IF THIS IS PATRIOTISM, KEEP IT

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Wednesday September 26 08:23 PM EDT

IF THIS IS PATRIOTISM, KEEP IT

By Ted Rall

Bush and Company's Grab for a Blank Check

NEW YORK -- We've been treated to some astonishingly vile images over the last two weeks: office workers hurling themselves into a hundred-floor-high abyss. A gaping, smouldering hole in the financial center of our greatest city. George W. Bush passing himself off as a patriot, even as he disassembles the Constitution with the voracious glee of piranha skeletonizing a cow.

"There is no opposition party," Republican congressional leader Trent Lott chillingly announced as Democratic counterpart Tom Daschle watched in silent, cowed assent after Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress. And even if it's mainly the result of our pathetic desire to follow someone -- anyone -- in the aftermath of Sept. 11, there's little opposition out in the cities and towns across our vast continent: Bush's job-approval rating is hovering up there with puppies and sunny days.

It may have seemed meaningless at the time, but now we know why 7,000 people sacrificed their lives -- so that we'd all forget how Bush stole a presidential election. And as it turns out, national amnesia was only the beginning.

"War" was declared against America Sept. 11, Bush told us, and we're declaring "war" right back. War against whom? Afghanistan (news - web sites)? Iraq? Canada? You declare war against a nation-state, not against terrorists living inside a country. You can ask a foreign government to extradite accused terrorists for trial, but you're not likely to get very far if you don't share good diplomatic relations. According to the Constitution, the president doesn't declare war -- Congress does.

Without so much as an invocation of the Constitution-bending War Powers Act -- which would allow the president to commit troops for a limited time -- here we are at "war." Troops are being mobilized and allies are being gathered to fight ... whomever. Whatever. Wherever. Wallowing in a level of cynicism unseen since Lyndon Johnson conned Congress into the Vietnam War based on a Tonkin Gulf incident that never happened, Bush has capitalized on a nation's grief, confusion and anger to extort a political blank check payable in young American blood.

Oh, right. First we have to "get" -- read, murder -- alleged terrorist mastermind and perennial bugaboo Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). "We rule out the possibility of his handover to America without substantial evidence," Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Mutmaen said Sept. 24. This demand is nothing more than any country, not least the United States, would insist upon before extradition; the Bushies call this adherence to basic international law "a stalling tactic." But even if you don't believe that the Afghan government deserves this courtesy after all they've done (whatever that is), how about us? After all, we live -- or lived, before the Supreme Court subverted it last December -- in a democracy. Aren't we entitled to see some definitive proof tying bin Laden and/or the Taliban to the hijack attacks before we send our sons and daughters off to die in the Hindu Kush?

JFK showed us survelliance photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba. TV cameras followed troops into battle in Vietnam. But according to an anonymous defense official quoted by Reuters, "There is a new way of doing business here, and it's not in the sunshine." And the "war" itself will be waged far away from prying journalists. "It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations -- secret even in success," smirks Bush.

We're at war with whoever Bush decides is our enemy. Not only won't he tell us how or why they're our enemies, he won't tell us how or why we're attacking them or how or why our citizens are getting killed trying to do it. Welcome to 'cause-I-said-so-ocracy. "Operations like those mounted by special forces are played out in the shadows," Edward Turzanski, a LaSalle University national security analyst, told Reuters. "It is not even clear that operations in which troops might be killed will be disclosed, at least right away."

"It's important as this war progresses that the American people understand we make decisions based upon classified information, and we will not jeopardize the sources," Bush arrogantly announced Sept. 24. "We will not make the war more difficult to win by publicly disclosing classified information."

For a man who hired goons to physically threaten Florida election officials, Bush is asking an awful lot of us in his one-man war against the world. Let's get this straight: We're supposed to believe this guy's account of "classified" information -- even while he tells us that, from now on, he'll be lying to us for our own good?

