The "Sesame Street Repugs" take over Bush's National Security Council!

[KoKo]

(I hope there are some "Free to Be You and Me" and "Mr. Rogers" Dems who are willing to come in and help the next Dem Administration.)


By Dafna Linzer
Sunday, March 12, 2006; B03

They headed off to college as the Berlin Wall was coming down, were inspired by globalization and came of age with international terrorism. Freed from a constant nuclear standoff as a dominant fact of international life, members of Generation X no longer fear war or upheaval in the global status quo.

Understand them -- and where they came from -- and suddenly President Bush's Middle East forays, grand democratic experiments and go-it-alone strategies take on a different look.

That's because nearly a dozen thirtysomething aides, breastfed on "Sesame Street" and babysat by "The Brady Bunch," are now shaping those strategies in unexpected ways as senior advisers at the National Security Council, the White House's powerful inner chamber of foreign policy aides with routine access to Bush. This small group of conservative Gen Xers -- members of an age cohort once all but written off as stand-for-nothing underachievers -- is the first set of American policymakers truly at home in a unipolar world.

Their adulthood has never included a fellow superpower or the need to reach accommodation with an enemy -- a Cold War concept none of the NSC's Gen-X crowd can get their heads around. Instead, their history begins with Sept. 11, 2001. It is the measuring stick they use when discussing their generation's challenge and the sole lens through which they envision the future. "We all built careers in the post-Cold War world," said Meghan O'Sullivan, who at 36 is the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. "You have to think about what are the defining features of the age we live in. For me, that's American primacy, globalization, terrorism and WMD, which is why we do what we do. This wasn't applicable during the Cold War."

Growing up in a time of unprecedented wealth, they saw capitalism as inescapably tied both to freedom and democracy. In a world where everything seemed achievable, it was just a matter of setting the right priorities. They figured, at a young age, that Mideast oil was of great importance, that the really bad guys didn't come from Russia and that for all the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, the country could still be hurt, held hostage or prevented from striking back.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031002003.html

[Atman]

1. Wow, this is very interesting!

It deserves a thorough read. Very compelling.

Basically, America is being run by a bunch of spoiled, snotty-nosed kids with ADD.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Seems to me, they've confused capitalism with democracy. Too

bad, none of them ever studied history.

[Felix Mala]

3. Here's the pic. They may not get their far-right bible state, but I

think they'll get a lot of us praying.

[reichstag911]

4. After suppressing my gag reflex...

...I sent this LTTE to the Post:

Dear Sirs:

How gratifying to see what our best and brightest Gen-Xers are up to at the National Security Council. Such in-depth analysis of the complex world in which we live with a refreshingly profound historical perspective ("Arms control, what's that?"). It's also a pleasure to see these youngsters who can take credit for the resounding successes of our Afghan and Iraqi adventures getting along in their careers. Excelsior! You know what they say: "Nothing succeeds like (catastrophic) success."

I can only hope that they do, in fact, wind up as "Kissingeresque-type folks," their travel to a good chunk of the planet being proscribed because they're wanted by international tribunals for questioning on their involvement in war crimes. Now there's a proud legacy!
Best,
-----------

[KoKo]

5. But....we have many Gen X'ers who want to make their mark for GOOD

here on DU.........

:shrug:

[reichstag911]

6. And your point is...?

I was writing of the NSC Gen-Xers profiled in the WaPo piece, and my allusion to them as the "best and brightest" (with a nod to David Halberstam's facetiously titled Vietnam deconstruction), as with most of my writing, was ironic.

[KurtNYC]

7. From the title I might have expected some more correlation

for instance:

Oscar the Grouch = Cheney
Cookie Monster = Rumsfeld
Elmo = Dubya
The Count = ?

Big Bird = hiding from Cheney (and not hiding behind a Texas lawyer bc that wouldn't stop him)