Patriotism: Love of Country or the last Refuge of Scoundrels?

In simple terms, patriotism means loving and revering one’s country. Patriotism can take many forms. During the Vietnam War, for instance, John McCain found it preferable to endure torture and captivity rather than dishonor the uniform he wore and the ideals he lived by.

The Vietnam War, of course, was controversial. Many of those who protested against America’s involvement in South East Asia were motivated by patriotism too since they believed the war was a betrayal of America’s values. Forty years later, the arrogance and folly of that ill-fated war seem apparent even to its architects (such as Robert McNamara). Criticizing one’s country, too, can be a profound act of patriotism, particularly when a mob of pundits, politicians, and the hoi palloi threaten to stampede the lonely dissenters who have only truth on their side.

One of the solitary dissenters who was trampled in the run up to the Iraq war was weapons inspector Scott Ritter. I remember vividly watching a talk Ritter gave on the eve of the invasion as he emphatically insisted there were no WMD in Iraq. Though I remained agnostic on the question of WMD I opposed the war against Iraq for three reasons: 1) I believed the Bush administration was pursuing an imperial agenda that would prove tragic for the United States. 2) Unless the international community had a stake in the outcome I believed the venture would be more likely to fail than succeed. And 3) I believed the Bush administration did not appreciate the sectarian divisions in Iraq.

The demagoguery used to sell “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was nauseating. Pundits like William Kristol impugned the patriotism of those who questioned the war. Like Cassandra, I felt I sense of foreboding as the Pollyannaish cheerleaders bashed opponents of the war as appeasers and defeatists.

An axis-of-obtuseness (Fox News, the Weekly Standard, the Bush administration) drowned out the few lonely voices of reason that attempted to warn the public. The Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom recognized in Bush – our “boy emperor” – a figure at once tragic and farcical. Al Gore, a Renaissance (man especially compared to mediocrities that mocked him) spelled out with prescient lucidity the case against launching a preemptive war with Iraq. And Barrack Obama, an up and coming state senator from Illinois, had the wisdom to recognize a bad idea when he saw it.

There were others, of course, such as General Anthony Zinni, who believed Iraq was the “wrong war at the wrong time.” But by and large, those with the greatest zeal and least understanding pitched their case to the lowest common denominator and carried the day: Mission Accomplished.

If only morality (and patriotism) was as simple as the president determined to vanquish evil by spreading liberty to the Four Corners of the Middle East. History, Bush believes, is a Manachean contest between the forces of freedom and tyranny. Bush is a man without a tragic sense. He envisions himself as the man in the white hat in a B western, but he is blissfully unaware that he inhabits a Shakespearean universe where noble intentions can breed moral catastrophes complete with torture chambers and precipitous national declines.

To put it charitably, Bush has about as much business being president as Dan Quayle would have competing in a spelling bee. Watching the Bush administration govern is about as cringe producing as imagining the cast of Hee Haw performing Rigolletto. The discerning reader, incidentally, will note that the dramatic irony in Verdi’s great opera is that the jester kills the very thing he loves most – his daughter – just as Bush has single-handedly destroyed the country he no doubt loves. The ruinous debt, the 7.6% inflation rate, stagflation, the plummeting dollar, the ill-advised and ineptly managed war in Iraq, the botched handling of Katrina, and the numerous torture, abuse, and lawbreaking scandals that have sullied America’s reputation precipitated one of the most precipitous national declines ever witnessed.

I don’t doubt Bush’s patriotism, or Donald Rumsfeld’s, or Alberto Gonazales’ . . . But there is ample evidence to doubt their character and their competence. The philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that the first thing the Nazis did as they consolidated power was to question patriotism of their political opponents. The would-be masters of the universe at Enron pursued a similar tack; anyone who raised doubts about the company’s accounting or business practices was branded as disloyal. Not surprisingly, both Herman Goering and Ken Lay insisted they would be vindicated in the end. To be a fool and rogue at the same time, their countries and companies may crumble, but their unique wisdom allows them to discern what others cannot: thirty, nay fifty years hence History will celebrate the choices and accomplishments they alone could make. It is all about them.

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Bill and Hillary's Unexcellent Adventure

Hillary’s Clinton’s campaign has been losing altitude faster than the Hindenburg after it caught fire. Watching the Clinton’s crash and burn has become a national spectator sport fed by the media’s lust to cover the former First Couple’s fabulous flameout. Hillary is going from heir apparent to political has been faster than you can say “Bush/Clinton/Bush Clinton.”

