Clay Fink
April-2nd-2003, 10:31 AM
Continued:
Q: But how could such a leader, this President Bush, have come to power in America? How is he qualified to be leader of what is called the free world?
B: He isn't. He was only considered for president because his father had held the office before him. He did not win the majority vote of his people; an anachronistic quirk in the American election system allowed him to be installed in office by partisan high court judges aligned with his family and party. His previous experience included failing at business, being given a share in a baseball team by men who wanted favors from his father, and serving as the leader of a state where his only known interest was education.
He does not even claim any expertise in foreign affairs or in the Middle East, where he has never set foot. He is actually proud of relying on his "instincts" -- rather than understanding -- for his major decisions. He has chosen narrow ideological zealots as his closest advisors, people who seek to establish U.S. military hegemony over the word.
But surely his military specialists realize that's impossible.
B: The U.S. properly places civilians in charge of the military. The problem is that the president's present choice for secretary of defense is a turf-minded and ideological egomaniac who thinks he knows better than his own military how to wage war on Iraq, despite his total lack of experience in waging such a war. He gave the military far fewer troops than they requested, rushed them into Iraq too far and too fast, and miscalculated his opponents' reactions. He is so incompetent that his own soldiers are now going hungry and many of his officers have turned on him just two weeks into the war. The doctrine of seeking military hegemony over the world is coming from ideologically motivated but irrational civilians, known in previous times as "crackpot realists." The military itself is deeply reluctant to undertake such an impossible task.
Q: Doesn't anyone close to him know better?
B: He does have a secretary of state, Colin Powell, who clearly knows better. But such people rise to such positions because of their willingness to play the "good soldier," that is, display unquestioning loyalty to the person who appointed them. By his own admission President Bush, as revealed in an adoring memoir of him by a kind of royal court journalist named Bob Woodward, runs a top-down administration and demands absolute personal loyalty from his subordinates. Powell's only honorable option would thus have been to resign -- an action that would have meant reversing a lifetime habit of service to superiors. He may also believe he is doing more good by staying and fighting from within, although this belief seems unwarranted since his superiors simply exploited his credibility to gain domestic approval for their ill-considered war -- a war that Powell failed to prevent and then failed to win world support for.
Q: But surely the U.S. is not a one-man dictatorship. What about the American public?
B: Most Americans don't feel they know very much about foreign affairs and tend to give the president the benefit of the doubt. This tendency was strengthened by Sept. 11, the first major attack on American soil by people whose goal was to kill Americans purely because they were Americans.
The public was terrified, and naturally turned to the president for protection. The president experienced an immediate boost in popularity, which has remained high ever since. His popularity cowed the legislature, media and many members of the intelligentsia. After the war started, most Americans rallied behind the president, even though public opinion in virtually every other country on Earth was opposed to it by huge margins.
Q: You mention a legislature. Doesn't the U.S. have a deliberative body that might have introduced some sanity to the situation?
B: Yes, but unfortunately its members' highest priority is their own political survival, which they felt would be threatened if they opposed the war. So the legislators gave the president a blank check to wage war and then turned their backs on it. One noble legislator, Sen. Robert Byrd, questioned his colleagues' honor for refusing to have a serious debate about the war. They proved his point by not even bothering to respond.
Q: Do critics have a voice through the American mass media?
B: The media, reliant upon the administration for information and official interviews, and dependent upon the public for revenues and therefore worried about offending the popular mood, allowed the president to set the terms of the debate. Although some criticism was provided, the vast majority of the coverage -- particularly on the powerful TV medium -- favored the president's position. At no point did the media powerhouses raise loud alarms, accusing the administration of behaving irresponsibly and irrationally. It does not help that the American media is owned by a few large corporations that are constantly seeking further wealth and power by appealing to the government to remove the regulatory obstacles in their way.
Even the most eminent journalists are loath to stand up against the administration. A prominent TV newsman named Tim Russert, for example, questioned Mr. Rumsfeld about his 1982 visit to Iraq without asking why the U.S. had supplied its dictator Saddam with the components needed to make chemical weapons and continued to support him even after he had used them against his own people and his neighbors. Russert routinely bullies the few critics of U.S. power that he allows on his TV programs, while coddling the administration officials upon whom he depends for ratings and revenues.
An influential newspaper columnist named Thomas Friedman disingenuously supported the war on the grounds that we needed to bring democracy to Iraq, without ever seriously making the case that the Bush team would actually do so. This clever positioning allowed him to avoid being perceived as a dove, while giving him room to oppose the war if the aftermath didn't work out.