If ever there was a classic naked-emperor moment, it was the morning after Bush's address to Congress. A competently delivered, committee-written hack job was breathlessly equated by liberals and conservatives alike to FDR's and Churchill's soaring oratorical highlights. Such is our craving for leadership that we're annointing a doltish daddy's-boy who still won't come clean about his DWI record with the mandate of heaven.

Pacificism is no way to run a superpower. If concrete proof can be presented that a group or individual directly participated in the massacre of thousands of New Yorkers and Washingtonians, those people deserve to be brought to justice or killed in the attempt to apprehend them. I, for one, would shed no tears for the inhumane scum who caused so much misery to so many. But the memories of our dead will be poorly served if we let right-wing extremists bring about the imperial presidency Bush is shoving down our throats. Blank-check democracy, if you stop to think about it, is no democracy at all.

-- (bush@is.antichrist), September 28, 2001

Answers

Well come on all you big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again, Got himself in a terrible jam, Way down yonder in Afghanistan.

Put down yer books, pick up a gun, We're gonna have a whole lot o' fun

And, it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Afghanistan.

And it's four, five , six, Open up the pearly gates, Well, there aint no time to wonder why, Whoopee, we're all gonna die.....

-- Country Joe (Andthe@fish.org), September 28, 2001.


One of the billions should go directly to Bush for his acting ability. How he can keep a straight face (almost) is fascinating. I keep waiting for "ROTFLMAO".

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), September 28, 2001.

www.frontpagemag.com

The New Anti-Americanism of the Academic Left By Candace de Russy and Winfield Myers FrontPageMagazine.com | September 28, 2001

"The question we should explore is not who we should bomb or where we should bomb, but why we were targeted. When we have the answer to why, then we will have the ability to prevent terrorist attacks tomorrow."

--Rania Masri, speaking at "Understanding the Attack: an Alternate View," held at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September 17, 2001

AT THE UNIVERSITY of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on September 17, while smoke still rose from the rubble that was the World Trade Center, a teach-in was held titled "Understanding the Attack on America: an Alternate View." The event’s sponsors were groups typical of those found on many campuses: the Progressive Faculty Network; Carolina Seminar on Bridging the Divide; Academics, Activists and the Struggle for Social Justice. Also on board were the office of Student Affairs and the University Center for International Studies. In its content and tone, the event sadly typifies the response of the campus left nationwide.

It is hardly news that America’s college campuses are filled with intellectual nihilists, cultural relativists, and mediocre activists of every stripe. For decades, academics have denied the existence of truth (except for their own pieties), questioned the possibility of communication (in writings designed to advance their careers), and attacked the intellectual moorings of Western culture (from their lucrative posts in Western institutions). Recently, signs were hopeful that their power was weakening, although no succession was yet discernible. A public always suspicious of egg-head culture tuned out the universities in favor of popular writers, public intellectuals, and cable TV.

Yet our nation’s day of death, September 11, has given the academic left new reason to live. Enraged that a people could so unite behind their president and flag, left-wing professors, students, and vagrant activists are holding rallies, teach-ins, demonstrations, and vigils to protest America’s will to defend herself against the war the terrorists have brought to our shores. Much of the language and affectation smack of the Vietnam-era, when white collar students condemned the world forged by their formerly blue collar parents from the ruins of depression and war. One is reminded of the pro-Viet Cong propaganda of the ‘60s, of photos of Jane Fonda posing in an anti-aircraft cannon used to kill U.S. servicemen, and of the knee-jerk tendency to blame America for all the world’s ills. Disingenuous charges of moral equivalency, mass rallies attended by self-righteous youth, and sympathy with the enemy again give meaning to the lives of thousands.

The charges at the Carolina event are not only intellectually vacuous; they are anti-American in the extreme. Catherine Lutz, a UNC professor of anthropology, said that the "international police" should be sent in to pick up bin Laden, and that these forces should "pick up Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet on the way home." Furthermore, she restated the tired left-wing claim that the U.S. began the Cold War and that killing thousands of innocents in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania was something we brought on ourselves. "The parallel to [September 11] is not Pearl Harbor. It is February, 1947, when a new war was declared." William Blum, an "investigative journalist" and founder of the Washington Free Press, a far-left ultra-green rag, remarked glibly on the President’s promise to go after nations that harbor terrorists: "[T]here are few if any nations in the world that have harbored more terrorists than the United States." He added that terrorism against America would not stop "as long as we are intervening in civil wars that are none of our business besides serving the interests of U.S. corporations." The moral equivalency, comfortable cowardice, and convoluted logic of these statements are drawn not only from old left cant, but from the new left’s expanded arsenal of ideas.

