Moving the Deck Chairs on the
TitanicA good title, the
Titanic being a metaphor for the Bush Administration’s steadfast, arrogant perseverance in pursuing a liberal, elitist, and internationalist ethos in – with few exceptions – virtually everything it has undertaken.
While GWB (disingenuously?) campaigned as an evangelical Christian and as a conservative, in virtually his every appointment, Bush has relied on the “elites.” The latest most egregious example, is the shuffling of the very noble-looking (but amazingly unproductive) and Yale-educated
John Negroponte from his position as director of National Intelligence (where he has performed with outstanding mediocrity) to the vacant position of Deputy Secretary of State.
Only slightly less egregious, but surely more important, is GWB’s appointment of Admiral
Fallon – who has spent the last several years in the Pacific rubbing elbows with his counterparts in the PLAN (that’s People’s Liberation Army Navy!) – to replace the retiring General Abizaid. It seems egregious, first, because, Fallon is a naval aviator (hat tip:
Westhawk) and the Iraq War is basically an Army/Marine affair, and it is egregious, secondly, because Fallon has had nothing to do with Iraq for the past three years.
In other words, Bush passed over all the generals that have gotten their hands dirty with the heavy lifting in Iraq for the past three years and brought in a patrician fly-boy more at home at a cocktail party
with Chinese bigwigs than on a battlefield.
Bush is running on empty, and reshuffling the deck chairs is not going to get it. Bush, it seems, is working very hard at going down in history as the worst Republican President EVER (well, except, perhaps, for Gerald Ford).
If you wonder why I am so discouraged about the war, read the following pieces about: a) how the American elites have (suicidally)
rewritten the rules of warfare (with the net result that we never win any); and how, if Iraq is to be won, it must be won – not by building sewage plants – but by restoring order and by
letting our troops FIGHT!
And, oh, Bush apparently
wants to keep building more sewage plants in Iraq (at OUR expense!).
POSTSCRIPT: Ralph Peters, whom I greatly respects,
has a totally different – and very FAVORABLE – take on the Fallon appointment to CENTCOM – namely, that Fallon’s focus is to be – not Iraq – but Iran. If, in fact, Peters is correct in this surmise, then this could be a favorable sign after all. (However, I remain skeptical.)
