Gene Lyons

[mooseandsquirrel]

snip

Actually, that line’s gotten somewhat muddled since Hurricane Katrina. With President Bush jetting back and forth to the Gulf Coast in a frantic effort to show concern, GOP robo-pundits in the nation’s great metropolitan newspapers have taken to portraying FEMA’s failures as an inevitable result of government ineptitude.

Funny, that’s not what they thought about Bush’s utopian scheme to democratize the Middle East. But hold that thought.

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

[CrispyQ]

1. Good piece.

I especially liked the last 2 lines:

"They’ve created their own reality all right. Alas, the rest of us have to live there, too."


Welcome to DU, mooseandsquirrel! :hi:

[tom_paine]

2. kick

:kick:

[Martin Eden]

3. Government Ineptitude

With President Bush jetting back and forth to the Gulf Coast in a frantic effort to show concern, GOP robo-pundits in the nation’s great metropolitan newspapers have taken to portraying FEMA’s failures as an inevitable result of government ineptitude.

Funny, that’s not what they thought about Bush’s utopian scheme to democratize the Middle East. But hold that thought.

Yes, that's a thought that should definitely be taken to the next logical step:

If government is incapable of handling something like preparaing for and carrying out evacuations for a predicted event like Katrina -- in our own country with intact government institutions at every level -- then why the fuck did these same "government-is-the-problem" wingnuts expect our government to be capable of transforming Iraq into a functioning free market democracy -- a task that is orders of magnitude more difficult than handling something like Katrina?

The chances are for success are especially dim when those in charge of such a project prefer their own version of reality to the one that actually exists on the ground. The last paragraph of Lyons' piece was spot-on:

The result has been mismanagement and incompetence on an heroic scale: ignoring the terrorist threat until 9/11 because al-Qa’ida was a "Clinton issue," driving the country into war in Iraq by conjuring imaginary nuclear "mushroom clouds," forcing the retirement of military leaders (e. g., Gen. Eric Shinseki) who warned that pacifying Iraq would require hundreds of thousands more troops than neo-conservative theory dictated, getting rid of a treasury secretary (Paul O’Neill) who correctly predicted that the war would cost tens of billions more than White House philosophers dreamed, rejecting detailed State Department plans for rebuilding Iraq in favor of pie-in-the-sky schemes to turn the fractured nation into a corporate utopia, turning a $300 billion budget surplus into a $550 billion (and counting) deficit through reckless tax cuts—such a list could go on almost indefinitely. Slashing FEMA’s budget and replacing its experienced professional staff with hacks and cronies wasn’t a mistake; it was absolutely characteristic of the Bush administration’s vision of government as a partisan spoils system. Even worse than its reliance upon abstract ideology has been the White House’s remarkable inability to admit error. Partly due to its Republican-style political correctness, partly to the cult of personality surrounding Bush himself—his fabled "gut instincts" were supposed to make up for his manifest intellectual shortcomings, the administration finds it almost impossible to adjust to altered circumstances. They’ve created their own reality all right. Alas, the rest of us have to live there, too.