Wednesday, April 11th, 2007
Outsourcing the Presidency
You might want to sit down before reading what I’m about to tell you. According to the Washington Post, President Bush wants to appoint a “war czar” to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the moment, at least three generals approached by the Bushies to take the position have demurred, some not so politely:
“The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going,” said retired Marine Gen. John J. “Jack” Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job.
Indeed, General Sheehan. That much has been evident from day one of this botched crusade for Daddy’s honor. But it seems that there is more to it than that. I can think of three somewhat convergent reasons for this clusterf-ck of a decision by the Decider-in-Chief. All of these observations, sadly, have been borne out by the president’s prior behavior.
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Outsourcing of Most, If Not All Government Functions: You want examples? How about The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (privatizing the social safety net)? How about contracting out facilities management at Walter Reed to IAP Worldwide Services (to which reason #2 below also applies)? How about outsourcing our military to private security firms like Blackwater and Aegis Defense Services who run around shooting up random Iraqi civilians and ordering our brave soldiers to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib? (Something we should’ve seen coming after seeing the results of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment)
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Overbloating the Government with Incompetent Cronies: “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job!” is the first thing that comes to mind. And along with that comes the demotion of FEMA from a cabinet-level position to a subsidiary of the bloated bureaucracy known as the Department of Covering Bush’s Ass Homeland Security - itself a sordid tale of waste, fraud, cronyism, corruption and the “big government mess” conservatives love to carp about. Not to mention the U.S. Attorney Purge™ where the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas was shoved aside in favor of a Rove protege who was allegedly involved in voter intimidation efforts in 2004, among other suspicious activities.
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Having a Scapegoat Handy If Things Go Wrong: This is, perhaps, one of the biggest problems with having The Most Holy George W. Christ occupying the highest office in the land. Although he campaigned back in 2000 on “bringing honor and integrity back” to the White House, his presidency has been largely defined by doing everything he can to avoid being held responsible for his disastrous decisions. Chief among the examples here is the effort - by proxy - to lay the entirety of the blame for 9/11 at the feet of Clinton’s Almighty Penis™. Other examples include minimizing the abuses at Abu Ghraib, his numerous non-apology apologies for missteps from Katrina to the prosecution of the Iraq war, the floundering economy on his watch (he blamed it on Clinton and 9/11, natch), the Enron accounting scandal, thowing Scooter Libby and Donald Rumsfeld under the bus after the 2006 midterms, and so on. And at every turn, there’s always some flunkie convenient to point the finger at, whether it’s the grunts on the ground following the orders of the rent-a-soldiers in Abu Ghraib, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for Katrina or “a few bad CEOs” in Enron, WorldCom, etc.
No wonder no one wants the job. And incidentally, isn’t this supposed to be one of the President’s exclusive powers - that of Commander-In-Chief? Why is he outsourcing his own duties? And why is he creating an extra layer of bureaucracy specifically for the purpose of micromanaging his own generals (something he criticizes Democrats for)?
This man needs to be sent back to the private sector. NOW.
