So at last it seems we have come to that point in the life of one George W. Bush when everything 'W' has tried to do fails, and miserably at that. In the past he had Daddy's friends or connections in the oil business or the SEC or somewhere to come bail him out. Today, however, he is alone. No one can solve his problems for him. We all sit, mute, and watch the disaster unfold in slow motion. And we all will be made to suffer for it.
Zbigniew Brzezinski in the International Herald Tribune makes an articulate summary of the foreign policy disasters that will plague American for decades to come.
Terrorists are not born but shaped by events, experiences, impressions, hatreds, ethnic myths, historical memories, religious fanaticism and deliberate brainwashing. They are also shaped by images of what they see on television, and especially by their feelings of outrage at what they perceive to be a brutalizing denigration of their religious kin's dignity by heavily armed foreigners. An intense political hatred for America, Britain and Israel is drawing recruits for terrorism not only from the Middle East but from as far away as Ethiopia, Morocco, Pakistan, Indonesia and even the Caribbean.
America's ability to cope with nuclear nonproliferation has also suffered. The contrast between the attack on the militarily weak Iraq and America's forbearance of the nuclear-armed North Korea has strengthened the conviction of the Iranians that their security can only be enhanced by nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the recent U.S. decision to assist India's nuclear program, driven largely by the desire for India's support for the war in Iraq and as a hedge against China, has made the United States look like a selective promoter of nuclear weapons proliferation. This double standard will complicate the quest for a constructive resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem.
Compounding U.S. political dilemmas is the degradation of America's moral standing in the world. The country that has for decades stood tall in opposition to political repression, torture and other violations of human rights has been exposed as sanctioning practices that hardly qualify as respect for human dignity.
Compounding U.S. political dilemmas is the degradation of America's moral standing in the world. The country that has for decades stood tall in opposition to political repression, torture and other violations of human rights has been exposed as sanctioning practices that hardly qualify as respect for human dignity.
Even more reprehensible is the fact that the shameful abuse and/or torture in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib was exposed not by an outraged administration but by the U.S. news media. In response, the administration confined itself to punishing a few low-level perpetrators; none of the top civilian and military decision-makers in the Department of Defense and the National Security Council who sanctioned "stress interrogations" (torture, in other words) was forced to resign, nor to face public disgrace and prosecution. The administration's opposition to the International Criminal Court retroactively now seems quite self-serving.
Finally, complicating the sorry foreign policy record are war-related economic trends, with spending on defense and security escalating dramatically. The budgets for the Department of Defense and for the Department of Homeland Security are now larger than the total budgets of most nations, and they are likely to continue escalating even as the growing budget and trade deficits are transforming America into the world's no. 1 debtor nation.
At the same time, the direct and indirect costs of the war in Iraq are mounting, even beyond the pessimistic prognoses of the war's early opponents, making a mockery of the administration's initial predictions. Every dollar so committed is a dollar not spent on investment, on scientific innovation or on education, all fundamentally relevant to America's long-term economic primacy in a highly competitive world.
It should be a source of special concern for thoughtful Americans that even nations known for their traditional affection for America have become openly critical of American policy. As a result, large swathes of the world - be it East Asia, or Europe, or Latin America - have been quietly exploring ways of shaping closer regional associations tied less to the notions of trans-Pacific, or trans-Atlantic, or hemispheric cooperation with the United States. Geopolitical alienation from America could become a lasting and menacing reality.
That trend would especially benefit America's historic ill-wishers or future rivals. Sitting on the sidelines and sneering at America's ineptitude are Russia and China: Russia, because it is delighted to see Muslim hostility diverted from itself toward America, despite its own crimes in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and is eager to entice America into an anti-Islamic alliance; China, because it patiently follows the advice of its ancient strategic guru, Sun Tzu, who taught that the best way to win is to let your rival defeat himself.
Then there is the Uber-insider Chris Nelson in his Nelson Report reporting on the political spectrum's reaction to the Bush domestic disasters.
There is a cumulative effect to being systematically "disrespected", as Bush might say, in his characteristically dyslectic syntax. A critical, potentially fatal question now arises for political players in both parties, as also for foreign governments trying to plan their interaction with the US: is this man falling apart before our very eyes? If not physically and intellectually...and those questions are starting to be raised, see Dana Milbank in Wednesday's Washington Post, Oct. 12, pg. A-7...but politically?
