Take a tip from David Hackworth, whose “Memo for the President-Elect” makes these
recommendations:
+ Immediately fire SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of his Pentagon
senior civilian assistants and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard
Myers.
+ Replace Rumsfeld with retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and give this tough,
smart, proven leader a free hand to bring in the best people to reshape and streamline our armed
forces for the long counterinsurgency fight ahead.
+ Fire National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and replace her with retired Gens. Wes Clark or John
Sheehan.
Hackworth makes a dozen other recommendations, too. Go read the rest. (If you don’t know
who he is, check him out.) He’s no armchair
general but a candid, experienced, highly decorated combat veteran with a varied
military background from World War II on. According to his biography:
In 1971, as the Army’s youngest colonel he spoke out on national television
saying, “This is a bad war … it can’t be won we need to get out.” In that interview, he also said
that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon in four years — a prediction that turned out
to be right on target. He was the only senior officer to sound off about the insanity of the war.
Understandably, Nixon and the Army weren’t real happy with his shooting off his
mouth.
Which brings to mind the investigation of the soldiers who refused convoy
orders in Iraq. Whomever is held to account, “it
seems far less likely” that Rummy Boy and his minions “will ever have to answer for their
egregious failures” of planning and leadership.
Meantime, have a look at Georgie Anne Geyer’s scary column from the other day,“Bush
re-election could lead to imperial dreams.” It comes a long way from the
notion Joan Didion pointed up recently,
that before 9/11 “it had still been possible to imagine the clouded outcome of the 2000 election as
its saving feature, an assured deterrent to any who would exercise undue reach.”
Then think about this: A majority of American voters believe the Ignoramus in Chief has
mismanaged the economy and the war in Iraq, according to a new New
York Times/CBS poll, and that his tax cuts favored the rich.
They also believe John Kerry “would do a better job preserving Social Security, creating jobs and
ending the war in Iraq.”
Yet the poll found that, despite believing the ignoramus has been wrong on so much else, 68
percent believe he “would make the right decisions to prevent another terrorist attack.” Why they
believe that must be one of the great mysteries. But largely because of that and their doubts about
Kerry, the poll shows the presidential election at this point to be a dead heat.
The poll also found that 59 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong
direction; 59 percent believe the ignoramus’s policies favored corporate interests; only 38 percent
approved of the way the Republican-dominated Congress is doing its job, and that 46 percent said
they would vote for the Democratic Congressional candidate, compared to 38 percent who would
vote Republican.
You’d think the poll would have shown a brewing landslide against an ignoramus with such
high disapproval ratings. In the real world that would have been a no brainer. But this is America,
which seems to be living in a dream world. Are we in shit too deep to climb out? Will voters
suddenly wake up on election day and make the right decision? I wouldn’t count on it. But if it’s
too much to hope for, why the hell am I blogging?