Q: But as the war started going badly, did these political leaders and media people not recognize the errors in their thinking?
B: No. Once the war began, they were silenced by the charge that critics of the war did not support the U.S. soldiers who were fighting and dying on the field. A nation's flag can make a very effective gag.
Q: So where does Earth go from here? Is there any hope of changing American policies?
B: Well, they have a saying on their planet: "Hope springs eternal in the human beast," oops, I mean "breast." It is important to remember that a majority of Americans did not vote for President Bush. This majority includes millions of Americans who have refused to be blinded by war fever and have taken to the streets to protest the war. A similar peace movement thwarted two American presidents during an earlier war in Indochina and may eventually grow strong enough to keep President Bush from damaging U.S. interests any further. After all, he faces election again next year.
Q: What do you mean "damaging U.S. interests any further"? Does President Bush have military designs beyond Iraq?
B: Yes, Iraq is but the beginning. The president's "doctrine" was created by the Project for a New American Century, a group of hawks inside and outside his administration. It calls for extending U.S. military supremacy over the world for decades to come. The Washington Post has reported that administration officials are already talking about attacking Iraq's neighbor, Iran, next.
Their irrationality is conveyed by the absurd title they chose for their group. It is obvious to all but this narrow band of zealots that the 21st century is not "the American century" -- a term originally coined by the founder of Time magazine to describe the 20th.
This is the world century, in which the human species will preserve the biosphere it needs to survive, and avoid mass murder on a scale yet undreamed of, only if it learns to build a new, cooperative, multilateral world order. President Bush is presently committed to policies that will destroy the very cooperative world order we need to survive.
Q: Are you saying he must be stopped or the human race's very survival as a species could be threatened?
B: President's Bush's irrational war-making is not even the planet's biggest problem. The more serious threat he poses to Earth's survival is his inexcusable refusal to seriously address the ongoing destruction of the biosphere from global warming, biodiversity loss, water aquifer depletion and a host of other systemic problems. The man in charge of monitoring Iraq's weapons programs, Hans Blix, properly declared on March 15 that "the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict."
Q: Can I be of any help?
B: Yes, we are counting on you, friend. If you thought Earth was hell before, you might not have seen anything yet.
salon.com
Q: But how could such a leader, this President Bush, have come to power in America? How is he qualified to be leader of what is called the free world?
B: He isn't. He was only considered for president because his father had held the office before him. He did not win the majority vote of his people; an anachronistic quirk in the American election system allowed him to be installed in office by partisan high court judges aligned with his family and party. His previous experience included failing at business, being given a share in a baseball team by men who wanted favors from his father, and serving as the leader of a state where his only known interest was education.
He does not even claim any expertise in foreign affairs or in the Middle East, where he has never set foot. He is actually proud of relying on his "instincts" -- rather than understanding -- for his major decisions. He has chosen narrow ideological zealots as his closest advisors, people who seek to establish U.S. military hegemony over the word.
But surely his military specialists realize that's impossible.
B: The U.S. properly places civilians in charge of the military. The problem is that the president's present choice for secretary of defense is a turf-minded and ideological egomaniac who thinks he knows better than his own military how to wage war on Iraq, despite his total lack of experience in waging such a war. He gave the military far fewer troops than they requested, rushed them into Iraq too far and too fast, and miscalculated his opponents' reactions. He is so incompetent that his own soldiers are now going hungry and many of his officers have turned on him just two weeks into the war. The doctrine of seeking military hegemony over the world is coming from ideologically motivated but irrational civilians, known in previous times as "crackpot realists." The military itself is deeply reluctant to undertake such an impossible task.
Q: Doesn't anyone close to him know better?
B: He does have a secretary of state, Colin Powell, who clearly knows better. But such people rise to such positions because of their willingness to play the "good soldier," that is, display unquestioning loyalty to the person who appointed them. By his own admission President Bush, as revealed in an adoring memoir of him by a kind of royal court journalist named Bob Woodward, runs a top-down administration and demands absolute personal loyalty from his subordinates. Powell's only honorable option would thus have been to resign -- an action that would have meant reversing a lifetime habit of service to superiors. He may also believe he is doing more good by staying and fighting from within, although this belief seems unwarranted since his superiors simply exploited his credibility to gain domestic approval for their ill-considered war -- a war that Powell failed to prevent and then failed to win world support for.
Q: But surely the U.S. is not a one-man dictatorship. What about the American public?
