Posted on 06/26/2002 8:42:06 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
President George W. Bush delayed for several days yesterday's speech calling on Palestinians to depose Yasser Arafat as one condition for Palestinian statehood. Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Force, trying to protect Jews from terrorist attacks, is reoccupying areas formerly administered by the Palestinian Authority. In short, matters took their own logical course.No one involved has liked that course. Palestinians would prefer to live without Israeli tanks in their backyards or fences walling them in. They are increasingly angry at Yasser Arafat for getting them into this mess. Israelis face the costs and disruptions of calling up army reserves to reoccupy territory they happily turned over to PA administration in the 1990s. The Bush administration was embarrassed over its delay in overhauling Bill Clinton's failed "Oslo peace process."
The administration's Mideast paralysis was symptomatic of a much larger problem of U.S. government, one that is not at all new but manifests itself mainly when there is a need for fundamental policy changes. The permanent bureaucracy, once accurately described by Henry Kissinger as the fourth branch of government, resists change. Harry Truman knew this well. When he turned over the presidency to former Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, he remarked that Ike, who was accustomed to having his orders obeyed, was going to get a big shock when he issued an order from the Oval Office and nothing happened.
President Bush, faced with multiple crises, is no doubt learning this sobering lesson. His forest service, taken over by "environmentalist" dilettantes during the Clinton years, is helpless as dead wood accumulated through years of neglect fuels fires that are destroying many thousands of acres of forests, endangering people, animals and homes. Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission lawyers, emboldened presumably by recent corporate scandals, are having atavistic spasms, hunting down companies that are either competing too little or too much. Agriculture bureaucrats, catering to the farm bloc in Congress, are doling out bigger dollops of hard-earned tax dollars to rich farmers.
And so it goes. Mr. Bush is somewhat in the position of trying to steer an 80,000-ton supertanker with nothing more substantial than a sailboat rudder. He is rueful about the difficulties. When the Environmental Protection Agency undercut his Kyoto policy with a report asserting that the globe is certain to be warmer than now in a hundred years, he brushed it off as yet another vaporous emanation from the EPA bureaucracy.
When it was ascertained that there are 50 or so units of government involved with security, he decided to create a new Department of Homeland Security, no doubt hoping that in the process he could rationalize some of those efforts. Given the natural tendency of bureaucrats to expand their remits, he will be lucky if he doesn't end up with more duplication and deadweight than he has now. As Ronald Reagan once commented, "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."
Republican presidents have a special problem with bureaucracy. Bureaucrats march to a different drummer, the thump, thump of the Democrats. That's because the Democrats have traditionally been the party of government. Federal employee unions raise money for the Democrats because they assume that party will add federal jobs. Mr. Bush came to power after eight years of Bill Clinton, when the federal bureaucracies consolidated their power to behave pretty much as they pleased, with consequences being felt today.
The State Department bureaucracy traditionally has been more focused on governing structures than on the characteristics of the people who manage those structures. Thus it was that one denizen of State years ago argued that the Soviet Union was a "stabilizing force" in Central Europe. Indeed, when the old USSR collapsed of its own weight and meanness, State was very slow to recognize the newly liberated and independent states. Laurence J. Peter, of "Peter Principle" fame, once wrote that, "bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status."
Something like that seems to have happened with U.S. policy in the Mideast. Even the Israelis, who put so much faith in the Oslo process, are reluctantly acknowledging its failure. There is not a great deal of happiness with Ariel Sharon's reconquest of the Palestinian territories, but there is even less enthusiasm for continuing to live with the threat of suicide bombings. Israeli politics, normally vibrant and contentious, are today beset with torpor and indecision.
Even some of the key players in the Oslo process now see the fatal mistake at its launching in 1993, the imposition of a known terrorist on the Palestinian people as their leader. Ambassador Dennis Ross, the lead U.S. peace negotiator throughout the first Bush and two Clinton administrations, writes in the current issue of Foreign Policy that the U.S. trusted Arafat. "He formally agreed to renounce terror, to discipline and punish any Palestinian violators of that pledge and to settle all disputes peacefully. Suffice it to say, Arafat has not abided by those commitments."
Mr. Ross is clearly disillusioned about the way Arafat reverted to type. But the State Department as an institution, with so many careers tied up in the "peace process," is in a state of denial. Colin Powell, who presides over this institution not as its boss but as its representative in White House councils, has been at odds with the realists in Mr. Bush's inner circle. The effort to find a compromise that would preserve the remnants of Oslo, came up with a "provisional" Palestinian state, that would become permanent with good behavior. The call for the ouster of Arafat was a positive step even if it was not immediately clear how the Palestinians would do it.
A decision to be more forceful in getting rid of Arafat and his high command would be a signal that realism has prevailed. Maybe bureaucratic inertia is about to be overridden.
With the life and safety of the American people at stake, the careerists in government had better wake up. Either that or they will become up close and personal with some hot tar and feathers administered by an outraged American public.
Most Presidents don't want to take the time, or don't have the guts to do what is necessary. Give Clinton credit - he fired every single one of the 48 U.S. Attorneys upon taking office. That had never been done before, and I guarantee it sent a message. Clinton got what he wanted out of the bureaucracy, and crushed anyone who interfered. I am not suggesting that a conservative use terror, intimidation, or murder, but they need to be strong if they expect to get anything done.
The first time an order is not followed in the time allotted, and I mean the first time, the President should start firing people and thus send a message that he will burn down the barn before he lets orders go unheeded. Zero out agencies. Get rid of the Dept. of Commerce, which as far as I can tell serves not useful purpose whatsoever.
IMHO, you can lay, almost, every single PR fiasco the administration has had on to Clinton appointees remaining in the government. The leaks are to be laid at their feet as well!
Regards,
TS
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