Way to Go, George…Way to Go

Not a single shot has or ever will be fired, yet we have finally and unwittingly already lost a war with Iran that we have been waging since 1979. Throughout that time, the foreign policies of Messers Reagan, Bush and Clinton have been one of containment, at least maintaining a sort of status quo with the Iranians that has seen our relations with its government ebb and flow with the ascension and decline of both moderate and radical mullahs in Tehran and Qum. The one constant that marked each administration’s approach to Iran was a wary diplomacy that understood the need to maintain a dialog with Tehran without losing sight of the undercurrent of hatred and resentment amongst Iran’s more radical mullahs toward the West that drove much of that country’s foreign policy. At its worst, the relationship (since the end of the hostage crisis in 1980) was an ostensible standoff. Never…until now…was that policy dominated by one country or the other.

As I have suggested on numerous occasions, the blueprint for the destruction which has been wrought by the Bush administration is found in the September 2000 Project for a New Century white paper, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century” which was co-authored by a number of persons who were or are members of the Bush team including Rumsfeld and Cheney surrogates, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby. It is in that paper that the triumvirate of Iraq, Iran and North Korea are grouped together and identified as the object of our scorn and later branded by Bush as the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address. It is in that paper that the framework for the war which was launched in March 2003 was laid out in some detail, positing the need for the United States to establish forward military positions in the Persian Gulf in order to help foster a western-style democracy and to protect U.S. (oil) interests in the region. Positing that the United States could not permit a few small “rogue” powers with arsenals of ballistic and nuclear weapons to threaten our security, its authors wrote, “We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq…to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself. The blessings of the American peace, purchased at fearful cost and a century of effort, should not be so trivially squandered.”

Well, the implementation of the PNAC strategy has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its authors. I would suggest, however, that those wildest dreams are waking nightmares not only for the strategy’s neocon authors, but for this nation and its allies. Indeed, what we are witnessing is the unfolding of the most poorly conceived and dangerous foreign policy in my lifetime…one that has not only failed to secure the peace for the United States and its allies, but succeeded in reducing the United States to a bit player in the drama that is unfolding in the Persian Gulf and across Asia.

With war drums beating in the background, flushed with memories of quick victory in Kuwait and Iraq in 1992 and in Afghanistan in 2001, Mr. Bush, time and again, took to the podium to describe Iran as a member of the evil triumvirate, to describe the threat posed by Iran to American interests and to make clear that he and his government would never deal with Iran so long as it supported and fomented terrorism in the Gulf region, the Middle East and throughout the world. Unwittingly or otherwise, these speeches served to galvanize the Iranian electorate (who historically are very heterogeneous and not overly enthusiastic about the teachings of their radical mullahs) and made possible the election of the very conservative, very radical and quintessentially anti-American, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unfortunately no one in the Bush administration seems to have recognized the threat that this little man posed to Western interests. Indeed, it is still not clear whether anyone in this administration fully understands how this megalomaniac has turned the tables and usurped control over western and Persian policy in the region and policy through much of Asia and the world. In a word (or two), Mr. Ahmadinejad has and continues to play Mr. Bush like an old, finely tuned Gibson twelve string.

Understanding the western and Asian (particularly Chinese) dependence upon oil, Ahmadinejad has pressed his insistence upon developing Iran’s nuclear capability, playing the United States and Western Europe against Russia and China, with the expectation that a consensus could and would not be reached concerning sanctions that might interfere with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. When things began to look bleak for Iran (that is, that the Russians and Chinese began to indicate their willingness to support some sanctions and controls of and toward Iran), Iran unleashed Hezbollah to begin its assault on Northern Israel. Though, I suspect, neither Iran nor Hezbollah fully expected the violence and duration of the Israeli response (itself acting as a surrogate for the United States in the region), the point was nevertheless made: if you push or threaten us with sanctions and possible military action, Mr. Ahmadinejad says, we can very easily instigate violence any where and at any time of our choosing. The tactic worked. There was little talk of sanctions while the world’s attention was drawn to Lebanon during the summer of 2006 and little talk of sanctions since.

Moreover, with the Bush administration having been repudiated by the American electorate and unable to fashion a strategy for extricating ourselves from the quagmire it created in Iraq, the administration is now anxiously awaiting the report of James Baker’s, “Iraq Study Group” which will strongly recommend that the United States seek the assistance of Iran and Syria in trying to bring the sectarian violence under control in order to allow us to begin to withdraw our forces from the country.

What a mess Mr. Bush has made of our policies and standing. After years of criticism and condescension, how dangerous…how degrading…how embarrassing for this nation to now try to repair its relations with Iran by asking it to help us put out a conflagration that we started but cannot stop. Would it certainly have been better for all concerned to have continued the dialog (albeit an arms length one) with Iran that had been started by the three presidents who had preceded Mr. Bush in the White House so as to not lose the policy stand-off that has prevailed since Mr. Reagan took office in January 1981?