That’s right, a Bush or a Clinton has been on the presidential ballot for the last twenty-eight years. I’m convinced that nominating Hillary is the best chance Republicans have of avoiding the comeuppance they so richly deserve. For years the Clinton’s biggest selling point was the sympathy vote they got from standing up to their political enemies. Now, however, the Clinton’s are in the perverse position of standing a good chance of handing their political enemies a victory if they resort to scorched earth tactics to defeat Obama for the Democratic nomination. Put simply, if Bill and Hillary lose at the polls but then try and snatch the nomination by relying on super delegates and other shenanigans at the convention, then they’ll fracture the party and hand the election to John McCain.

Hillary is losing to Obama for a variety of reasons. Obama is a better candidate. His campaign is better-organized and well run than hers. And voters are finding Obama more authentic than the seemingly ever-calculating Clinton. For instance, every time Hillary has to defend her decision authorizing the disastrous war in Iraq she sounds like an unprincipled politician who can’t bring herself to admit a mistake. Her answer is so formulated – “if I knew then what I know now” – that everyone recognizes it as the ultimate copout to cover a catastrophic misjudgment.

Voters are finding Obama’s clarity – he opposed the war from the very beginning – far more preferable than Clinton’s cloudy obfuscation. After all, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor might also say: “if I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have cast the deciding ballot that installed Bush/Cheney over the will of the electorate.” But that hardly mitigates the fact that she made a horrendous decision.

There’s not much daylight between Obama and Hillary policy wise, so voters are going with the personality they prefer. Obama represents not just change, but also transcendence in the sense of America regaining and living up to the ideals that make the United States a great country. Hillary, on the other hand, has a proven track record of being a polarizing figure. In many ways, she’s a mirror image of George W. Bush, even if she on the other side of the political spectrum. For instance, both Bush and Hillary exhibit a pathological degree of self-certainty, a congenital unwillingness to concede mistakes, and an attitude that politics is always a zero-sum game.

There are a lot of Republicans and moderates that are looking to punish the Republicans this November. Their distaste for Hillary Clinton, however, may overcome their anger at the GOP, particularly given the fact that no one doubts John McCain’s emotional authenticity. Of course, revulsion at the Bush administration may be so high that even Hillary (a candidate with negative ratings approaching 50%) could squeak by in the general election. However, at this stage Hillary is faced with a daunting if not impossible challenge: how to beat Obama without alienating a coalition made up of traditional Democrats, new voters, independents, and moderate Republicans that see in Obama a breath of fresh political air. Paradoxically, Hillary is now in the unenviable position whereby she can only win the nomination by resorting to tactics that will doom the Democrats in November.

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Is the Surge Really Working?

The surge in Iraq may be succeeding (at least on a superficial tactical level) but America is sinking thanks to the strategic ineptitude of the Bush administration. John McCain, according to the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, is close to clinching the Republican nomination because he courageously embraced Bush’s troop surge, and now that unpopular decision, Gerson argues, is in the process of being vindicated.

To be sure, any reduction in violence is a welcome sign, but the notion that the United States is achieving momentum towards “victory” reflects a tragic misunderstanding on part of Republicans. The United States could eventually achieve stability in Iraq, but at this stage any victory is likely to prove phyrric. That is, any “benefits” will amount to averting and mitigating consequences and potential worst-case scenarios set in motion by the ill-considered invasion and disastrously managed occupation itself. Stabilizing Iraq may have at best a neutral impact on global terrorism, though in all-likelihood America’s presence in region will be a rallying cry for jihadists for decades to come. Put simply, Iraq became the spawning ground for a new generation of anti-Western foot soldiers who can take battlefield experience and techniques gleaned in Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, and elsewhere.

Bush’s theory that a democratic Iraq would transform the Middle East has been turned on its head. Spreading liberty as a way of reducing terrorism was a tempting panacea at best, but it is proving simplistic and false. The United States can continue to pour blood and treasure into Iraq, but in the interim it is neglecting its own crumbling infrastructure and the investments it needs to secure a more prosperous economic future. Ironically, at the very moment it’s own resilience is being sorely tested the country is facing a series of virtually unprecedented environmental calamities. Responsible scientists will not attribute any one event to global warming, but taken as a whole the wildfires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters we’ve seen of late are beginning to represent a scale of devastation forecast by Al Gore and experts on global climate change. On this issue, tragically, George Bush and his conservative minions resemble nothing so much as a flock of ostriches with their collective heads in the sand.

