The Collateral Damage of Intelligence Failure(s)

First a confession. I've never entirely understood that strange phenomenon known as "rabid Clinton-hating." At least not until that fateful day in 2000, when President-elect Gore finally conceded that the Bushies had successfully stolen the Florida election, and I was forced to watch the young Pretender (Gee Duh-byh Shrub) smirk and gladhand his way through and out of the Texas Statehouse into a waiting motorcade of ominous black SUVs. Without warning I was suddenly afflicted with the profound, visceral realization that something was terribly, TERRIBLY wrong in the Universe...that somehow a lying, insincere and disingenuous, pot-smoking, coke-snorting, draft-dodging, incompetent, unqualified, self-serving, self-important, self-absorbed YALE man had usurped power in our glorious Democratic Republic...which was followed almost immediately by the insight that there were an awful lot of people (or perhaps should I say "a lot of awful people") in this country who felt exactly the same way about our 42nd President as I felt about the man who was about to be sworn in as our 43rd.

Notwithstanding this fleeting moment of empathetic "getting it," it still took me more than five years before I could bring myself to drink orange juice again. At first I saw a "baby Bush" Presidency as something to be endured and survived, and took comfort in the knowledge that the more time he spend on vacation at his ranch in Texas, the less real damage he could do to the country and to me personally. After 9/11, like many patriotic Americans, I tried very hard to rally loyally behind the dignity of the Office rather than giving in to my disdain for the man and his obvious shortcomings, only to feel disappointed and betrayed again and again as I watched Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company systematically twist and exploit our national tragedy for the political advantage of their maladroit, malapropic puppet, as well as the continued personal enrichment of their corporate cronies and the aggrandizement of the Religious Right.

The "Patriot" Act. The invasion of Iraq. That absurd "Mission Accomplished" photo op (not to mention the "Plastic Turkey" photo op that following Thanksgiving). Thousands of American soldiers killed; tens of thousands wounded; hundreds of billions of dollars squandered; crude oil at $70 a barrel and gasoline at $3 a gallon; record Federal deficits (and record oil company profits); untold numbers of warrantless searches, wiretaps, and incarcerations without trial or even benefit of counsel; gutted environmental regulations; the fiasco of Katrina; even a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as "a relationship between one man and one woman..." all the gifts of champagne soldiers and "chicken hawks" who love the sound of rattling sabers (and of course their own voices), but turn deaf ears and a blind eye to the cries of mothers whose children now rest in metal caskets draped in American flags.

Forgive me for sounding shrill, but given what we've all now seen with our own two eyes it is difficult to sound otherwise. It is difficult for me to understand how a nation, and more specifically a Congress, that was willing to impeach a sitting President for testifying evasively about receiving a blow job from a willing partner, now seems willing to ignore how profoundly this current President has fallen down on the job. How in his rush to provide tax cuts for his wealthy supporters in his the first year of his term, he ignored the intelligence warnings that al-Qaeda was planning a dramatic attack here in the United States. How he "sexed up" subsequent intelligence reports regarding the existence Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and suppressed or ignored information to the contrary, even allowing his minions to disclose the identity of one of our own intelligence operatives in order to discredit the opinions of her husband. Not only should it be obvious by now to anyone with even a half-way objective point-of-view that Iraqi WMDs were merely an extravagant pipe-dream that both Dubya and Saddam shared, it should also be painfully clear that the decision to invade Iraq in the first place was simply a foregone conclusion looking for a credible rationale: a settling of old scores from his father's administration together with a misguided attempt to control Iraqi oil; and that the war itself has now likewise gone terribly, terribly wrong...if it could ever have been said that it was right in the first place.

And along the dark underbelly of this failed policy is an even more disturbing reality. Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. Abu Ghraib prison. "Rendition," "water-boarding" and "stress positions" (would not that which we refuse to call torture by any other name remain as brutal?). Military Tribunals. Suspension of Habeas Corpus and even rudimentary due process. The proliferation of "signing statements" and legislation by executive order, both apparently intended to expand the power of "the Decider" and undermine the constitutionally-defined separation of powers. And now, most recently, the massacre at Haditha - which many knowledgeable individuals now acknowledge is not an isolated incident.

But it seems to me that what is often overlooked in what little discussion takes place about these things is that public relations nightmares like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and now Haditha are not the reason we are losing the war. They are rather symptoms of the fact that we ARE losing the war, that we perhaps have already lost the war. The young men and women whom we have placed in harms way are doing exactly what we have asked them to do, exactly what they have been ordered to do.. But those at the highest levels of government who have issued the orders seem incapable of understanding that this struggle for the "hearts and minds" of the world is not a struggle that will be decided by who has the better spin doctors, or who can best control the press, dominate the news cycle, even fix elections. It will certainly not be determined by military force alone. Hearts and Minds are won through Wisdom and Compassion. And this Administration is sadly lacking in both.

The Bush administration has abandoned the "real" war on terror (or perhaps I should say, the struggle against the real terrorists) in order to become state supporters of terrorism themselves. Armed with the most powerful military force in the history of the world, and in possession of vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, they nevertheless find themselves bogged down in a war of attrition against a growing insurgency: a war which lacks tangible war aims or even a clear definition of victory, which lacks a coherent exit strategy, which may not even be "winable" by military means, and which is rapidly losing the support of the American People.

To punish a handful of Marines for committing war crimes on the ground is to miss the point. There are bigger War Criminals waiting to be brought to justice. Yet the moral, legal and political implications of taking THAT step have very ominous consequences for the future of our Democratic Republic. And that too is something for which the Bushies are to blame.