My Week-Late Review of No End In Sight

I saw Charles Ferguson's new documentary last Tuesday, and the reports I've seen throughout the blogosphere, wondering about whether the film would be a 90-minute defense of the "incompetence dodge," are in my view accurate. Yes, the film is an impressive chronicle of the thuddingly stupid mistakes made by the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Administration after the invastion. And those mistakes did occur and should be rightly lambasted. But they were prefigured by the "original sin" mistake of going into Iraq in the first place, which many knew would upset the delicate balance on which that country teeters, which many knew would take us away from the primary mission in Afghanistan (where the Taliban is resurgent) and the overall war against Islamic radicalism (where Al Qaeda has a new safe haven - in Pakistan).

After the screening the director (a poli sci professor - this is his first film) spoke on a panel. I left early, but the report I got was that the director (and some other RAND Corp. flack on the panel named Gregory Treverton) essentially averred that the war was an OK idea but it was just incompetently managed. The crowd went BALLISTIC, apparently, which is to be expected for Westside LA.

There have been studies of the batshit insane circumstances in Iraq, like Imperial Life in the Emerald City, that don't come off this way. But No End In Sight most certainly does, because the voice of the film is on the side of the brave people, Administration appointees all, who tried to "fix" Iraq, not anyone who actually didn't think it was a good idea to begin with. I appreciated the film for laying out the history in a linear fashion, but I fear it will be expropriated by those who take the lesson of "for the next unnecessary pre-emptive war, we'd better pack a lunch!"

You Guys Are The Dumbest Bounty Hunters I've Ever Seen!!

The more I read about the Bush Administration, the more I'm reminded of that classic line from Midnight Run. I know we're not supposed to accuse them of incomeptence, because that lets them off the hook too easily, and in truth this latest outrage is more about deliberate policy prioritizing than anything else. But I don't know how you can say that these people are anything more than bumbling fools after you read this:

Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces.

Facing tough questions before a congressional panel last week, Broadcasting Board of Governors member Joaquin Blaya admitted none of the senior news managers at the network spoke Arabic when the terrorist messages made it onto the air courtesy of U.S. taxpayer funds. Nor did Blaya himself or any of the other officials at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the network.

"How does it happen that the terrorists take over?" asked Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y., at a hearing last Wednesday of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee he chairs. "Is there no adult supervision?"

Keystone Kops doesn't begin to describe this. Terrorists took over American-owned and operated television stations without firing a shot, because we're so arrogant and clueless that we didn't bother to have one Arabic speaker running the station. They had this fantasist notion that they could democratize the Arab world by piping propaganda into their homes, but they care so little about details that they never bothered to learn the language of that propaganda, and they outsourced virtually all the responsibility for the content of the network to Arabic-speaking journalists who they hired nonchalantly without even explaining the mission of Al Hurra to them.

Yes, there is a lot of incompetence going on here. But like I said, this is an outgrowth of the kind of contempt for the details of governance that you see at every level of government in the Bush era. They delegate responsibility relenetlessly because they're so disinterested in the finished product. They believe they can divine the hopes and dreams of Iraqis or Iranians or Yemenis or Saudis without even bothering to learn the slightest bit about their culture or even their language. And like the proverbial bull in a china shop, they stumble in and make everything worse, including giving an outlet to terrorists to promote anti-Israel messages. On a station paid for by American taxpayers.

Incompetence doesn't begin to describe these people. Willful ignorance is more like it.

Dodge Ball

There's been some interesting developments on Iraq. Not in Iraq itself, that's still an orgy of bloodshed, where deputy Prime Ministers are under constant threat of assassination; where US soldiers are still sitting ducks; where the Turks are beginning to intervene in Kurdistan, threatening a wider war; where Marine reserves get trapped in the net and must return; where returning veterans must fight for the health care they deserve; and where the country of Iraq itself is running out of safe water (an unbelievable tragedy).

No, this development is happening in the US Senate, where the Republicans won't stand in the way of the veto by the President, preferring instead to yoke the war on his neck and get out of the way:

Unwilling to do the White House's heavy lifting on Iraq, Senate Republicans are prepared to step aside to allow language requiring troop withdrawals to reach President Bush, forcing him to face down Democratic adversaries with his veto pen.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) announced the shift in strategy yesterday, as the chamber took up a $122 billion war spending package that includes a target date of March 31, 2008, for ending most U.S. combat operations in Iraq. The provision, along with a similar House effort, represents the Democrats' boldest challenge on the war, setting the stage for a dramatic showdown with Bush over an otherwise popular bill to keep vital military funds flowing.

No matter the outcome of the Senate vote, McConnell is looking ahead, assuming House Democrats will insist that withdrawal conditions be included when a final bill is sent to Bush. If so, McConnell said, Republicans would forgo the parliamentary tactics they used to block antiwar legislation that had forced Democrats to amass an insurmountable 60 votes to prevail.

"We need to get the bill on down to the president and get the veto out of the way," McConnell said.

The Republicans want nothing to do with this President and his policies, especially on Iraq. They're not stupid. They know that they will need to be re-elected at some point, and they have seen the numbers.



So they're trying to blame everything wrong in the country on the President, and letting him battle the Democrats on his own. It's a classic incompetence dodge, blaming the messenger (Bush) rather than the message (conservative ideology and governance). But as Nitpicker demonstrates, the problem isn't Bush.

So, while it's good to see Congress finally chipping away at the crust surrounding the Bushies warm, gooey center of corruption, it's important to make clear that this isn't simply a rogue, incompetent administration. This is a rogue, incompetent administration which is, nevertheless, following the exact recipes Republicans have written over the last thirty years. Americans need to understand that, in one sense, Bush hasn't failed. He implemented core Republican principles and they failed. And they always will.

The resolution on Iraq in the Senate sets an earlier deadline, but is nonbinding. It's anyone's guess what will come out of conference committee. But whatever it is, the Republicans don't want any part of it. After cheerleading from this war for over four years, they want to act like they had nothing to do with it, even though it strikes at the core of modern Republican ideology.

They're not going to get away with it.

UPDATE - If it was only about Bush, then support for government programs and cratering support for "social conservatism" wouldn't be seen in the Pew poll as well. It isn't just these people, it's the whole ideology.

UPDATE II - Yglesias:

The irony in all this, at some level, is that if the Bush administration had spent less time thinking about ways to abuse their power for electoral gain and more time thinking about ways to govern the country in a non-disastrous manner, they probably would have done much better in the midterms. At some level, there's no substitute for knowing how to do your job properly.

But the standard operating procedure of the Republicans in the 21st century is to use power for electoral (and financial) gain. That's their entire theory of government.