For radical thought has in fact changed over the past 30 years. Today’s protestors draw upon decades of corrosive academic theory: deconstruction; critical legal studies; pseudo-disciplines based on victimology – the unholy trio of race, class, and gender; and the New Age religion of environmentalism. Indeed, William Blum’s Washington Free Press is filled with the writings of radical greens, for whom human life is little more than contamination of planet earth. Add to this the throngs of professional thugs posing as anti-global trade protestors who periodically loot and pillage cities, and the degree of change since Woodstock becomes clearer. We’re faced today by a fusionist left eager to overlook internal differences to form a unified front.

Public response to this new fusion of malcontents is reassuringly negative; opinion polls place President Bush’s approval rating at around 90 percent, and most Americans demand a military response to the terrorist bombings. Even the elite media presented a unified, pro-American face in the first week after the bombings, perhaps more from sheer shock than from a genuine sense of patriotism. But that visage has fractured with each passing day, so that as September draws to a close America’s intellectual elite appear less resolute in their dedication to principle. Overcoming the toxic seepage of academic opinion into the mainstream will require a significant counteroffensive that takes its strength from the patriotism and self-sacrifice so evident among our citizens over the past few weeks. The struggle before us will be long and at times frustratingly obscure. Let us take this opportunity to ensure that the deaths of innocents will not be compromised by the fatuousness of the professors.

Winfield Myers is director of communications at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Candace de Russy is a writer on educational and cultural issues.

-- - (Alice@the.restaurant), September 28, 2001.


The Ted Rall's of the world are assholes.

They would have us do NOTHING in the face of this!!!

What a socialist piece of garbage. Twice as many people died as in Pearl Harbor and they blame Bush for not revealing "trade secrets" about links to Bin Laden. But blame Clinton for shooting cruise missiles into Afghanistan in a half-assed attempt to kill Bin Laden with no 'revealed' evidence to the world and that's okay??!!!

Socialists are hypocrites to the extreme.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), September 28, 2001.


OK, we'll keep it, and you can move to Afghanistan.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), September 28, 2001.


The Spectator The fascist sympathies of the soft left

Christopher Hitchens says that intellectuals who seek to understand the new enemy are no friends of peace, democracy or human life

Washington

What is known in American psycho-babble as ‘denial’ strikes in many insidious forms. It can express itself as the simple refusal to admit that a painful event has occurred. It may manifest itself as a cheery rationalisation of something ghastly. Or it can involve a crude shifting of blame. It’s actually a more useful term than it sometimes looks.

The reaction of much of the Left to the human and moral catastrophe at the World Trade Center, and to the aggression that lies behind it, has partaken of all three variants. For me, the best encapsulation came in an angry email I received shortly after I denounced the rationalisers in a column published in New York. It came from Sam Husseini, who runs a dove-ish Washington outfit innocuously called the Institute for Public Accuracy. (I hope it goes without saying that I am not picking on Mr Husseini because of his Arab-American origins: he speaks here for many a brow-furrowed Wasp and conscience-stricken Jew.) The forces of Osama bin Laden, he wrote, ‘could not get volunteers to stuff envelopes if Israel had withdrawn from Jerusalem like it was supposed to — and the US stopped the sanctions and the bombing on Iraq’.

That neatly synthesised all three facets of denial. ‘Envelope-stuffing’ reduces the members of al-Qa’eda to the manageable status of everyday political activists with a programme; the same image obstructs the recognition of the full impact of the attack; the diplomatic measures that supposedly could have warded off the atrocity become, by an obvious transference, the source of responsibility for it. This is something more like self-hatred than appeasement.

