Unwise And Inappropriate

Responding today to Congressional legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney said "Democrats think they can impose unwise and inappropriate restrictions on our commanders."

It was a moment of breathtaking, almost laughable hypocrisy.

No elected leader in recent memory has been so utterly wrong on any number of judgments and predictions than Cheney, and no administration in the past hundred years has made more "unwise and inappropriate" decisions than the Bush team.

But don’t take my word for it. Matthew Dowd, a former advisor to President Bush, ripped his ex-boss in an interview this weekend in the New York Times. Dowd left the White House disillusioned by the handling of the Iraq war and claimed Bush was increasingly out of touch with average Americans.

But recent examples of glaring incompetence extend far beyond Bush and Company. Senator McCain visited Baghdad hoping to confirm troop surge "progress", but was instead confronted by hostile journalists wondering if he had been living in an alternate universe. Despite whines and moans from conservative pundits, the journalistic disdain was justified and well within the bounds of a critical media. Past heroism doesn’t absolve McCain from painting a picture of Iraq that amounts to a lie. Though the weekly civilian death toll falling from 100 to 99 might be technically termed "progress" it amounts to little more than a band-aid on a gaping wound. Of note, McCain never took a lone, leisurely stroll outside the green zone. He would likely have been killed.

And let’s not overlook the smack-down given by the Supreme Court today to the EPA. By failing to enforce the law under the Clean Air Act, said the Supremes, the EPA failed to do its job. Why would the EPA drag its feet on something as important as enforcing environmental law? To help the energy industry, which gave mountains of money to the candidacy of George Bush. His cronies at the agency were the foxes in the proverbial hen-house, helping the EPA to sprinkle glaring incompetence with sleaze.

The media isn’t immune from blunders, either. They’ve been reporting all day about the implications of huge first-quarter money raised by the 2008 Presidential candidates. But they have entirely missed a major point: the Democrats out-raised the Republicans. In past years the GOP had a substantial fundraising edge thanks to ties with big business. But that paradigm has changed, in part because of the ineptitude of the Bush regime and in part because of the Internet’s ability to reach grass-roots activists who were relegated to the sidelines in years past.

Finally, we were reminded this week of the most audacious of the glaringly incompetent—Middle Eastern Governments. The seizure of 15 British sailors by Iran underscores the need by theocrats to obscure their own incompetence by demonizing the West, in this ridiculous case by forcing prisoners to parrot incriminating statements to reporters. Without an enemy to blame for their problems, states like Iran, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon would have to explain to citizens why their unemployment rates are obscenely high, why their economies have been left behind by the rest of the world, why their societies are hopelessly stratified and filled with inequality, and why their cultures remain brutally tribal, stale and myopic.

If only our own leaders understood this dynamic enough to avoid playing into it. But alas, elite-sissy-turned-wannabe-tough-guys like Dick Cheney are convinced that bullying and threats succeed while diplomacy fails. We’ll still be paying for this misjudgment generations from now.

- JT Compton