Perspective- Part 2
12/24/2007
“Perspective”- You are a little pest. As our beloved President Reagan said: “There you go again!” President Clinton and the CIA warn President-elect Bush and his National Security Advisor about the dangers of Al Qaida and even that there is a plan afoot to use commercial airliners to execute terrorist acts. Both the President and his advisors are “unimpressed.” They do nothing about the warnings. They do not investigate known Al Qaida agents, the FBI refusing the CIA request for wire taps (Why??) and there is absolutely no response to the phoned warnings from Al Qaida kidnap victims or after the first aircraft hits one of the twin towers. The only response by the Bush administration is for Dick Cheney to flee to safety in an Air Force Jet while the President is a “sitting duck” in a classroom in Florida.
A predictable evaluation by a typical third grade American student would assume that President Bush, Condy Rice, the FBI and the President’s closest staff were completely incompetent. Obviously Bin Laden and Al Quaida waited for these “schleps” to take over our government because they are incompetent. Somehow, the Bushites have “gotten away with murder,” blaming the cowardly Democrats and a competent Bill Clinton for their complete inability to guard our country.
The President’s response, however, mires us even deeper into incompetence. He does the obvious- makes a big deal of Homeland Security- further weakening the country’s ability to respond to both terrorism and national disasters. He hires a competent, honorable man as head of Homeland Security, but is very careful not to fund the position. Instead, he doles out political plums- important agency jobs to every political hack and ally that he knows, making sure that they are as incompetent as possible in their positions. This ensures that they will never criticize him- the Peter Principle carried ad nauseum!
Bush replaces one of the most brilliant and talented minds in FEMA, James Lee Witt, with Joe Albough, a pleasant fellow with absolutely no experience in emergency/ disaster management, and then with Michael Brown, another of his campaign workers. In the end, Misters Brown and Bush become the “emergency disaster.”
In short, we have a President who could get nothing right. Even when he “gets it right,” he “can’t stand prosperity.” We send General Franks into Afghanistan at the behest of the brilliant (for real!) Mr. Karzai who arranges everything for us- we are welcomed by most of the country. Karzai has a plan for guarding the borders, changing the government, any occupation that is needed- all General Franks has to do is overthrow the Taliban and capture Bin Laden. He overthrows the Taliban, but does not seem to take the capture of Bin Laden very seriously.
Still, this was a great success- an honorable effort by our country to salvage an embittered and embattled country for its people and to enlist the assistance of European and Middle Eastern countries in the interest of freedom. Somehow, this was not something to savor and use as a catapult to peace and cooperation in the Middle East, however.
No, the pattern of political hackery had now been vindicated by the neopsychotics in the Bush administration. Now, with this “great” victory in “Afgrandstand,” they could ignore all of their failures in permitting the 9/11 attack- blame it on those weak, faint hearted Democrats (who did so well in the Balkans and did not have any 9/11 failures).
Anyway, Admiral Zinni advised sticking to an intelligent plan. First, don’t attack Iraq (the great enemy of Al Qaida). Second, employ 350-400,000 soldiers, plan to guard the borders and for the occupation- all those things a third grade class would come up with. For this, he and his General Chief of Staff, Shinseki, were both fired. Never ones to take advice based on facts, the Neopsychotics chose the brilliant All Star Tommie Franks (a reward for the brilliant job Mr. Karzai had done for him). He agreed to try to conform to the Neopsychotic plan of Herr Rumsfeld- 60,000 soldiers (a politically expedient number) and no plan for guarding the borders from Syria, Iran or Al Qaida- “just find those damn WMDs that we know are not there.” As for the “occupation,” doesn’t that mean something about “jobs?” There “would be no insurgency” they said, The Iraqis won’t care if Bush brings over his campaign donors to take over all the Iraqi businesses; they wouldn’t care about Blackwater International butchering innocent people- they would welcome us as the Afghans did. The trouble is: no Karzai. All the Neopsychotics had was Chalabi- an Iranian spy. All we had was Tommie Franks who couldn’t plan a birthday party without Zinni’s help. Alas, Admiral Zinni’s description of the entire effort was “A large brain fart.”
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.