The death-squads of New York and Washington have not favoured us with a posthumous manifesto of their grievances, but we are nonetheless able to surmise or deduce or induct a fair amount about the ideological or theological ‘root’ of their act.

The central plan was to maximise civilian casualties in a very dense area of downtown Manhattan. Whatever Mr Husseini may say about Israel, the plan was designed and incubated long before the mutual masturbation of the Clinton– Arafat–Barak ‘process’. The Talebanis have in any case not distinguished themselves by an interest in the Palestinian plight. (It ought to go without saying that the demand for Palestinian self-determination is, as before, a good cause in its own right. Not now more than ever, but now as ever.) They have been busier trying to bring their own societies under the reign of the most inflexible and pitiless declension of Sheria law.

The ancillary plan was to hit the Department of Defense and (on the best evidence we have available) either the Capitol Dome or the White House. The Pentagon, for all its symbolism, is actually more the civil-service bit of the American ‘war-machine’, and is set in a crowded Virginia neighbourhood. You could certainly call it a military target if you were that way inclined, though the bin Ladenists did not attempt anything against a guarded airbase or a nuclear power-station in Pennsylvania (and even if they had, we would now doubtless be reading that the glow from Three Mile Island was a revenge for globalisation).

The Capitol is where the voters send their elected representatives — poor things, to be sure, but our own. The White House is where the elected president and his family and staff are to be found. It survived the attempt of British imperialism to burn it down, and the attempt of the Confederacy to take Washington DC, and this has hallowed even its most mediocre occupants. I might, from where I am sitting, be a short walk from a gutted Capitol or a shattered White House. I am quite certain that in such a case the rationalising left-liberals would still be telling me that my chickens were coming home to roost. Only those who chose to die fighting rather than allow such a profanity, and such a further toll in lives, stood between us and the fourth death squad. One iota of such innate fortitude is worth all the writings of Noam Chomsky, who coldly compared the plan of 11 September to a stupid and cruel and cynical raid by Bill Clinton on Khartoum in August 1998.

To mention this banana-republic degradation of the United States in the same breath as a plan, deliberated for months, to inflict maximum horror upon the innocent is to abandon every standard that makes intellectual and moral discrimination possible. To put it at its very lowest, and most elementary, at least the missiles launched by Clinton were not full of passengers.

So much for what the methods and targets tell us about the true anti-human and anti-democratic motivation. What about the animating ideas? The teachings and published proclamations of the Wahhabi-indoctrinated sectarians of the al-Qa’eda cult have initiated us into the idea that the tolerant, the open-minded, the apostate or the followers of different branches of The Faith are fit only for slaughter and contempt. And that’s before Christians and Jews, let alone atheists and secularists, have even been factored in. As before, the deed announces and exposes its ‘root cause’. The grievances and animosity predate even the Balfour Declaration, let alone the occupation of the West Bank. They predate the creation of Iraq as a state. The gates of Vienna would have had to fall to the Ottoman jihad before any balm could begin to be applied to these psychic wounds.

And this is precisely, now, our problem. The Taleban and its surrogates are not content to immiserate their own societies in beggary and serfdom. They are condemned, and they deludedly believe that they are commanded, to spread the contagion and to visit hell upon the unrighteous. The very first step that we must take, therefore, is the acquisition of enough self-respect and self-confidence to say that we have met an enemy and that he is not us, but someone else. Someone with whom coexistence is, fortunately I think, not possible. (I say ‘fortunately’ because I am also convinced that such coexistence is not desirable.)

But straight away, we meet people who complain at once that this enemy is us, really. Did we not aid the grisly Taleban to achieve and hold power? Yes, indeed ‘we’ did. But does this not double or triple our responsibility to remove it from power? A sudden sheep-like silence, broken by a bleat. Would that not be ‘over-reaction’? All I want to say for now is that the under-reaction to the Taleban by three successive US administrations is one of the resounding disgraces of our time. There is good reason to think that a Taleban defeat would fill the streets of Kabul with joy.

