One way to make sense of it

I, and I think a good part of the nation, have always been puzzled by how badly the Bush wars went wrong. It was as though no one in the administration took them seriously.

As I may have said before, when Bush first invaded Iraq, my greatest fear was that it would be such an easy success that it would validate the “Bush doctrine” of pre-emptive war and we would, as a nation, just continue to romp and stomp our way around the world.

That did not pan out.

But why?

Over at Tom Dispatch, John Brown has a theory. In his article Too Parochial for Empire, Brown opines that it was never world conquest that drove the Bushies. Or rather, that world conquest was secondary to winning the power struggle inside the bubble that is Washington, D.C. Bush was ignorant and indifferent:

George W. Bush was incapable of having a global vision himself, imperial or otherwise. In the words of commentator William Pfaff, “Bush is happy deciding, even though he knows nothing.” The President’s major foreign-policy decision — to invade Iraq — was certainly not based on any understanding of the global implications of what he was doing (including, conceivably, expanding an empire). It was taken for reasons that still remain unclear, but may have ranged from his tortuous relationship with his father to his desire to portray himself as a decisive commander in chief to the American electorate. Perhaps, to use his words, the former cheerleader frat boy just wanted to “kick ass” overseas to show the media, voters, and possibly even himself, that he was doing something other than sitting in the Oval Office preaching the virtues of compassionate conservatism.

Condi and Colin were incompetent for the jobs they were given:

Given the tabula rasa in Bush’s mind regarding the world outside “the homeland” (a word his administration has regrettably contributed to the American language), it is hardly surprising that he selected as his main foreign policy advisers two people with very limited global visions of their own: Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor and, as Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Rice herself admitted in 2000 that, as a “Europeanist,” “I’ve been pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope”; and Powell’s qualifications were based on his military savvy — and loyalty — not his geopolitical perspectives. The general, as Bill Keller of the New York Times reported in 2001, was “a problem solver, not a visionary.”

As became clear after the horror of 9/11 — a foreign policy failure of the first order, if ever there was one, that no “empire” in its right mind would have allowed — Rice and Powell essentially became talking-point briefers…

Which left Cheney and Rumsfeld in charge and they had old scores to settle:

As for the once-dynamic duo who characterized much of this administration — Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and those clustered around their “offices”) — the only “empire” that really counted for them was the parochial world of Washington, DC, with its lobbyists, bureaucrats, politicians, and assorted supporting think-tankers, all absorbed in their petty turf-wars about who among them would get government money for their minions and projects, overseas or at home. This was the narcissistic province that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense had the urge to dominate with their “unitary executive,” “wartime,” commander-in-chief presidency and the foreign wars that made it all possible. Developments outside the U.S., however, mattered largely to the extent that they helped in the aggrandizement of their own power, their fiefdoms, and those of their cronies, on the banks of the Potomac.

In short, Cheney and Rumsfeld were very smart about doing very stupid things. And so, to misquote Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy,* “here’s another fine mess they’ve gotten us into.”

(These two have a history of getting us into messes that goes clear back to Nixon.)

Read all of this highly readable article. The notion that two men would set the world aflame as a way of consolidating power in D.C. makes sense with this lot but it is almost incomprehensibly shocking.