Bush makes shit happen

“One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.” -- Bill Moyers

1. Sure, Shit Happens, But President Bush Should Stop Making It Happen -- by Beth Quinn (from the Middletown Times-Herald Record)

Two weeks ago, during the brouhaha over Bush saying "shit" in front of an open mic, I confess I was strangely pleased that the guy swears now and then.

He was talking to Tony ("Yo Blair") at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, and they were discussing the only news of the day that mattered - Israel and Hezbollah and that whole mess. Neither man knew that an open mic was capturing their conversation.

When Bush said "What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit," it seemed like a reasonable sentiment. Everyone ought to stop "doing this shit," including Bush, who has played his part in worsening the Mideast quagmire.

But I'll tell you what did bother me. Bush's table manners. As we all saw clearly on CNN, he talks with his mouth full. Not only that, he makes smacking noises when he chews. Frankly, he must be disgusting to dine with.

You can tell a lot about a person from his table manners. If you're the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, acting civilized at the dinner table should be part of the job description. Graciousness goes a long way toward diplomacy and getting people to see things your way.

But his piggish dining behavior was only the beginning. At a meeting of the most important people in the world, George Bush repeatedly demonstrated the manners of a spoiled brat, first by loudly complaining that "some of these guys talk too long" - "these guys" being the other leaders of the world - and by grousing that he wanted to go for a run and then get to that pig roast instead of listening to all those windbags.

And then came the capstone of his loutish performance - his attempt to give a shoulder massage to the German chancellor who, by no great coincidence, was the only female world leader there.

If you haven't seen the video clip, Bush wandered up behind Chancellor Angela Merkel, put his hands on either side of her neck and then started rubbing her. Merkel, who threw her hands up in surprise, was "erschrocken" at what the "dumkoff" was doing.

If she'd had a pocketbook handy, she probably would have clocked him with it.

There's a guy in every office like that - the groper who's often called down to HR for a talking-to because women complain about his rude, condescending and presumptuous behavior. Like Bush, they don't get it. They roll their eyes at what they consider an "hysterical" over-reaction from humorless girls.

If Clinton had done that, the Republicans would have been calling for his head.

Actually, much of what's gone awry with this disastrous administration might well be seen as bad manners.

Eavesdropping on us? That's uncivil. It's polite to announce your presence when listening to a conversation that the participants assume is private.

Cronyism? Ill-bred. We all remember the snobby clique in school that favored its own kind.

Not sharing? Crass, but Bush has raised to a fine art the practice of not sharing tax breaks and no-bid contracts with us average folks.

Playground bully? You bet. Attacking a country unprovoked and starting a big brawl is boorish.

As everyone knows, if you've got a rude child, the parents are often to blame. Bush's mom, surely, is a swine in pearls as she illustrated in her contemptuous remarks about the lower classes after Katrina.

His father does better, despite puking on the prime minister of Japan. I can't help but think he's been embarrassed by his son now and then.

I know it was just a small moment in this presidency. And I know that shit happens. But after nearly six years of this vulgar behavior, it's a reminder that we have a vapid, towel-snapping frat boy in charge of the world. God help us.

There are 911 days left until Inauguration 2009.

(Beth Quinn's column appears on Monday. Email to: bquinn@th-record.com)


2. Bush's Biggest Offense At Summit Overlooked -- by Jennifer Martikean

Sadly, my column this week starts with an apology on behalf of the news media everywhere. Journalists often are maligned for their coverage of stories, and for once, I will contribute to the complaining.

The international news media messed up by not devoting more coverage to the video of President Bush rubbing the German chancellor's shoulders and neck at the G-8 summit in Russia last week.

The encounter certainly bothers me more than Bush slipping up and using the S-word at the same conference. Cursing I can handle. But sexually harassing a head of state sends a message that women, no matter what they do, will not break through the glass ceiling. Yet, the one foul word received more coverage, and more serious coverage, than the story about what happened to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The video is readily available on the Internet if you haven't seen it. It shows Bush walking by Merkel and briefly massaging her neck and shoulders. She shrugs her shoulders and throws up her arms. But upon realizing who it was, she then appears to smile.

When Bush went to massage the chancellor, it cannot be mistaken for anything but harassment. Why did Bush touch the only female at the table? He certainly wasn't giving back rubs to Tony Blair or Jacques Chirac. If it is laughable that the president would massage the shoulders of a male world leader, why is it less offensive, or even funny, that he should do it to a female world leader?