The sponsorship of the Taleban could be redeemed by the demolition of its regime and the liberation of its victims. But I detect no stomach for any such project. Better, then — more decent and reticent — not to affect such concern for ‘our’ past offences.

Ultimately, this is another but uniquely toxic version of an old story, whereby former clients like Noriega and Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic and the Taleban cease to be our monsters and become monstrous in their own right. The figure of 6,500 murders in New York is almost the exact equivalent of the total uncovered in the death-pits of Srebrenica. (Even at Srebrenica, the demented General Ratko Mladic agreed to release all the women, all the children, all the old people and all the males above and below military age before ordering his squads to fall to work.) On that occasion, US satellites flew serenely overhead recording the scene, and Mr Milosevic earned himself an invitation to Dayton, Ohio. But in the end, after appalling false starts and delays, it was found that Mr Milosevic was too much. He wasn’t just too nasty. He was also too irrational and dangerous. He didn’t even save himself by lyingly claiming, as he several times did, that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Bosnia.

It must be said that by this, and by other lies and numberless other atrocities, Mr Milosevic distinguished himself as an enemy of Islam. His national-socialist regime took the line on the towel-heads that the Bush administration is accused — by fools and knaves — of taking. Yet when a stand was eventually mounted against Milosevic, it was Noam Chomsky, among many others, who described the whole business as a bullying persecution of — the Serbs!

I have no hesitation in describing this mentality, carefully and without heat, as soft on crime and soft on fascism. No political coalition is possible with such people and, I’m thankful to say, no political coalition with them is now necessary. It no longer matters what they think.

-- - (Remember@the.WTC!), September 28, 2001.


BEFORE you go giving the executive branch carte blanche powers don't you FIRST set up a legislative and judicial "Oversight Committee"? One that is hopefully neither too leaky nor too tight? Are we relying, right now, on our 'old' oversight bodies and structures, or new ones, or integrated hybrids or none at all? I have to admit I don't even know, right now; it's never spoken about at all, these days.

Anybody?

Who's specifically charged with saving our butts from Bush or from ourselves, these days, or at least informing us when something is going badly? Can we count on them? I don't think too many professional politicians even dare to disagree on anything going on right now, let alone actively speak out against something. Who's supposed to "sound the alarm" when this whole blank check deal starts to go terribly wrong? The media? Have our 'checks and balances' been reduced to our reliance on the existance and perceptions of the free press alone?

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 28, 2001.


Zzzz,

That's Cherri's job and she does it quite well. Of course there are several others around here who don't want anybody to think of these issues.

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), September 28, 2001.


The next thing you will hear is Bush saying that he is canceling social security as he needs the money for his secret war and by the way he wants all loyal Americans to continue paying into social security because next year he is going to need even more money for the secret war against "terrorists". When the press asks how the war is going then Bush will tell them that its a state secret and revealing how the war is going will get somebody killed.

-- Bush is the greatest (We need your@money.com), September 28, 2001.

Ya and ALL of THIS is Bill Clinton's doing! bastard.

-- (anotherp@sfrombush.touristoffice), September 28, 2001.


Zzzz:

You're absolutely right! We should listen to Ted Rall, for whom these 7000 deaths and multi-billions in damages are nothing more than another excuse to whine about the "wrong" man winning the election.

We should all sit around and deliberate. Most especially, we should invite the Ted Ralls of the world to direct these deliberations, lest someone he doesn't like actually blunder into a position to actually DO something.

Instead, we should have another election immediately -- one which Rall's candidate wins, of course (otherwise the election is "stolen" and we'd need to try again). With any luck, we'd elect representatives who could exercise true checks and balances, so that every faction would have nice veto power over every other faction (except Rall's, of course).

I get the impression that Rall isn't really concerned about all those deaths, nor does it cross his mind that the national will can't help be galvanized to respond in some way. The ONLY thing bothering Rall is that Bush, rather than Gore, is the political recipient of national outrage. Can you even imagine Rall having second thoughts if HIS preferred politician should enjoy such dangerously unanimous support?

