View from where we are

So last week Alberto Gonzales quit (read: was fired by the Pres). Following the utterly incompetent Donald Rumsfeld and the overly competent Karl Rove, one of the last of the toxic squares is gone only leaving Dick Cheney to fall on his sword. It won't happen, I know, but it would be so good for the political climate in the USA and make a statement that those with the "We had to destroy the village to save it" mentality are finished. And "toxic squares", you ask? Well there are four of them, they pretend to be uber-conservative, atavistically so in a social context. And they've done more than anyone but the Pres to simultaneously alienate useful, longtime friends abroad as well as conservative voters at home.

So how did it come to this and why are these four so poisonous? Well it's like this. Cheney and Rove are almost certainly the architects of the "Let's talk compassionate conservativism while polarising the electorate" then isolating inconvenient special interest groups decimating the opposition. It was a risky and but brilliant tactic that worked. Up to a point. More on that later

Rumsfeld was a key asset to the administration until the flaws in his plan began to show. And flaws they were as he committed one of the biggest mistakes a politician could make - looking like a sucker. He believed the hype from people like Ahmed Chalabi, that Iraqis were still waiting for America to free them and that they would respond with "flowers and sweets" and bring freedom and light to the Middle East. Mind you a quick read through the histories of previous Westerners and Easterners who have tried this in the area would have disabused him of the notion in quick time, but no, Rummy new better. And like a dotcom wannabe he believed it would be different somehow this time. He believed the particular thread of neo-con hype from Norman Podhoretz and friends that, post-9/11 created the basis of belief to launch the War on Terror. It was America doing it and we had the strongest Army in world history and the place was flush with money after the Clinton years. Nothing could stop it. And nothing did. The Iraqi Army crumbled like a Potemkin village in a brush fire. Rummy had his proof of concept - a high-tech war can be fought with inferior numbers but still project overwhelming force. But they're no closer to creating any semblance of a free Iraq and almost all of the fighting has taken place after the offensive war was completed. Donny R made a 1st-year-student at West Point mistake and forgot that there's an aftermath and you have to win the peace so paid for it with his job. Shame that's all!

But Iraq's a long way away and like Vietnam in the 70's we'll pay dearly but will eventually get over it*. All politics (to quote Tip O'Neill) is local. And local is where there's been not only a huge power grab by the executive, but the global has come back to bite us all in the ass. A lot of this can be laid at Alberto Gonzales door. Gonzales, another of Dubya's Texas cronies, was the first Hispanic cabinet Secretary. Which is a shame as he was widely considered to have gotten his job on the basis of his friendship with the president rather than on merit. This shows in his output and he got the sack not for firing prosecutors in a partisan way (as many pundits like to say, that's unfortunately perfectly legal in the USA) but for doing it crudely without any regard for process or consensus - i.e. it looked bad. But the two things he may go down (in more ways than one!) in history for are quite probably flip sides to the same coin: advising the president that it was legal for the US military to torture people to extract information, and that the administration could get away with wiretapping American citizens.

We have lost so many good friends abroad because of Abu Ghraib and the follow up from Gonzales issuing cover for what amounts to torture in any human beings definition (except maybe in the White House). Maybe this seems a trivial loss next to soldiers dying but we have to remember America is an idea, a very strong idea that used to resonate around the world. This is the place the poor, the abused and the dispossessed could come to have a clean start and even do well for themselves just on their wits and hard work. This is the place where you can criticize the government and not be imprisoned or killed for it. This is the place where freedom to worship anything, anyone or any God you want is foundational AND you can do this with whomever you like and its none of the governments business. This was revolutionary stuff and and still is even today in much of the world! But we forget that and we betray the idea of what America is when we say we can torture you as long as it's not in the 50 American states - anywhere else our ideals don't hold, we're just like the worst of what Saddam, Mugabe and every other tinpot dictator of some 3rd world toilet are. Which is a shame because our friends and ex-friends abroad want to be believe in the liberty and democracy we preach but but find it hard when we're so hypocritical about it. We're not convincing. They don't believe we really mean it and there are unnecessary costs we incur for being that way.

But that's the great abroad. The thing is, the problems above aren't aberrations and a few bad apples deviating from the true Bush path. Oh no. There's a competency issue to be addressed and the evidence doesn't look a bit good for the Pres.

Bill Clinton left office with an enormous surplus set to last for at least a decade. That was exhausted by 2002. But the big spending continued until no less than Alan Greenspan stepped up yesterday to say it's gone too far and is becoming dangerous. So who are the conservatives then? Not big-spender GW Bush!

But the defining moment when the 2008 election was probably lost and compassionate conservatism was dealt a death blow was Hurricane Katrina. The incoherent and inept Federal response was pathetic. For all the 100's of billions of dollars poured into homeland security Michael Chertoff's lot demonstrated amazing incompetence in the face of real need. God help our miserable hides should an organized terrorist cell strike again. It'll be sudden, not in slow motion like a hurricane.

But Chertoff, to be fair was new in the job and in a branrd new department. Question was where were the men with the brains? Karl Rove, for all his vaunted expertise in managing political crises seemed out to sea on this one. He missed the boat (to extend a metaphor dangerously) by a long shot. But even he was an adviser. Dick Cheney, with a reputation for being the most powerful vice-President ever was also missing in action. He was meant to be the experienced one, the one that could read the way the wind was blowing (as it were) and avert disaster of the White House's making but he missed the boat as well.

So these were the top men helping George Bush run the leading country in the world? Then good riddance and thank God for term limits. Not to say another crew will be any better but to plumb depths of incompetence this low takes some amazing, but awfully twisted skill.

* My father mentioned recently that we lost 58,000 killed in Vietnam. No one mentions the over 150,000 that committed suicide when they came back. Maybe we haven't gotten over it the way we think we have...