The cultural anthropologist Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, observes how the decline of great powers are often associated with military defeats on the periphery of empire, which in truth mask ecological collapse at home. There is no doubt – none whatsoever – that the seven years of the Bush administration have led to an unprecedented decline in America’s strategic, moral, and economic strength. In simple terms, the United States is in a vicious cycle: Borrowing money to purchase oil from Middle East, which empowers anti-American forces, while simultaneously contributing to the high level of carbon emissions that fuel global warming. Bush, for his part, seems oblivious to the fact that American taxpayers are funding both sides in the terror war. To add insult to injury, many victims of Katrina and the tornadoes in the South have family members serving in Iraq. We are stuck in a war we never should have launched while the Bush administration completely ignored the gathering threat posed by environmental calamities fueled by global warming, which our own imprudent and unsustainable energy habits helped bring about.

Great leaders have a sense for the arc of history. That is, they see where history is going and they prepare their people to face the challenges of the future. Al Gore, for instance, has been trying to educate the public on global warming for three decades. He was also prescient – in a way Bush is incapable of – in recognizing the potential the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq would have to ignite sectarian conflict that could destabilize the entire Middle East.

Gore (and most Democrats) understand that confronting the challenge of Islamic extremism will take a lot more that marshalling America’s military power; it will take diplomatic suasion and bi-partisan cooperation to rally the world behind a comprehensive strategy to increase the ideological appeal of America and its Western values (especially women’s rights and the separation of church and state) while reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism. It will also entail taking the United States beyond the carbon era.

Gore’s rational approach to problem solving contrasts sharply with Bush’s disastrous faith-based approach to governing. Conservative ideologues like Bush see terrorism as a manifestation of ontological Evil, a superstitious outlook that engenders a historical form of madness akin to the Salem witch trials or the Inquisition. It is no accident, for instance, that Bush’s response to the challenge of terrorism includes waterboarding and other forms of torture generally associated with the Middle Ages. Indeed, his style of leadership hearkens back to the Divine Right of Kings, the long discredited notion that a political leader functions as God’s regent here on earth.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that the rise of religious fundamentalism is invariably a sign of civil decline. He also observed that civilizations that attempt meet existential challenges by remaking the rest of the world (especially far-flung outposts on the periphery of empire) are invariably less successful that than civilizations that remake and renew themselves from within. This insight goes along way in explaining the Bush tragedy; the Bush administration has effectively outsourced America’s national security to Iraq’s security forces.

The surge has produced some tactical advantages, but there are compelling reasons to doubt they can be sustained. For one thing, widespread corruption governing the dispersion of oil revenues does not bode well for a political reconciliation. Further, Iraq’s various militias recognize the surge is by its nature of limited duration. Thus, they have every incentive to lay low and/or play-up their al-Qaeda fighting bona fides in the hopes of procuring as much American aid and equipment before Iraq enters the next phase when American troops begin to draw down in the Spring/Summer of 2008.

America’s predicament in Iraq resembles a Zugswang, which is a situation in chess where every possible move you make will leave you worse off. The United States may prevail in Iraq, yet maintaining the present commitment is likely to further hasten America’s decline. Those among Bush’s dwindling number of apologist who still believe that some decades from now the United States will be able to declare “Mission Accomplished” should remember the words of King Pyrrhus: “one more victory such as this and we are ruined.”

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Top Ten Reasons the Declining Dollar is a Good Thing

10). Greedy oil sheiks will get what they deserve when they discover just how worthless all those greenbacks they’ve been accumulating from their petrol profits.

9). “When you multiply 4% inflation times a 50% decline in the dollar, then a 199% increase in the deficit doesn’t seem too bad. Heck, we may actually be making a profit.” – Alan Greenspan (author of “Irrational Exuberance” and “Fuzzy Math).

8). “I feel a lot better knowing the IRS is getting currency that is losing value as we speak.” – Wesley Snipes (Black belt bad-ass & spokesperson for H&R Block).

7). “If the value of the dollar declines to zero, then it will prove my point: deficits don’t matter.” -- Dick Cheney (from a secure location).

6). “Declining dollar will raise the costs of food, which will force Americans to eat less, thereby solving our obesity problem. Every day the dollar drops I suggest American drop and do some pushups too.” – Jack la Lalanne (Fitness Guru).

5). If dollar declines enough Bill Gates will be as poor as everyone else.

4). The Iraq war will be priceless if the dollar continues to slide.

3). “If the dollar continues to plummet we’ll need more tax cuts and rebate checks to stimulate investment in things America really needs, like even bigger plasma TVs and cooler I-Pods.” – (James Cramer who won recently the Nobel Prize in Economics for his financial treatise, Mad Money).

2). When the dollar is replaced by the euro as the world’s reserve currency (sometime in 2009) we should replace George Washington’s likeness with George W. Bush’s mug. By that time, it may more economic sense to use our worthless currency as a substitute for Charmin toilet paper.

1). Replacing “In God we Trust” on our currency with “It’s you money, you paid for it” will be a fitting testament to the legacy of George W. Bush.

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The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg (Review).

