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solarbirdI'm posting this because it's much too much like what I've been picking up as how the Bush administration - and how President Bush in particular - works.
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Without a Doubt
By RON SUSKIND
October 17, 2004
TinyURL here: http://tinyurl.com/5nb83
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them...
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'''
The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action.
But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect.
The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.''
What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?
All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.
The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.)
Much, much more at the web site.
-----
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Without a Doubt
By RON SUSKIND
October 17, 2004
TinyURL here: http://tinyurl.com/5nb83
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them...
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'''
The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action.
But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect.
The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.''
What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?
All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.
The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.)
Much, much more at the web site.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 02:40 am (UTC)You have to take the bad with the good, especially if the good is so much greater.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 03:01 am (UTC)Bush’s administration underestimated the difficulty of liberating Iraq. Not of defeating Hussein’s Republican Guard — that was the easy part. But they seem to have accepted Ahmed Chalabi’s song-and-dance routine about the Iraqi people welcoming us with open arms and strewing our path with rose petals. Paul Wolfowitz even claimed that there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq! Talk about ignoring reality.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 12:22 pm (UTC)"Diverting Resources away from Afganistan" is a lie. The general in charge of that operation, Tommy Franks, says so. Troop strength in Afganistan has remained relatively constant or grown slightly since we went in.
Clearly, your fears of Bush "Making a hash of it" were unfounded. It's turning out pretty well. Why not accept that as an indication he will also succeed in Iraq?
I'm not sure on what you base your comment about them not welcoming us. Maybe the fact that the news only covers the fighting. Of course the Iraqis are looking forward to the day we're gone, but they're still glad for what we've done - at least in all except three provinces where the foreign terrorists are concentrated.
Ï
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 06:26 pm (UTC)Sometimes, no matter how many resources you have, you still lose.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that he is dead, buried in a colapsed cave somewhere. We can't prove he's dead, and AQ can't prove he's alive, but they pretend he is for propaganda purposes.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 06:06 pm (UTC)My source is the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Indirectly, via Time and The Economist, because the IIS charges money to see its actual reports. And it’s just an estimate, of course, but it’s better than nothing.
White House counterterrorism adviser Rand Beers said that intelligence resources were diverted to Iraq that would have been better spent elsewhere, and that the Bush administration abandoned Afghanistan. He was so upset with how Bush is mishandling the War on Terrorism that he quit his administration job and went to work for Kerry.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 06:46 pm (UTC)So I'm reading the Economist article, and other than the estimate of how many have been trained, there's no real quantification other than "accellerated" with regard to recruitment. (Technically, they could say that if they went from one a month to two a month and still be correct.) And frankly, there's no indication if this rate of recruitment is higher or lower than the rate we are killing and capturing them. A (non)figure like that in isolation is worthless.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 06:56 pm (UTC)"Beers, a registered Democrat, vigorously promoted President Clinton's cautious line on Colombian policy as his assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. He owed Clinton for saving his career in 1997, when White House aides wanted to sack him as a National Security Council staffer for failing to give the president FBI reports about illegal campaign contributions from China."
He has also described himself as a good friend of Richard Clarke's for over 25 years. Interesting that he slipped into Clarke's old position, and then followed him into attacking Bush.
All I can say in the face of his background is that the criticism you bring up doesn't carry a lot of weight with me.
ˇ
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 09:44 am (UTC)But leaving that alone, I'm not just talking about Iraq. I think it's part of his general approach to both life and governance. And that's not good.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 12:29 pm (UTC)But I have an even harder time when liberals effectively say "We need more troops in Iraq, and we want them out right now!"
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 02:13 pm (UTC)> effectively say "We need more troops in Iraq,
> and we want them out right now!"
Listen.
You can put people in red shirts and blue shirts, but people are still people.
There is no homogeneous liberal anti-Bush opinion.
There are just people. The Kerry campaign and Bush administration might be two sloganeering machines pumping out contradictory ideas, but people are just individual folks who care about different things. Putting people you disagree with into blue shirts and trying to fight them as a whole is profoundly disrespectful.
There are memes out there that are "liberal" as you define it. It may even be worthwhile to argue against them. But it is worth considering two things:
Does the person you're talking to actively accept that meme?
and
Why do they do so?
Rebecca
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 04:25 pm (UTC)Back before the invasion there were *huge* fights between Rumsfeld and the top military leaders over how many troops would be needed for the invasion. It's been well documented that Rumsfeld personally edited and directed troop level, ignoring the advice of the best military strategists.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 06:28 pm (UTC)Besides, weren't you complaining about resources being taken from Afganistan earlier? Where would these additional troops have come from? A Draft?
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