* And the power-grid and all other civil infrastructure to incompetents
* And drove the newly poor military (who took home their weapons and knew where all the other explosive goodies were hidden) into an insurgency of survival that soon became an insurgency of national pride and Shiite-Sunni revenge.
Stuff happens. To paraphrase Rumsfeld, it’s not the army you wish you had that you send home, it's the army you have.
So the disaster in Iraq, for which these 313 sons and fathers, daughters and mothers gave their lives in the last 90 days, is not the commonly blamed disaster born of al-Qaeda terrorists.
It is the gradually revealed disaster born of neocon hubris and incompetence, where the perpetrators of one catastrophe after another award themselves medals and hand off blame in whatever way is most convenient.
Vaclav Havel, who shook George Bush’s hand in Prague last month, would easily understand the scenario. He lived under similar incompetence and blame-avoidance for forty years. Until the wheels came off communism. Not so much because it was a failed philosophy (which of course it was) but because it was so thoroughly and inherently incompetent.
The wheels have similarly come off the Bush neocon-inspired administration, not so much because it had a failed philosophy, but because it was (and is) overwhelmingly, stupendously, incomprehensively incompetent.
Small government, low taxes, balanced budgets and democratic principles are laudable goals. Nothing at all wrong with that part of the Bush political philosophy. It’s incompetence that has brought us enormous (as well as unrelentingly bungled) government, record deficits, tax irresponsibility and a near collapse of democratic principal both here and abroad. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The incompetence of this Republican administration is so deep and pervasive that it has prominent Republicans running from it as well.
The only entity that has less public approval (by half) than our president is the Congress. In Washington, it might be good policy to follow what was disastrous policy in Iraq.
Send everybody home.
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