Fire the Bums!

Renewed controversy is flaring up based on disclosures in State of Denial, Bob Woodward's new book on the Bush administration's failures in Iraq. The biggest allegation is that no one from the Bush crowd took the al-Qaeda threat seriously in the months before 9/11. Actually, the claims that Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Bush had been repeatedly warned are not new; we have been hearing about them consistently since that fateful day. However, what gives these allegations enhanced credibility is the perceived authoritativeness of Woodward, and the fact that he has been accused frequently in recent years of being nothing more than an imperial stenographer because of his two Bush-friendly recent books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. His revelations have also fanned the flames of political debate, with November congressional elections looming. But there are strong reasons to be cynical about whether anything will actually change, even if the Democrats regain control of Congress.

In the big picture, what is acceptable and relevant in American politics has for over five years been conditioned by one thing, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The ramifications of why the attacks were allowed to occur and what the response to them implied are so weighty and portentous that everyone – whether they were involved or not – seems terrified about what they might find were they to try to get real answers. Yet if such a thing had happened in any normal country, even on a symbolic level and if only to assure the public that the leadership felt some sense of responsibility and remorse, a total purge would have been carried out immediately. Alas, America is not such a country.

Yet venture anywhere outside of the political arena and there are clearly analogous cases we read about almost every day. Imagine any corporation. An executive bilks money or simply fails to make a decent profit, and he faces the ax. A baseball coach loses too many games, and he's history. Burn too many fries at McDonald's, and you're on the street. The fact that no one from the government has been fired in relation with the 9/11 attacks – with the exception of those who criticized the administration's asleep-at-the-wheel tendencies before the attacks, or its subsequent handling of the "war on terror" – speaks volumes about the government's avowed dissociation with the same concepts of accountability and competitiveness that guide almost every other category of organization in American society. Yet these are the concepts that made the country great, that allowed it to develop more rapidly than any other, and that, at least in the early days after the Revolution, were emphatically applied to the conduct of government as well. Ironically, nowadays the least important issues in American society are scrutinized and punished relentlessly, while the most important ones are met with icy indifference by the powers-that-be, who have lost contact with the founding principles that once guided political life.

Condi and Bush: Missing in Action, Obtuse and Uninterested

The official to have been excoriated most recently is Condoleezza Rice, for a long time regarded as an obvious weak link in the administration. The fact that a Russian specialist at Stanford University could have been appointed as national security adviser back in 2001 offers a revealing insight into the misplaced priorities of an administration of old Cold Warriors determined from the start to ignore the real emerging threats to the country's well-being. While undoubtedly an intelligent academic, Rice seems to have had no real qualifications for her new role, and no real interest in learning from people who, like then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, knew what the real emerging threats were. Rice was told well in advance that al-Qaeda was determined to hit America. Yet her reaction, Woodward writes, was to give her intelligence advisers "the brush-off." Maybe for Rice, coming from her background, a briefing from the intelligence czar and his colleagues was comparable to just another mundane faculty meeting. Yet rather than being fired or demoted after her failure to take action when she could have, this academic with the ubiquitous vacant stare was promoted to a position in the Department of State where her incompetence could actually do greater harm.

And then there is the president himself, a man so certain of his unerring correctness of judgment that he has consistently closed his eyes to the reality unfolding all around him, one of death, destruction, and disaster for American interests. There is an old truism that a president is only as good as his advisers, and this president has indeed proved his worth by surrounding himself with yes-men and opportunists willing to parrot his preexisting opinions about the world and America's role in it. It is hard to imagine how anyone with more material resources, intelligence data, and qualified personnel at his command could have done a worse job of utilizing them. One can only conclude that for whatever reason, the resistance to reality has been deliberate.

Rumsfeld's Royal Treatment

If Reagan and Clinton were the Teflon presidents, to whom nothing would stick, Rumsfeld is the diamond king: there's just no chipping away at him, despite so many inviting facets. The fact that enormous internal and public opposition to his rule have failed to dethrone him by now is testament to a megalomania and brazen cunning above and beyond those of anyone else in the current government. It is indeed almost unprecedented in the history of warfare that the head of any military could keep his office after bankrupting his country's armed forces, stretching the troops to breaking point, sending his men into harm's way with unsafe equipment in a war that reasonable individuals accurately predicted would be self-defeating, and, to top it off, finally recruiting from the bottom of the barrel when no one else will enlist. In only five years, Donald Rumsfeld has almost single-handedly ruined the morale, the public image, and the quality of the U.S. armed forces.

Indeed, it boggles the mind to consider that Rumsfeld is still in command after these failings, not to mention such a demonstrably destructive war, the Abu Ghraib and other torture scandals, and now, finally, the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which shows the Iraq invasion has made the U.S. less safe from terrorist attacks. And then there is Afghanistan, where the second coming of the Taliban has made a mockery out of America's "shock and awe" invasion of late 2001, Hamid Karzai's puppet government, and Western attempts to "rebuild" the country.