Rall's opposition to Bush is exactly like Cherri's -- mindless, knee- jerk, ignorant hatred of Bush along with predetermined opposition to whatever Bush might do. Rall doesn't have any clue what Bush might do, of course. All he knows is that whatever Bush does is wrong and bad by definition. And the support that circumstance has created for Bush has driven Rall into paroxysms of apoplexy, to the point where reading his prose means looking directly into the eyes of sheer insanity. Scary.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 28, 2001.


Bush stood ontop of the remains of thousands with a blowhorn on day3 spewing for the cameras. What is NOT to understand?

He ran hours after this event to the cornfields. Claimed he was targeted. All since confirmed baloney by the Secret Service AND the FBI. Spent day2 explaining why he ran.

Question is, why did he infact run and then make-up the false story? What are they hiding? where are they hiding? maybe as one of us? maybe?

-- (Jesus@youpeopleare.stoopid), September 28, 2001.


Everything looks left from the extreme right.

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), September 28, 2001.

Flint: I have no idea who Ted Ralls is, nor do I care. My question was a valid one about "checks and balances", and your answer was some partisan tirade on some [obscure] spin doctor; who cares?

I just hate to see our checks and balances system reduced to the "Deep Throat" inside informant system of the Watergate era. That's pretty lame, and insanely chancy, if you ask me.

This is serious business. Very serious business.

I, personally, regard handing the government carte blanche secrecy powers along with an unlimited budget and a pervasive attitute of "fear-of-dissent" from the rest of our political infrastructure as a thing that's potentially FAR more dangerous to all of us, and to democracy itself, than all the terrorists in the world combined are. So - I'm a damned fool for not trusting this whole thing to some secret little clique?

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 28, 2001.


I, personally, regard handing the government carte blanche secrecy powers along with an unlimited budget and a pervasive attitute of "fear-of-dissent" from the rest of our political infrastructure as a thing that's potentially FAR more dangerous to all of us, and to democracy itself, than all the terrorists in the world combined are. So - I'm a damned fool for not trusting this whole thing to some secret little clique?

Agreement here. But I think "potentially" is a key word in the above; I don't know if I believe the US executive branch is capable of causing any real long-term damage to our civil liberties. They would have to keep congress in check, the fourth estate (press) in check, every historically aware pentagon general/chief in check, while all the while keeping the almost autonomous intelligence agencies completely, utterly tasked to this end.

The failings of government bureaucracy alone would keep this from happening.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), September 28, 2001.



Bemused-

You're probably right...so why don't I feel any better yet, even knowing that?

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 28, 2001.


Zzzzz:

OK, Ted Rall is the author of the editorial that started this very thread. I had (mistakenly) assumed you knew and had read what you were responding to. But I'll also gladly ignore Ted Rall, whose vile bile seems based on nothing more than blind hatred.

As for the checks and balances, I suspect Rall (and others of his stripe) are strongly misrepresenting the situation. I tried to point out why I felt this way. The Rall types BEGIN with their total hatred of Bush, and then operate from the premise that NO MATTER WHAT Bush does, it must be the worst possible thing for everyone.

And so we get to what concerns you. You say Bush has near-unanimous public support? That must mean Bush isn't being subjected to the kind of reasonable checks and balances that a doofless dingbat requires! And we all agree that Bush is at least stupid, if not cowardly, dishonest, a puppet, etc. Don't we?

You say Bush wants to use the likely most effective tactics for combating terrorism? That must mean Bush must be secretly running roughshod over the Constitution! Any evidence? AHA! That's JUST the point - because it's secret, there is no evidence. But because it's Bush, it must be a terrible thing he's doing. Whatever it is.

You say that given the galvanized, angry public sentiment, it has become strikingly unpopular if not dangerous to evince anything other than pure jingoistic chauvinism? That must be Bush's fault, because Bush has tried to mobilize a reasonable and effective response, rather than kissing the ass of the "America is terrible and deserves this" liberals.