George W. Bush is a Churchill wannabe with the soul of Inspector Clouseau. That, in a nutshell, is the disheartening conclusion I draw from Jacob Weisberg’s illuminating character study of our forty-third president, The Bush Tragedy.

The goal of tragic drama, Aristotle, believed, is to elicit pity and dread as a means of achieving catharsis. After seven years of Bush’s catastrophic misjudgments and squandered opportunities, which certainly invite pity and dread given the stakes for the United States, our country is looking for catharsis. But has America learned anything from watching the tragic spectacle of the Bush administration? The answer to that question may depend on the outcome of the next election. However, as Weisberg’s book makes clear, the lack of introspection, particularly an inability to comprehend one’s hidden motives and correct mistakes, is a fatal flaw, both in a leader and a country.

Weisberg approaches his subject matter from a Shakespearean point of view. That is, he recognizes (in a way that George W. Bush cannot) that life, individuals, and current events are inexhaustibly complex, suffused with contradictions, and utterly resistant to simplistic synopses. Indeed, even George W. Bush eludes any easy categorization, such as historical buffoon.

It is precisely because Weisberg can approach Bush sympathetically that his critical conclusions are so devastating. Bush, is fond of asserting that historians will be unable to get a grip on his presidency for decades. But Bush’s preemptive dismissal of all early-draft evaluations of tenure seems both shallow and self-serving when considered next to Weisberg’s meticulous, studious, and historically informed examination of the administration’s record.

The Bushes are notoriously averse to psychoanalysis. However, Weisberg convincingly demonstrates the Oedipal dimension that is at the heart of the unraveling of forty-three’s presidency and ultimately the Bush dynasty. Put simply, the younger Bush has defined himself in opposition to his father, the forty-first president, to a virtually pathological degree. Whereas the elder Bush was patient, prudent, and civil to a fault the younger Bush cultivated the opposite qualities; he would be brash, impetuous, and confrontational.

Bush Jr. has been haunted by the specter of his successful father for most of his adult life. However, Bush the younger was convinced that his father was a failed president because he failed to capitalize on his success in the Gulf War, failed to finish off Saddam, and failed to be reelected to a second term. Finishing the job his father started but didn’t complete – ousting Saddam for good – would paradoxically allow George Jr. to slay his father’s enemy and thereby exceed his father as well. Bush may not have been cognizant of such dynamics, but advisors like Dick Cheney certainly exploited them.

Weisberg also explores Bush’s extraordinary overconfidence, which he contends masks a deep insecurity. Bush, Weisberg argues, nurtures a deep resentment against intellectuals and liberal elites because of his experience of being ridiculed as a mediocre student at Andover, Yale, and Harvard. Indeed, that same resentment was palpable with both Karl Rove (a self-described “ultimate nerd”) and the taciturn Dick Cheney.

All of this goes a long way to explaining why this administration was so determined to brush aside the advice and input of experts of every stripe. Put simply, an axis-of-ignoramuses despised the bureaucratic know-it-alls, be they experts on global warming, analysts at the CIA, or foreign policy gurus associated with first Bush or Clinton administrations. Who needs experts, after all, when the president has his famous gut instinct?

As a result, the normal decision making procedures were subverted. Political hacks that parroted the president’s ideological outlook were brought into replace competent bureaucrats. And Constitutional principles were eviscerated on the dubious (and certainly undemocratic) theory that only an unchecked, unfettered, and essentially monarchical chief executive could protect the United States against it enemies. The results speak for themselves: the WMD fiasco, Katrina, and Abu Ghraib to name just a few of the administration’s spectacular self-inflicted failures.

Weisberg effectively lays to rest any notion that Bush will someday be vindicated by posterity. Perhaps his successors will manage to mitigate the still grim situation in Iraq, but the magnitude of Bush’s mismanagement and misjudgments virtually insure that future historians will compare him to the arrogant and incompetent Andrew Johnson, rather than Harry Truman. Ironically, Bush himself probably believes that he will join the ranks of great wartime leaders such as Lincoln, F.D.R. and his hero Winston Churchill. Tragically, Bush believes stirring rhetoric, eternal optimism, and unbending will are alone sufficient to insure success. Bush has many shortcomings, but his inability to match means and ends is arguably his greatest fault.

Churchill instinctively knew this in a way that Bush does not. The Old Lion once said that a democratic people could face any adversity, provided they believed their leaders were leveling with them and not living in a fool’s paradise. Reading Weisberg it’s easy to come a way with the feeling that Bush has too many tragic flaws to enumerate. But I think one can argue that Bush’s greatest failing is that he lost the confidence of the American people because he lacked the wherewithal not only to tell the truth, but to even recognize it.

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