Today in America, all politics is divisive. Some people see the video as confirmation that Bush is an idiot, like they always suspected. Others will see it as an innocent gesture of a friendly president that has been overblown. We all have our own opinions of the president, but what bothers me is what this means for Merkel and women everywhere.

When the incident first was reported, the stories mentioned how Merkel seemed to smile after the incident. And after that, coverage of the story died away. What's worse, that this powerful woman has to endure the president's shoulder rub because he is in a position of power, or that people believe that her smiling makes it OK?

It's a smile and a laugh that a lot of women know. It's the laugh and smirk women do when someone touches them when they don't want to be touched, but aren't in a position to make a big deal about it. It's the same face I used to make as a young reporter when a certain male police officer would put his hand on my arm and call me "sweetheart" when I tried to do my job. The chancellor's chagrin is no justification for what happened.

Pioneering women in the last two generations have endured unspeakable harassment in hopes of rising through the ranks of power so that someday they would have the authority to prevent their daughters from having to endure such abuse. The Chancellor of Germany, man or woman, is one of the most powerful people on Earth. If a woman who rises to that level of power still is mistreated because of her gender, is there any hope for women around the world? If Merkel hasn't broken through the glass ceiling, what hope do the rest of us have?

So I'm writing this column as an apology on behalf of the news media. I have control over this small piece of newsprint each week, and today I'll use it to bring attention to a story that was overlooked. Women shouldn't be laughing about it; we should be outraged.

(Jennifer Martikean is the south bureau editor for the Illinois Northwest Herald.)


3. US Blunders Roil the Mideast -- by Robert Kuttner

The latest violence in the Middle East demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Bush administration's grand design for the region. The Iraq war was going to display American power, promote democracy, strengthen moderates, and secure Israel. Instead, the quagmire has demonstrated the humiliating limits of US military power, fomented anarchy, recruited Islamist extremists, and strengthened a more radicalized Iran.

Palestinian moderates have been marginalized, leaving nobody for Israeli moderates to negotiate with. Hamas and Hezbollah have more support among Arabs than ever. Israel finds itself more vulnerable militarily, prone to excess, and dangerously isolated from world opinion. As for democracy, our few allies in the region are dictators and kings. Democratic Lebanon is a shambles. The democratically elected government in Iraq has just denounced Israel, and a democratic Palestinian election empowered Hamas.

Bush said you couldn't negotiate with bad guys. In Iraq, where Saddam turned out to be telling the truth about nuclear weapons and Bush turned out to be lying, diplomacy was forsaken for war. Syria, which gave the US genuine intelligence help after 9/11, was deemed a nation not worth diplomatic engagement. As former National Security Council official Flynt Leverett documented, an overture by the then-moderate Iranian government in 2002 was blown off by the United States.

Bush insisted that we go it alone. Now, having rejected diplomacy, an isolated Bush administration is more dependent than ever on the European Union, the Russians, and the UN. In Bush's four minutes of open-mike fame at the G-8 summit, he plaintively told Britain's Tony Blair, ``I felt like telling Kofi to call, to get on the phone to [Syrian President] Assad and make something happen."

But when UN General Secretary Kofi Annan told the Security Council Thursday that we need an immediate cease-fire and expanded multilateral peacekeeping, America's UN ambassador, John Bolton, rejected the idea. Bolton and the other radicals in the administration want Israel to keep pummeling Lebanon a while longer. The Bush policy has produced a codependency of the most extreme elements on all sides -- the party of mutual Armageddon. This is the war party of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Israeli right, the Iranian ultras, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Right-wing strategists like William Kristol, who often reflect the thinking of Cheney, are now openly calling for war with Iran.

Iran is the source of those Hezbollah missiles, the spawning ground of Islamist militancy, the greatest threat to Israel. So let's just have it out. Not a ground war or an Iraq-style regime change -- we blew that option-- but a war on the cheap, of missile strikes (with a risk of mass civilian casualties). That would sure make Iran think twice about supporting Hezbollah, promote democracy, and respect America.

Can these people be serious?

Bush did not create radical Islamism, but he certainly gave it a boost. The point is not that the rulers of Iran, the Baghdad suicide bombers, and the fanatics of Hamas and Hezbollah are misunderstood good folks who need only a naïve olive branch from the west. On the contrary, these forces menace everything modern and democratic. They must be stopped, not appeased. The issue is the most practical and effective way of containing them.

