Since even before it was dubiously elected in 2000, the Bush administration has been
asking Americans for their unquestioning trust. The
Republican-dominated Congress has been eager to comply, approving most of
President Bush's requests without
serious scrutiny or question, and squelching concerns from the minority
party and independents.
Remember the campaign promises? Before they were
elected in 2000, George W. Bush and Richard Cheney told the
American voters:
Trust us! We'll restore
decency and honor to government!
Trust us! We'll reach out
to all Americans and unite the nation!
Trust us! Washington is
awash in money, and our policies will balance the budget!
Trust us! We'll shrink
government!
Republicans hailed and echoed the promises, and although
Bush's victory was questionable, GOP legislators were swept
into a majority in the Congress..
Now, more than five years later, what is the result?
- Decency and honor are nowhere to be found amid the
unchecked corruption.
- The only unity among Americans is against the most
obvious blunders of the administration itself
- The projected surplus inherited from the previous
administration has been converted into unprecedented debt.
- While government services have been cut back or
eliminated, military operations and government intrusion
into citizens' private lives are at all time highs.
So did Team Bush just make a few honest mistakes?
Or were they deliberately misleading us? Whichever is
the case, whether they're merely incompetent dolts or
malevolent schemers, it is becoming clear that they have
established a pattern of betraying the public trust, and
just about everyone is a victim in some sense.
Oh, but these were just campaign promises! Everyone
knows these are rarely kept.
Yet once they were in office, the pattern not only
continued, it escalated and spread throughout the
administration. Consistently simplistic misjudgment of
the complexity of the real world, coupled with inconsistency
in reasoning and action, became the hallmarks of every
aspect of Bush administration policy. .Let's look, for
example, at the now famous rationale for invading Iraq,
which shifted repeatedly, as conflicting evidence has
contradicted policy at every step.
Trust us! We'll only go to
war as a last resort, when all peaceful options have been
exhausted!
Oops! Did prematurely shutting down U.N.
inspections look a little suspicious? Oh well...
Trust us! Afghani war
lords can take over the job of bringing Osama bin Laden to
justice!
Oops! Some of those war lords don't seem to take
our anti-terrorism policy seriously. Oh well...
Trust us! Iraq is building
weapons of mass destruction to use against the United
States!
Oops! It looks as though it wasn't doing that after
all. Oh well...
Trust us! Saddam Hussein
has connections to al Qaeda terrorists!
Oops! It seems bin Laden wanted him dead, too.
Oh well...
Trust us! The world is
safer now that Saddam Hussein has been deposed!
Oops! Now there are lots of terrorists where there
were none before, and Iran and North Korea are getting
difficult now that they see we're spread too thin. Oh
well...
Trust us! Iraqi oil
production will pay for rebuilding the country!
Oops! We'll have to rebuild the oil production
facilities first, if the saboteurs will let us. Oh
well...
Trust us! The Iraqis will
embrace democracy!
Oops! While many Iraqis do want democracy, it seems democracy doesn't work so well where
coercion and violence are the traditional ways of settling
differences. Oh well...
Trust us! Iraqis will soon
take over security and defense of their own country!
Oops! It seems they can't yet work effectively
without American leadership. Oh well...
Trust us! There won't be a
civil war in Iraq. Democracies don't war!
Oops! Ours just did, didn't it?
The one thing that has become abundantly obvious to all
but the most stubborn partisans, is that the
administration's obtuse policy of putting simplistic
ideology ahead of hard reality is responsible for the
repeated disappointments and disasters. True to form,
the administration refuses to acknowledge the problem, that
it is itself responsible for its loss of trust, both of its
allies and of its own people. Refusing to acknowledge
its problem and reality, the administration is incapable of
dealing with it realistically. Its mind set, that its
ideology couldn't possibly be in error, simply won't allow
it. All it can do is follow its own discredited
precedent, feebly concocting imaginary excuses and
scapegoats for the real problems that its blind ideology is
powerless to solve.
Trust them? Some contend it's just bad luck on this
one issue, that the pattern does not involve other aspects
of administration policy. How about intelligence and
planning?
Trust us! No one could
have foreseen terrorists using hijacked airplanes to
demolish buildings!
Oops! Intelligence reports from weeks before had
warned that just such an event might be imminent.
Trust us! No one could
have foreseen that deposing Saddam Hussein might lead to
chaos and civil war!
Oops! That was precisely the reason that the
previous President Bush—Dubbya's father—decided against
ousting Saddam during Gulf War I.
Trust us! No one could
have foreseen a hurricane overtopping the levees in New
Orleans!
Oops! Meteorologists and army engineers had
predicted just that event, and had reported their findings
hours before Katrina struck.
Trust us! National
intelligence needs to be overhauled!
Oops! It isn't as much a failure of intelligence
services to provide reliable information, as it is the
administration's refusal to act upon available information
appropriately, that has resulted in its being blind-sided
again and again.