One of the more revealing lines of Conservative attack against Bush's pick of the hapless Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court is when we read senior establishment elite players like George Will or David Brooks or Bill Kristol or Charles Krauthammer laughing at the President's assertion that we should trust his judgment on how brilliant Ms. Miers really is. These former supporters sneeringly ask, in effect, "what the hell would Bush know about personal excellence!?"
This isn't just rude, it's devastating, given where it's coming from. And we have three more years with Bush in the White House. The implications of such questions even being asked, much less answered in the affirmative, are obvious, and boil down to the risk of political anarchy at home, and increasingly disconnected foreign policy, as per Brzezinski's analysis, overseas.
So the specific question for today is, what are the leadership implications? Even assuming Bush's team can come up with serious, meaningful approaches to the Delphi bankruptcy as a signal of the coming collapse of the Capitalist social contract with Labor (and what do you think the odds are on that? What are YOUR bright ideas?) how can this White House expect to enforce political discipline on a Congress just three months away from an election year, when it's everyone for themselves under the best of circumstances, and when a majority of Republicans remain incredibly uncomfortable voting for something as basic as Trade Adjustment Assistance?
Delphi this week...and GM at some point, followed by its millions of suppliers and co-dependents. It's irreversible under the current system.
The industrial middle class of America has been under attack from globalization, and self-induced failures like no national health-care, for a generation. Even if some miracle set of programs arises from some latter day FDR and his New Deal (and remember, it was WW2 which ended the Great Depression here...think on that for a minute) it will take another generation to work out for the population as a whole. And that's if we're lucky and a real Marshall Plan for America can be developed....some way to provide Americans with a European-style "state subsidy" for the social benefits which stockholder-responsive private industry can no longer provide, at a profit, in the face of globalization.
But the biggest question is not about, "How could Bush do this?", it's about "Why did we let him?" Few of us have been consistently sounding the alarm over the past five years.
Republicans have been lining up for the pork provided by the Homeland Security funds, supposedly building our national security. Too many of these funds went to places where Republican voters are many, and security risks are few. Notably absent is any coherent security for our nation's ports, nuclear facilities, water and food resources, all of which would be first and most disasterously felt in our Cities, which interesting vote Democratically. Only when Bush's latest debacle, the nomination of his personal attorney to the Supreme Court in an act that blatently drips of chronyism. Yet it's not that the Republican's complain of, it's pay off promised to the Christian Right wing that wants to build America into a Theocracy. Then there are the billions supposedly fighting the war and rebuilding Iraq, much of which actually ended up in Bush's buddies from Halliburton. Then of course, there was the trillions in tax cuts for the super rich that will eventually gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing prices and pensions, the wealth and safety net for the middle and working classes.
So where have the Democrats been? Having lost too many elections in a row, they are timidly hiding from the scene when the important things happen, like the passing of the resolution in the Senate authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq, and the stealing of two elections by chronies at key positions in electoral management and finally on the Supreme Court. And what about the unprecidented undermining of the Bill of Rights represented by the so-called "Patriot Act", torture by military personnel worldwide, and extraordinary renditions of citizens of America and our allied countries. Now finally with the polls tilting and the Republican right wing in an up-roar, the Democratic leadership is finally standing up.
This is not about George W. Bush, the villiage idiot from Texas, this is about the collapse of a system of government by a country the whole world admired, sometimes begrudgingly. Even enemies came to the US to avail themselves of American edication and technology. Perhaps if we had a government full of honorable men of the left and right of the likes of Paul Wellstone and Barry Goldwater, we might have avoided this.
But no, I'm afraid the problem runs much deeper than this, this is about the collapse of the marketplace of ideas. Our citizens and even leaderships simply don't know enough to advise, consent, and govern. Instead the citizens of the US are educated by a flickering vacuum tube that flashes enticing images and sounds of trinkets, sound bites, tidbits of information and disinformation. TV conveys far too little information to educate.
This is the challenge we face. Will it require the collapse of the largest economy in the world? The history of man says it will. Man has made important evolutionary changes in the face of challenges to the survival of the species. Ice Ages have made us who we are. Can we learn enough to protect us from ourselves?
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