B: Most Americans don't feel they know very much about foreign affairs and tend to give the president the benefit of the doubt. This tendency was strengthened by Sept. 11, the first major attack on American soil by people whose goal was to kill Americans purely because they were Americans.
The public was terrified, and naturally turned to the president for protection. The president experienced an immediate boost in popularity, which has remained high ever since. His popularity cowed the legislature, media and many members of the intelligentsia. After the war started, most Americans rallied behind the president, even though public opinion in virtually every other country on Earth was opposed to it by huge margins.
Q: You mention a legislature. Doesn't the U.S. have a deliberative body that might have introduced some sanity to the situation?
B: Yes, but unfortunately its members' highest priority is their own political survival, which they felt would be threatened if they opposed the war. So the legislators gave the president a blank check to wage war and then turned their backs on it. One noble legislator, Sen. Robert Byrd, questioned his colleagues' honor for refusing to have a serious debate about the war. They proved his point by not even bothering to respond.
Q: Do critics have a voice through the American mass media?
B: The media, reliant upon the administration for information and official interviews, and dependent upon the public for revenues and therefore worried about offending the popular mood, allowed the president to set the terms of the debate. Although some criticism was provided, the vast majority of the coverage -- particularly on the powerful TV medium -- favored the president's position. At no point did the media powerhouses raise loud alarms, accusing the administration of behaving irresponsibly and irrationally. It does not help that the American media is owned by a few large corporations that are constantly seeking further wealth and power by appealing to the government to remove the regulatory obstacles in their way.
Even the most eminent journalists are loath to stand up against the administration. A prominent TV newsman named Tim Russert, for example, questioned Mr. Rumsfeld about his 1982 visit to Iraq without asking why the U.S. had supplied its dictator Saddam with the components needed to make chemical weapons and continued to support him even after he had used them against his own people and his neighbors. Russert routinely bullies the few critics of U.S. power that he allows on his TV programs, while coddling the administration officials upon whom he depends for ratings and revenues.
An influential newspaper columnist named Thomas Friedman disingenuously supported the war on the grounds that we needed to bring democracy to Iraq, without ever seriously making the case that the Bush team would actually do so. This clever positioning allowed him to avoid being perceived as a dove, while giving him room to oppose the war if the aftermath didn't work out.
Q: But as the war started going badly, did these political leaders and media people not recognize the errors in their thinking?
B: No. Once the war began, they were silenced by the charge that critics of the war did not support the U.S. soldiers who were fighting and dying on the field. A nation's flag can make a very effective gag.
Q: So where does Earth go from here? Is there any hope of changing American policies?
B: Well, they have a saying on their planet: "Hope springs eternal in the human beast," oops, I mean "breast." It is important to remember that a majority of Americans did not vote for President Bush. This majority includes millions of Americans who have refused to be blinded by war fever and have taken to the streets to protest the war. A similar peace movement thwarted two American presidents during an earlier war in Indochina and may eventually grow strong enough to keep President Bush from damaging U.S. interests any further. After all, he faces election again next year.
Q: What do you mean "damaging U.S. interests any further"? Does President Bush have military designs beyond Iraq?
B: Yes, Iraq is but the beginning. The president's "doctrine" was created by the Project for a New American Century, a group of hawks inside and outside his administration. It calls for extending U.S. military supremacy over the world for decades to come. The Washington Post has reported that administration officials are already talking about attacking Iraq's neighbor, Iran, next.
Their irrationality is conveyed by the absurd title they chose for their group. It is obvious to all but this narrow band of zealots that the 21st century is not "the American century" -- a term originally coined by the founder of Time magazine to describe the 20th.
This is the world century, in which the human species will preserve the biosphere it needs to survive, and avoid mass murder on a scale yet undreamed of, only if it learns to build a new, cooperative, multilateral world order. President Bush is presently committed to policies that will destroy the very cooperative world order we need to survive.
Q: Are you saying he must be stopped or the human race's very survival as a species could be threatened?
B: President's Bush's irrational war-making is not even the planet's biggest problem. The more serious threat he poses to Earth's survival is his inexcusable refusal to seriously address the ongoing destruction of the biosphere from global warming, biodiversity loss, water aquifer depletion and a host of other systemic problems. The man in charge of monitoring Iraq's weapons programs, Hans Blix, properly declared on March 15 that "the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict."
Q: Can I be of any help?
B: Yes, we are counting on you, friend. If you thought Earth was hell before, you might not have seen anything yet.
salon.com