Tenet resigning--who's next?
I'm in Ontario. I see there's lots of speculation about why George Tenet resigned. Of course, there are many reasons he should have resigned, at many points along the way-- him and Colin Powell, both. Indeed, those two and anyone else of any possible integrity in the service of this government...
One of the delightful (and weird) twists on this story is that our dear old buddy Ahmad ('Don't blame me, I only sold them the snake-oil') Chalabi, who is now in Najaf, rapidly trying to reinvent himself as a Shi-ite national hero (?), is now acting the wounded party and blaming Tenet for having framed him re the passing-secrets-to-Iran business.
If we were to believe Chalabi - oh, ha-ha-ha, this is almost to crazy to write... If we were to believe Chalabi (!), then Tenet's sudden downfall might look like the doing of Chalabi's longtime backers in the Wolfie-Feith-Perle circle?
But what it certainly looks like to me is that there's a really delightful falling-out among all the rabble who've been running our country's so-called foreign 'policy' under Bush...
And Tenet's resignation surely isn't the end of it.
Certainly, the neo-conservative Likudniks within the Office of Special Plans, Defense Policy Board, National Security Council Middle East Division, and the Cabinet will escape unscathed. With American Enterprise Institute and Rand Corp media pundits pasted across American political commentary programs and op-ed pages, who will think of critizing these perennial chemists of political disaster? They delayed American-Soviet detente for 20 years and escaped accountabilty; they supported Israel's disaster in Lebanon and escaped accountability (Sharon took more of a fall for Lebanon than his American Likudnik backers); they pulled off the Iran-Contra scam and escaped accountabilty; they fomented the first Gulf War and escaped accountability; now, the WMD myth.
They are adept at creating fear, finding enemies, and allying with the American industries that profit from bombing with these enemies. And, they are far from finished. West Africa will be their next strategic prize.
Will Rummy's resignation include crying? What about the others?
So much is flying apart in this administration that one wonders what is holding it together at this point. It seems like we are seeing the fraying of a group of know-it-alls who are faced with maybe the first great humiliations of their lives. I wonder how long many of these people can possibly hang on here. So much is coming out. Who could possibly have written this script! If you think of the totality of failures, ineptitutude, mendacity, and apparent back-stabbing and double agents (not just double speak), it boggles the mind and bends all ability to consider the ethics, let alone the politics!
The mind reels! There is just too much to take in all at once and when you begin to count it all up, it seems like an endless stream of villainy, slime, and utter degradation.
If it's hard for us to take in, I can't imagine how these guys (I've decided Condi is a "guy" since I've voted her out of the feminine gender!) must be scrambling to try and throw the blame on someone else or at the very least get out of the way of the shit hitting fans.
They can't keep the lies straight anymore. And the secrets just keep turning up, like bodies buried in Iraq.
The Bush team may be symptomatic of a larger problem with U.S. society; they did not make this mess by themselves.
Edward makes the unfortunate point.
For me, the low point was after the first debate between Gore and Bush when it was universally believed that Bush had "won" the debate because Gore had trounced him so thoroughly on the facts.
It would be nice if we could say that our experiment with electing (err, allowing to take power) a demonstrably stupid psychotic liar with a history of failing at everything was nearing its end. Perhaps we're heading in that direction, but as long as Bush gets approval ratings above 5 percent, I'd say we have a long way to go.
Bush is the ultimate fulfillment of the archetypal hero and prophet, the leader who embodies all the characteristics of his people. His relation to his people is as other figures in history and legend. The Buddha embodied the wisdom of a people that had matured spirtually; Pericles, the orator favoring balance on the eve of political turmoil; Muhammed, generosity in victory and the attainer of the absolute in the empty wilderness, a mirror of chivalric Hejaz.
Bush is illiterate, folksy, and apocalyptic. He predicts war and, like the fisher-king, brings the taste that satisfies the appetite of his people: A southern evangelical movement of the insecure, the rootless, who find their meaning in hatred of those different, and get their revelations and inspirations through Franklin Graham and Fox News. It is a people easily manipulated due to their simplistic life, a rural and suburban routine where they influence nothing lasting or permanent. So, they destroy what is lasting and permanent, what has a deep history, be it the books of Baghdad or the architecture of Jerusalem, not knowing what they stomp on, like barbarians, drunk with a sensation of power, though they really lack self-control and mental discipline.
Yes, Dubya is the hero of rural and suburban America.