Ambushed on the Potomac

National Interest ^ | January 6, 2009 | Richard Perle

[iopscusa]

great post. Richard Perle in defense of GWB, Iraqi War and NeoConservatives.

[richardtavor]

What a self important wind bag.

[PetroniusMaximus]

Short version: we are rotting from within.

[highlander_UW]

Early in 2003 one senior foreign-service officer answered my question, “How many of your colleagues at the State Department share the president’s views on foreign policy?” with a quick and confident, “About 15 percent.” The number may well have been even smaller at the CIA, which made egregious intelligence errors and then applied its skill at tweaking and leaking to undermine the president who acted on its advice.4

The disease has so infused the US that I don't see how a sufficient amount of it be purged to allow the patient to survive. And by that I mean the state department, the media, politicians...the framework is rotten to the core. Building upon this structure is foolhardy and dangerous.

[SatinDoll]

If all of you get the chance to read Trevor Loudon’s essay, “Obama and the Keeping of Power” at the internet site below, we better hope they do the same to PEBHO.

http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/

[FreedomPoster]

Yes, the take-away from this is that the Imperial Bureaucracy does what it likes, damn the President’s policy directives.

It is past time for the People to stop funding this nonsense in the name of “a professional Civil Service”. I’d rather have the President’s hand-picked people, even if they change every 4-8 years.

[livius]

Very interesting.

[jimtorr]

From what I have myself seen, this disease seems to affect every agency.

After all, Presidents and even legislators come and go, but civil servants have jobs as long as they want.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

bttt.

[highlander_UW]

After all, Presidents and even legislators come and go, but civil servants have jobs as long as they want.

They have become a shadow government running from behind the scenes. What goes on at the top is often little more than kabuki theater.

[Guenevere]

read later

[nathanbedford]

This article is clearly a very important contribution to our understanding of the failures of the foreign policy of the Bush administration. It is a remarkable coincidence that it appears on Free Republic within an hour of the article directing readers to view C-SPAN's "After Hours" interview of investigative reporter Bill Gertz responding to questions by Frank Gaffney about his book, "Failure Factory." It is significant that these two sources complement and confirm each other. Both discuss quite candidly the fecklessness of the Bush administration and especially its failure or to clean house in the State Department, the Defense Department, and the intelligence apparatus with the predictable result that Bush's policies everywhere were undermined by liberal apparatchiks.

It is my view, and I so posted here at the time, and that Bush lost control of his foreign policy and any hope of implementing the so-called Bush Doctrine when the weapons of mass destruction were not found as advertised. Later, in a postmortem of his incumbency in the Bush administration, Karl Rove astonished me in a press conference in which he confided that he had gone to George Bush and implored him to conduct a defense of his administration which was being impaled with the slogan, "George Bush lied and people died." Astonishingly, Bush declined to do so and even forbade Rove from conducting such a defense of the administration. The rest is history, we all know that everything sloughed down hill both domestically and in foreign affairs thereafter.

I also posted immediately after the debacle of the 2006 election that part of the reason for the catastrophe at the polls was Bush's inability or unwillingness to exploit the bully pulpit and articulate conservative policies which the party and the people could understand and rally behind. We now see the two strands coming together, the Bush administration died a victim of its own rope -a -dope habit both at home and abroad.

Both Bill Gertz and Richard Perle have contributed greatly to our understanding of the events which make up the outworking of this process. I have always been fascinated by this undeniable reluctance on the part of George Bush to fight his corner. I have never thought that he was motivated by mean considerations. Rather, I believe that it comes from his upbringing and his Christian character which finds politicking and self congratulation, or even exculpatory explanation, to be somehow unseemly or ungentlemanly. He regards himself as a statesman not as a politician as a Christian and not a party man.

Whatever Bush's motivations, he nevertheless bears a very heavy responsibility for failure to pick up the verbal cudgels because his obligation to do so is not exclusive to his own legacy but it is to his party, to his conservative friends, and to his nation. His inexplicable and certainly unjustifiable silence has gravely injured them all.

[Uncle Ike]

I wish I still had the link (and, for the record, I’m not about to try to find it before my first cuppa coffee at 5:30 on a Sunday morning...;~))

But, I learned all I ever needed to know about the US Dept of State a couple of years ago, when I saw a quote from the US Ambassador to the OAS —

After casting an ‘Abstain’ vote on a blatantly Anti-American resolution (put forth by Hugo Chavez, if memory serves) at an OAS meeting, he said that he really wanted to vote ‘AYE’ on the measure, but that probably wouldn’t look good......... (Gist is accurate, if the words aren’t exact)

[hinckley buzzard]

Even John Kennedy complained about the bureaucracy--he said words to the effect that "I establish policies and issue directions and--nothing happems!"

George Bush spent enough time in his father's White House to see all this close up. He had no excuse for not knowing that the obstinate and entrenched bureaucrats would do what they wanted, including betraying the country, unless he put the hammer down. Yet he acted like they were all just regular folks ready and eager to do his will. Pathetic.

[ByteMercenary]

“... he said that he really wanted to vote ‘AYE’ on the measure, but that probably wouldn’t look good......”

Career gubmint guy, at that level who says something like that should be shot, not fired. There should be a heavy price for treason but it has come to pass that any gubmint job above dog-catcher does not come with the intestinal fortitude to demand justice. IMHO it explains why many civil “servants” want us regular Joes unarmed.

[Leisler]

Condi Rice.
Colin Powel.
Mineta at the FAA.
Sandy Tenet.

Bush never fired anybody. Reagan fired an entire union.

If I was Bush I would of had fired/retired thousands.
There's no way that wouldn't of been a net positive

[Uncle Ike]

” Career gubmint guy, at that level who says something like that should be shot, not fired. “

As far as I was able to find out at the time, they guy suffered no negative repercussions from his statement...

[GadareneDemoniac]

You can go back even farther: Ronald Reagan’s people were told by contemptuous bureaucrats that in a few years they would be gone but the bureaucrats would still be there.

To my way of thinking, if I were POTUS, I would be sure that my cabinet was on the same page as me, then if they got any resistance from these feather merchants, reassign them. No, you can’t be fired. Yes, your new assignment is in Antarctica.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

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