And contain is the right word. During the ``long twilight struggle" as John Kennedy called the Cold War, the Soviet Union was even more of a threat. The Soviets really did have nuclear weapons, by the thousands. There were some in the United States who wanted to have it out, in World War III. Miraculously, they never attained power. Containment worked, communism fell. When pragmatists governed, we even managed to constructively engage the baddest of the bad, Red China, now our ally in containing North Korea, our prime supplier of Wal-Mart and biggest creditor.

But today, the ideological heirs to that lunatic fringe are running the American government. Every arrogant miscalculation only leads them to more disastrous blunders.

Had Bush used diplomacy to isolate Saddam and to improve relations with Iran and Syria, had he worked as Bill Clinton did for a reduction of violence and a true peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, radical Islam would have far less appeal, the United States would have more influence in the world, and Israel would be more secure. But you can't undo history, and the mess Bush made will haunt his successors for decades.

With a mid-term election looming and the Mideast in flames, will voters finally recognize that this crowd is delusionally incompetent? Or will cynical fear-mongering lead anxious citizens yet again to rally 'round their president?

(Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Boston Globe.)


4. Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Morons? (from Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal)

At least twice a day, I find myself thinking about the Bushies, "They can't be this stupid and this shortsighted."

Yes they can:

Scott Horton: Back in April, I found myself in Baghdad across the table from one of the nation's most prominent judges. A man with a reputation for integrity and independence, he had resigned from the bench rather than implement a cruel set of directives issued by Saddam Hussein. He suffered and was forced into a marginal existence thereafter. The Coalition forces, noting the respect his name commanded, tapped him for a particularly sensitive role, which he has held ever since. Since judges are killed at the rate of one-per-week in Iraq, however, I am going to refrain from using his name.

In a wide ranging discussion, he came very quickly to talk about the occupation and its shortcomings.

“We despised Saddam Hussein, and his overthrow raised such wonderful possibilities for Iraq. But how could a country like the United States behave so stupidly as it did in those first crucial months? Saddam was a nightmare. But our country had a strong state with secular traditions. That needed to be preserved at all costs. Instead the Americans smashed that state. What did they expect Iraqis would do? It sent people scurrying back to the basic building blocks of our society, which are the clans and tribes. People turned to them for basic self-protection, not because of any political conviction. And this has led directly to the social disintegration we have today. The choices that the coalition took had consequences. You destroyed the state and you failed to put order in its place. You created chaos, in other words. And now we have to try to live with the consequences of the coalition's decisions.”

These comments dovetailed with a "lessons learned" analysis I understand was done within the Department of Defense. As a part of the review, a "lack of cultural awareness" of Iraqi society was repeatedly cited. A DOD anthropologist notes that many of the most serious mistakes made in the early phase of the occupation relate to a misunderstanding of the consequences of the fall of the state. Just as my interlocutor noted, the people turned immediately to family ties for protection.

Surely political scientists already know this. The first chapters of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan reflect exactly the points that the Iraqi judge was making. With the collapse of the state and with no new order to replace it, Iraq fell into the war "of all against all." Hobbes wrote,

“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.... To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. (ch. 13).”

Put differently, the occupation heralded by the capture of Baghdad lacked the essential characteristic of an occupation - namely a new order. Hence, in Hobbesian terms, it was that form of war which encompasses the natural state of man. In the August issue of Harper's, Ken Silverstein probes more deeply into this process of social disintegration. He takes as his vehicle the rise of one particularly powerful, but shadowy figure in the current Iraqi Government: Bayan Jabr, the current minister of finance. Silverstein dubs him the "Minister of Civil War." This article is fascinating and it offers an unusual glimpse deep inside the transformative process in Iraq that coincided with the "rule" of the Coalition Provisional Authority. This was a period which combined immense attention to public relations with Western media with an excruciatingly poor grip on the cancer that was developing in Iraq. The article is a must-read.
-- Posted by Brad DeLong

Comments:
While I agree with the fundamental point (the early phase of the occupation was monumentally bungled in ways that made bloody civil war likely and perhaps unavoidable), I think it's important to keep in mind that Hobbsian atomization of society is precisely what did NOT happen in Iraq.