Now, what Rall wanted was concrete proof of direct participation in the acts of terrorism themselves, in which case he'd be willing to execute those involved. Rall fails to mention that (a) concrete proof is exactly what terrorism makes impossible; and (b) Those who directly participated are *already* dead.

So what should Bush do? As far as I can tell, neither you nor Rall makes any positive recommendation at all, you only decide that whatever that awful Bush does must be wrong. Maybe you'd recommend that we promptly put Gore in the presidency, where he can properly ignore the overwhelming public demand to respond, while he tries to generate the political gridlock you see to want so badly?

I don't want an unaccountable, out-of-control government any more than anyone else. But that isn't what we have or what we will get. Your concerns are not now, and perhaps never will be, realistic. So this all reads like an opportunistic effort to use national tragedy to vent political hatred. Rall is more honest about this, actually frothing at the mouth with political delirium. You seem more inclined to disguise your loathing of Bush behind more formal Constitutional concerns.

So I recommend we wait and see what actually happens, so that our reactions can be based on real abuses (if any), and not political partisanship run rampant. Bemused is exactly correct that we have not anywhere near close to abandoned our balance of powers. The "potential" Rall sees is mostly in his left-wing imagination. And the reason you still feel bad is, you cannot be comfortable with overwhelming popular support for someone you've invested so much emotion developing a hatred for. But fortunately, this is YOUR problem and not OURS.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 28, 2001.


Let's not go crazy, here, Flint.

Bush the first enjoyed immense popularity during the gulf war and found himself in retirement in 1992.

The country happens to be populated by folks who can think for themselves. I know, that's an abomination to the True Believers.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), September 28, 2001.


Bemused:

I'm not sure where you think I'm going crazy here. I find Rall in thrall to his own political agenda, and Zzzzz has been populating multiple threads with his de facto disgust with Bush no matter what.

Meanwhile, I think both are wrong about how government is being undermined by the near-unanimity of the public desire to respond. That reaction is utterly irrespective of whoever might have the misfortune to be president during such attacks, and faced with the daunting task of applying overwhelming military power to a shadowy enemy against which such military power is nearly useless.

I think it's extremely clear both from Rall's rant and Zzzzz's politically one-dimensional approach that both are consumed by WHO should lead our response, rather than against whom we should act, or in what way. For both of them, this terrible tragedy seems no more than an opportunity to vent their petty spleens, and this is a shame. We have a current crisis, and they are still tangled up in their emptional reaction to last year's election.

Rall's "blank check" does not, and never will, exist. He created this fiction out of sheer fanaticism. Zzzzz is just saying "me too, me too! Whatever attacks Bush is fine with me!" without really bothering himself considering, like, what's really happening.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 28, 2001.


I think that the really critical element involved here is mentioned in Bemused's last line. Government function is in large part carried out by the "bureaucracy". Most people overlook the very large role that a professional bureaucracy plays in government as an organization. In fact, I believe that this element of government organization is an additional check and/or balance that was never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.

Most people give the word bureaucracy a negative connatation while I believe that bureaucracy is actually good in its own way. It lends stability to the government operation while also serving as a brake, if you will, so things don't change too rapidly. Given the right people at the right place I believe that it could derail things as Bemused said above. I think that Bemused was implying that the bureaucracy would bring any such plan down through failure or a flaw in the system. I think it could very well be brought down intentionally as could any government program by the "bureaucrats" themselves.

Does anyone have any thoughts regarding the role and impact of bureaucracy in our government today?

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), September 28, 2001.


Jack:

Yes indeed. Someone once asked Jack Kennedy what was most different about being president from what he'd expected. After some thought, Kennedy said what surprised him most was the difference between how easy it was to give an order, and how very difficult it was to get that order carried out.

If the bureaucracy doesn't want to do things that way, it just kind of doesn't happen. Nobody in particular has circumvented the order, you understand. Everyone involved simply helped with the operational interpretation. After all, orders tell you *what* to do, and not *how* to do it in exhaustive detail. But in practice, HOW something is done IS what is done. So what happens is that many bureaucrats are involved in taking a general Presidential directive and casting that directive into specific behaviors, requests, changes in job descriptions, development of forms and procedures, wording of regulations, and on and on.

