timestamp: 2005.09.13 @ 18:41 UTC
sent by the unrepentant curmudgeon
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A tale of two Gulfs
This is a tale of two Gulfs, one Persian, one of Mexico.
The public reaction to the response of the federal government in the wake of hurricane Katrina was not generated in a vacuum. Discontent with the Bush administration had been building, and the seeming complete lack of planning and coordination in New Orleans provided only a trigger for the disapproval of President Bush in the recent polls, it is not a root cause.
However, the falling levels of satisfaction before the hurricane struck also were not rooted in what many attribute them to, the increasing numbers of casualties from the war in Iraq with little visible progress towards the stated goals of building a stable, democratic nation there.
It is the actions of the administration, and specifically President Bush, in response to the challenges in the two Gulfs that has undermined the confidence of the American public.
The Persian Gulf has long been a center of difficulties for American foreign policy, ringed by regimes that are either outright hostile or opposed to the support the US has long given Israel.
As I have written elsewhere, my views on the need for the Second Gulf War against Iraq have been evolving, and I now think that in a Machiavellian world driven by realpolitik, the regime of Saddam Hussein did present a danger to the United States, but not the one presented by the administration. I will not add to the endless discussion of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that were not there and the intelligence failures that led to a chimera being used as a justification for a pre-emptive, optional war. The origins of those failures are not important to the issue at hand; what is crucial is how the administration did not recognize that when what was perceived by the public to be the main justification for the war was nonexistent, the public then began to wonder why we were sacrificing our best and brightest for a people who did not show the gratitude that the administration said before the war to expect.
Americans think of the United States as a “good” country, a moral nation. We are the good guys, the ones in the white hats. No matter how despicable the behavior of a regime, there is an uneasiness associated with a pre-emptive attack because that is not what good people do. We teach our children to not hit first.
The administration as a whole, and specifically President Bush, have done an abysmal job of explaining why, despite the absence of WMD in Iraq, we did need to “hit first”. The statements made project an attitude of “we don’t need to explain anything to you,” which is not appropriate in a democracy, and not the leadership that President Bush likes to talk about.
A leader does not make decisions and then rest in imperial grandeur. A leader inspires, a leader creates conditions where those he is leading are willing to make sacrifices and do things they would ordinarily regard as undesirable.
Even before the absence of results in the search for WMD became obvious even to the biggest cheerleaders for the war, the administration should have been out front, explaining why it was necessary to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein beyond the assertions regarding WMD development.
Instead of leading, we have had reacting and resistance that gives the appearance that the administration refuses to acknowledge reality.
This doesn’t play well in Peoria where they teach children to not hit first.
The Gulf of Mexico has its own diplomatic challenges, but they pale in comparison with the killer storms that occur every summer.
Now we are confronted with one of the largest natural disasters to ever impact the United States, something that was seen coming, a luxury nature rarely affords.
Again, we had a response after the fact from the administration, despite the slow motion horror that was telegraphed well before the storm struck. Instead of showing leadership before the event, we were given the spectacle of public relations events staged by an administration that while on vacation had apparently left no one at home to take care of business.
It was well known that hurricane Katrina was a huge, very powerful storm, having swelled days before it struck land to a category 5 hurricane, but despite that forewarning, we had reaction instead of leadership.
The timeline is well known, and the story presented in several recent reports in major magazines do not paint a pretty picture. Even if a supposed “anti-Bush bias” is filtered out, the raw facts extracted do not show a leader who has the situational awareness to make good decisions, they show someone who is detached from both those he leads and from the world at large.
There was no significant change in the schedule followed by the President for days after the storm devastated an area the size of England, and when the agenda was finally changed the most telling image of the response was a photo of the President looking out the window of Air Force One at the damage, remote, far above those on the ground who were short of food and water and had no transportation to get to a safer place because of the inadequate response of government at all levels.
What would a leader have done in the last days of August 2005 with a major hurricane bearing down on a vulnerable coast where for years the predictions of the consequences of a storm like this were of a modern-day Atlantis?
Before the storm struck, President Bush should have cancelled the remainder of his vacation and returned to the White House. Slow down the knee-jerk defense that “he can do his job just as well at his ranch in Crawford as he can in the White House” and take the time to understand that it is irrelevant. The need for his return to the Washington has no foundation in what the President requires to “do his job,” it is based upon what the nation needs from those who would be its leaders. A speech from the Oval Office on the eve of landfall of a powerful storm the size of Texas, warning about the expected devastation, and asking that the nation pray for those that soon must endure the tempest would have shown a leader who is both concerned for those he leads and is in place, in charge, and ready to handle any crisis arising from the ravaging hurricane.
Instead, we received photo ops, artificial, simulations of events that were repeated in the devastated in a display of complete disregard for the seriousness of the failure, with equipment and people carefully placed around the President to give the appearance of activity, of “hard work” if you will, but with the reality sadly different once the President and the cameras leave.
We have a tale of two Gulfs, one foreign, one domestic, both showing failures to lead by a man who talks about how he is a leader.
There is a third gulf, a void, a chasm of understanding on the part of the administration and its defenders.
This is key, important enough to repeat: it is not about what the President needs, it is what the nation needs.
Yet all the defenses of the “vacation President” revolve around what the President needs.
Think about it.
President George W. Bush talks a lot about leadership, about how he is a leader, how leadership is needed. He repeats variations of the phrase “hard work” almost as a mantra.
Leaders do not waste the time talking about leadership and hard work; they show leadership through their work.
Technorati Tags: commentary, Iraq, Iraq War, Katrina relief, New Orleans, patterns in the white noise, politics, right wing, right-wing, right-wing politics
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