In the old days of empire, when the commander had to personally lead his men into battle, a revolt of the generals often resulted in a palace coup. Nowadays, when military decisions are made by a domineering civilian secretary in an air-conditioned office far from the battlefield, the generals are cowed into submission, or fired if they disagree. Either way, they can only express their frustration once in the safety of retirement. Again and again, Rumsfeld has been purposefully deaf to the real and serious concerns attested by top military men, while at the same time wishing to take control of clandestine operations from any other department – most notably, the CIA – that might steal the limelight or interfere with his own self-serving plan.

Non-Accountability and the Echo Chamber

What is really the worst aspect of the whole mess is how it has disintegrated into nothing more than a predictable series of pre-election attacks and counterattacks from the Republicans and the Democrats, who are in reality just two sides of the same coin. The former president, Bill Clinton, loses his cool on national television and declares that he was the one, not Bush, who tried harder to stop the al-Qaeda threat. Yet he didn't mention, and no one reminded him, that his administration's policy in the Balkan wars of the 1990s is the main reason Islamic mujahedeen were able to penetrate Europe, and from there the United States, in large numbers and with a sophisticated new operational network at their disposal. This is damning indeed, but don't expect the Democrats to acknowledge it.

For his own short-term interests, Clinton expedited the arrival in Bosnia of thousands of foreign mujahedeen sponsored by Iran and Saudi Arabia, and tolerated the establishment of a charity and banking network in Europe that would provide the springboard for the 9/11 hijackers to carry out their evil mission. Soon after the Bosnia adventure, Clinton's desire to bomb Yugoslavia so that NATO would have a reason to continue its moribund existence opened the door to Islamist NGO penetration in Kosovo, where businesses and charities funded by our "allies" in the Gulf continue to proselytize and radicalize segments of the Muslim population, still largely impoverished despite seven years of UN occupation and "development."

The most ironic thing about the Clinton outburst was how it emboldened the Democrats to stand up to the Bush administration. That it took a frustrated outburst from their party's white eminence to galvanize the rank-and-file is not exactly flattering for the Democrats and their stock of courage. Shamelessness, though, they have exhibited in abundance. Fearing the charge of weakness and not "supporting the troops," they have always meekly criticized the war, with even the 2004 candidate from the Democratic Party – the leader of the supposed "opposition," for crying out loud – calling for upping the Iraq occupation rather than pulling out. Now we seem to have entered a Bizarro World echo chamber, with Democrats accusing Republicans of a "cut and run" strategy in Afghanistan. A high school debating squad could have come up with a better comeback line. The truth is that they don't want to innovate away from the tried and true political vernacular.

The worst thing about all this is that when comes another terrorist attack on the U.S. or its assets abroad, the corrupt and incompetent political representatives from both parties are sure to just swap accusations about who could have saved the day. But no matter what they decide, they will both agree that it is crucial to keep up the war. After all, they both feed from the same trough, the one kept filled with slop by the lobbyists for the all-powerful interests of the military-industrial-oil-technology complex. They're in it together, party differences be damned.

There is simply no other way to explain how no one from the Clinton or Bush administrations has ever been indicted for truly important things, things like importing and arming mujahedeen in Bosnia, or allowing massive ethnic cleansing of Christians in Kosovo. Things like being complacent in the face of the al-Qaeda threat, or letting bin Laden himself escape at Tora Bora in November 2001. Or attempting to stop any investigations into 9/11 (remember that if the president had had his way, there would not even be a 9/11 Commission report today). Or brazenly fabricating intelligence and lying to the world about basically everything. Or shutting down patriotic whistleblowers such as Sibel Edmonds, who has simply tried to make America a better and safer place and bring the official corruption – and yes, even ties with foreign terrorists – to light.

On that note, we can appreciate a final irony, the one that really shows the utter hopelessness of our elected leaders. This is, of course, the now burning question of "What did they know, and when?" in the Mark Foley scandal. Yet if Speaker of the House Dennis "Denny Boy" Hastert is forced to relinquish his leadership over a gay congressman's online peccadilloes rather than this, it will just show that the American people's belief in moral integrity for civil servants applies only to matters titillating and salacious, and not to matters of life and death for large numbers of Americans.

So who among these great leaders is the weakest link, the worst threat to national security? In the end, it is hard to decide. They all have so much going for them.

To be safe, we should fire the lot. They've certainly not given any reason to believe that they intend to improve on their performance or honor the good old principles of accountability and integrity upon which this country was founded. It is in this light that we should reexamine just who might be the real "anti-Americans" in our midst.

Welcome to the land of no accountability