Not too surprisingly, the end product is that the bureaucracy tends to keep doing just what it was doing before. Bureaucracies are curious beasts. They tend to be populated by those who think that no matter the question, government is the right answer (because those who believe otherwise are in the private sector). So by inclination, this makes them heavily Democratic. On the other hand, bureaucrats are loathe to make real changes, because changes upset carefully balanced territories and power structures and make life unpredictable. Bureaucrats *hate* unpredictable.

And if things were difficult for Kennedy (a Democrat himself), imagine what it's like for a Republican administration. Nixon's downfall, everything considered, derived from his attempt to put the entire bureaucracy to sleep and bring their functions into the White House, where his hand picked people could do an end run around the official bureaucracy, and his orders could actually get carried out. Problem was, there are real advantages to the formal civil service bureaucracy, as Nixon learned the hard way. Loyalty was more important to Nixon than judgment and habit, and it cost him the office.

So your question is entirely pertinent. Whole books have been written about whether Supreme Court decisions change the behavior of police departments, which end up observing that no, most USSC decisions don't change much. Similarly, most Presidential directives don't change much either. The military is just another bureaucracy, used to doing things one way and reluctant to change.

The concern about "blank checks" is silly for many reasons, and any real understanding of the bureaucracy just adds one more reason.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 28, 2001.


Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

- Kafka

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency

- Eugene McCarthy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy

- Unknown

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status

- Laurence J. Peter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned - Milton Friedman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bureaucracy is the conversion of human energy into solid waste

- Unknown

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 28, 2001.


if you ain,t happy--send your REP. a note. they pay attention too enough notes.

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), September 28, 2001.

al-d, I never know what the hell you're talking about, but if it was up to me, you'd have a one-way ticket straight to heaven and by God I'd hope you'd come to your senses and use it even if it was coming in a little envelope like a wedding invite or funeral notice from a heathen like me. Hal Ay You La. Amen.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), September 28, 2001.

Flint-

You nailed me justly on at least one count there. My eyes must have glazed over reading the thread subject lead in; I didn't notice the name 'Ted Ralls', nor is it a "previously known" name to me. Sorry.

You might have noticed in my first posting on this thread that I did not single Bush out in any specific way at all, I said "Bush or from ourselves". He's "the dude", after all, and you can't just not mention him somehow if you're going to even bring this subject up, I don't think.

In my second comment he was not mentioned at all. To me this is not something "he caused" at all, my discomfort is just a generic forboding about the whole deal. You then went on to put a whole ton of your words in my mouth in the rest of your response, and the shit really started to get deep there after that; but that aside, your comments were interesting and I consider them.

I have come down on the man pretty hard in other threads. Granted. It comes with the office, and I'd expect the same if I were in his shoes. It just comes with the territory. I try not to be foaming-at-the-mouth rabid about it, and I try to confine myself to specifics in a rational way, I think.

Your constant defense of the man sounds, to me, a bit like a "mindless, knee- jerk, blind adoration of Bush along with predetermined support of whatever Bush might do" attitude too, don't you think?

And this is hardly just my problem, no matter that you might think - get real.

If it makes you feel any better let me also say that whatever preconceived notions I may have about Bush, I'll also agree that the guy has generally done "okay" so far. I won't even go into "better or worse" than who crap here, because it doesn't matter - all the others are "out", he's "in" and he's got the reins, and we're proceeding with some common sense, so far as I can see.

In watching this all unfold I've got to marvel, once again, at how the office itself has the power to change the person holding the office. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. I think Bush is getting a real education these days, and he's growing into it. I'll also concede the possibility that we may see an entirely different man emerging from this term of office than the one we started with - I think it's bound to do that to any man.

Anyway, he's not the "antichrist" in my book yet, and I'll give the man his due when he earns it. But he will have to earn it, and he will have the eyes of the entire world on him as he attempts to do that, including mine.

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 29, 2001.


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