Rather than using the intelligence it has available, the
Bush administration chooses to ignore what it doesn't like,
and cherry-picks bogus intelligence that appears to support
its ideology. It disciplines experienced military
commanders for expressing honest concern about its
half-baked schemes. It retaliates against those who
refuse to help it cover up its own blunders. In short,
the Bush administration has demonstrated a systemic aversion
to dealing forthrightly with reality and truth.
Seemingly with the mentality of a child, it supposes that
the inevitable calamities will somehow someday cease and
disappear, if only it denies, threatens, and preaches long
and loudly enough.
Trust them? According to recent polls, nearly 60
percent of Americans now do not, the remaining 40 percent
representing mostly neo-conservative dogmatists and people
who pay no attention to the news. The rest of the
nation and the world are growing increasingly concerned,
that out-of-touch fanatics in Washington could be as much
(if not more) of a threat as out-of-touch fanatics in
Teheran or Pyongyang.
And where has the Congress—our constitutional
check-and-balance safeguard—been while all this has been
going on? Well, for the most part, our legislators
have been busy dismantling their own reality-check
mechanisms as well. The House majority has dutifully
gutted the House Ethics Rules, to avoid the embarrassment of
having to impeach their own leader, Tom Delay.
Meanwhile, the Senate has just as dutifully caved to
pressure from V.P. Cheney, threatening to stifle all dissent
and debate with what it calls "the nuclear option." It
seems they haven't had time to study the Bush agenda in
detail, so for the most part they've simply rubber-stamped
it, devoutly trusting that the God-fearing leader of their
party and the free world wouldn't steer them wrong.
It's now obvious to most that we can't place any trust in
the Bush administration, except to do the wrong thing at the
wrong time for the wrong reason.
Trust us! The Patriot Act
has adequate safeguards to protect everyone's constitutional
rights!
Trust us! We promise we
won't illegally wiretap anyone who isn't either a terrorist
or a traitor!
Trust us! Anyone who says
we might use illegal wiretaps is either a terrorist or a
traitor!
Dizzy yet? Try this next bit of déjà
vu:
Trust us! If anyone could
foresee a possible threat to national security, the Dubai
port deal would not go through!*
At long last, it appears that Republicans in Congress
have begun to realize that their trust has been misplaced.
Alarmingly, to get their attention it was necessary for Bush
to approve a port deal that drew pubic attention to a policy
that most Americans (rightly or wrongly) deem a severe
potential threat to the security of their nation.
(Maybe even more severe than flag-burning!) Now, with
an election approaching in November, congressional
Republicans have abruptly executed a long overdue
about-face.
Trust us! We're fulfilling
our constitutional obligation in the system of checks and
balances!
Trust us! We're working to
reform lobbying and clean up corruption!
Trust us! We're going to
save taxpayers money by eliminating pork-barrel projects!
Trust us! Our opponents
(whom we've effectively muzzled) don't seem to have any
ideas!
Trust them? Have they given us any substantial
reason to do so? It's something to think about.
But let's not get so lost in thought that we forget to vote
in November. Because from now until then, we're likely
to hear words (to the effect):
Trust us!
We'll give
seniors an alternative to Medicare that'll give 'em heart
attacks trying to decipher!
Trust us!
We won't let stem-cell researchers harm your embryo just to
cure fatal diseases!
Trust us!
The President won't break the law, and Congress won't let
him get away with it!
Trust us!
No child will be left behind; their schools will just be
closed for lack of funding!
Trust us!
We swear to approve only fair-minded, non-partisan judges,
on our honor!
Trust us!
Sure we'll deal with corruption—we've been dealing with it
for years!
Trust us!
The Patriot Act safeguards all Americans' constitutional
rights!
Trust us!
We'll fix energy policy by changing Daylight Saving Time!
Trust us!
We'll make tax breaks for rich people permanent!
Trust us!
We'll save Social Security by privatizing it!
Trust us!
There won't be any military draft!
Trust us!
Don't worry! Be happy!
Trust us!
Right up to Election Day!
Now, ain't that a crock?
Some might criticize that dwelling upon past failures
distracts us from planning and building for the future.
True, bemoaning the past to the exclusion of forward vision
and thinking will not remedy anything. Yet we must
learn from the mistakes of the past in order to avoid
repeating them in the future. As we reflect on the
past and continuing incompetence, abuses, and failures
of the Bush administration, it becomes clear that this is
not a team that can forthrightly address and solve the
complex problems of today's real world. But while we
can't replace that administration in 2006, we have an
opportunity to shift the balance of power in a
rubber-stamp Republican-controlled Congress that has
refused—until this election year—to take its oversight
responsibilities seriously. Though real progress will
have to wait for new leadership, at least with stern
oversight perhaps we can reduce the number and severity of
blunders until that happy day arrives.
=SAJ=
*It is
entirely reasonable to suppose that no harm might ever come
from the Dubai port deal. Yet it is also entirely
reasonable for Americans to regard with suspicion any
agreement that would place their critical infrastructure
under control of any entity whose interests might someday
conceivably prove hostile to our own, even if there is no
evidence of such hostility at present. Some might call
this xenophobia. After 9/11, Americans call it prudent
caution. We wish our friends in the UAE well, and
trust that they understand our concern, as we would
understand theirs under similar circumstances.