To the extent that it thought about Iraqi society at all, the Administration imagined it to be essentially without structure. The Baathist regime, they believed, had eradicated all non-governmental, non-Baathist structures as possible challengers and threats. So, once the regime was "decapitated" (to use what turns out to have been a rather unfortunate choice of words), Iraqi society would be without internal structure and leadership and therefore essentially passive. We could therefore install the exiles of our choice without organized local opposition, declare victory, go home, and get rich off the oil & oilfield construction deals that our new friends would steer our way.

The surprise was that Iraqi society did NOT atomize, but coalesced around tenacious structures of clan and religious leadership which, it turns out, Saddam failed to eradicate after all. (I'll add that this was a surprise to the Administration, not to the many, many experts who warned that a sectarian and ethnic split was a possible outcome prior to the war.) -- Posted by: johnchx

I disagree that there was no plan for a new order when Bagdad fell, there very much was a plan: install Chalabi. The problem of course was that the price of making Iraq accept Chalabi was far higher than anything the US was willing to pay.

In fact it's remarkable that Karzai has hung on this long, but the endless campaign in southern Afghanistan, and the willingness of NATO to shoulder some of the burden gives some clue as to what it would have taken to install Chalabi.

This is not to say I believe installing Chalabi was a good idea, it was simply one in a long chain of bad decisions for which no contigency plans were drawn up. And that I suppose was the second mistake: not having a plan B. -- Posted by: Ssezi

bear in mind that this was a war launched by people who believe the state to be superfluous at best. doubtless they expected a government to spontaneously spring into being once a few entrepreneurs created a little wealth that it could, as the libertopians say, "confiscate". -- Posted by: brad the impaler

There's a whole literature of state formation and collapse in political anthropology that really provides more insight into the process than Hobbes, into what takes over when a state disintegrates. This is one good review of the literature:

Johnson, Allen W. and Timothy Earle. (2000) The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Second Edition.Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.

"But our country had a strong state with secular traditions. That needed to be preserved at all costs. Instead the Americans smashed that state. What did they expect Iraqis would do? It sent people scurrying back to the basic building blocks of our society, which are the clans and tribes."

Historians and hegemonic states have a systematic bias, habitually assuming that states are stronger and more unified than they actually are. In fact, at root, states are just opportunistic alliances of families, clans, lineages, and political organizations.

Ming dynasty Yunnan (c. 1369-1398) is a good example. The Ming emperor picks out one of many Tai chiefs and treats him like a centralized leader. Sub-chiefs assert their independence and he has to flee to the Ming capital in Beijing. They manage to restore him to power, but he's out again in a few years. (http://www.epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/)

My only point here is that the song remains the same. There are a lot of patterns that have been repeated for a very long time in history. Of course, buying a bomb instead of funding more research is easier. -- Posted by: Jon Fernquest

I would argue that America is increasingly being turned into a country where psychological anarchy reigns. Physical security hasn't broken down but trust in the law has.

Our laws are enforced according to the whims of those charged with enforcing them. Bush makes a mental finding and the law is put aside. Twelve million illegals enter the country while our government allows it to happen by not funding and enforcing its laws. When it is finally forced to acknowledge the situation Congress responds by attempting to pass a law making it a legal fait accompli, corporations are afforded the opportunity--for a price--to help write laws that favors them over consumers.

Respect for the law is constantly being weakened by such activities. Psychologically the individual begins to see the law as something to be used when it is to his or her advantage and put aside when it's not.

The goal is to be a winner, and society be damned. The result is that social needs become harder to address. The individual becomes detached from an increasingly dysfunctional society. The law and government becomes less and less relevant.

America is becoming the Iran of the mind. -- Posted by: wjd123

'libertopians' huh? So... what is it about pointing out governments creating chaos and failing to protect lives and property that is 'utopian?'

Any arguments to prove that classical liberal foreign policy doesn't work? -- Posted by: Brett Celinski

"Instead the Americans smashed that state.

It sent people scurrying back to the basic building blocks of our society, which are the clans and tribes. People turned to them for basic self-protection."

These words should be tatooed on GWB's chest so he has to read them every morning.

If my town had a little ethnic shooting going on and there were no national troops to pacify the situation in sight, I would immediately stick to the guys with the same nationality/religion, morals be damned. That's the winning solution in your civil war prisoner's dilemma. -- Posted by: Oskar Shapley