastrophic, and he doesn't even know it.