Instead, because of this nearly catastrophic policy to isolate rather than contain Iran, we now find ourselves in the extraordinary position of asking our avowed enemy (at least in the eyes of the PNAC neocons) to help us get out of Iraq. The consequences of our going, hat in hand, to Mr. Ahmadinejad under these circumstances, will be far-reaching, to say the least and unquestionably not in concert with our security interests at home and abroad. With question, the issue of Iran’s nuclear aspirations will be put on hold for the foreseeable future giving Iran the time it needs to complete its nuclear (weapons?) program. given that Mr. Ahmadinejad will certainly be an even more significant player on the world stage if and when the issue of Iran’s nuclear program is next before the United Nations, the likelihood of the UN or anyone else agreeing upon and enforcing a strategy for limiting Iran’s aspirations is likely nil.

Moreover, as I’ve written in the past, the United States’ ill-conceived strategy for removing Hussein and inserting a Western style democracy has not only failed but resulted in the election of a Shiite-led government that has concluded that its best chance for success lies with establishing relations --- nay, an alliance --- with the Shiite-based governments in Iran and Syria. Rather than an ally in the so-called, “war on terror”, we have likely given voice to a government that has and will find more in common with other Shiite-based led governments. Indeed, to avoid appearing as though they’re involvement in the region is dependent upon US policy and the recommendations of the Baker report, Iran has invited both the Maliki and Assad governments to meet with him in Tehran this weekend to “discuss” how to bring the sectarian violence to an end. Given that both Iran and Syria have both supported and fomented that violence through the insertion of weapons and foreign-born fighters into Iraq, bringing the violence to an end, though not a simple task, is likely to meet with far more success than the United States “stay-the-course” strategy of recent years. Further still, Syria and Iraq, this morning, announced a resumption of diplomatic ties that had been severed more than twenty years ago.

These formalized ties, as I’ve argued, will create a swath of anti-West/anti-American/anti-Israeli governments from the West Bank to Afghanistan making the PNAC strategy for global domination by nation building a reality. What our place will be in this burgeoning reality remains to be seen. It will, under any circumstance, be a messy and complicated reality that Mr. Bush will leave behind when his reign comes to an end in 2008 making the choice of his successor a messy and complicated one…and a critical one.

We Must Be Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Watching Don Rumsfeld deliver his reproachment to the American people last week in the White House, I was reminded of Dot Black’s testimony before John Grisham’s fictional Tennessee jury in “The Rainmaker”. Reading a letter from the insurance company which was denying her claim on behalf of her dying son, the company’s claims adjuster scolded Mrs. Black for her simply not understanding the reasons for the repeated denial with the reproachful, “You must be stupid, stupid, stupid”.

In case any of you missed Rumsfeld’s performance, you can still catch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NTEDfAHo2U. In a rather disjointed, short-but-rambling comment, the Secretary essentially blamed the American public for his dismissal/resignation because the public lacked the intelligence to understand exactly what it is that we’re doing in Iraq:

These six years…its been quite a time….The great respect I have for your leadership, Mr. President in this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the twenty first century. Uh, it is not well known, it is not well understood, it is complex for people to comprehend and I know with certainty that over time the contributions you’ve made will be recorded by history.”

Complex for us to understand? Explain it to us, Don, please help us to understand. Explain to us which part we don’t understand and haven’t understood. If you’re referring to your decision to fight the war with too few troops to actually secure the peace, you’re absolutely right. We don’t get it. If you’re talking about so over-extending our military as to render us incapable of even responding adequately to domestic crises, you’re right again. We don’t get that either. If, instead, you’re referring to your failure to provide the troops with adequate armor from the outset with its antecedent wasting of our best and brightest, right again, Don…we don’t understand that one, either nor did we understand your scolding of an enlisted man when he had the audacity to ask about the lack of body armor. Didn’t get that one though it did make for good theater. I know…it must be your decision back in 2003 to cut the pay of the service men and women serving in Iraq and to cut benefits due to the families of those troops…things like health benefits and death benefits at the very moment that your troops were being shredded day in and day out by IDEs and sniper fire. Right again, Don. We never understood that one, either.

This woeful litany of public ignorance is too long for our purposes here. Suffice it to say, Don, you are right. We don’t get any of it…way too complex.

Putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first instance, once committed to going forward am I to understand that it is we, the People, who do not now understand that the entire strategy for prosecuting this outrage was ill-conceived and so poorly executed as to raise the question of criminal conduct on the part of you, Mr. Rumsfeld and the President for whom you expressed such great respect last week.

In truth, Mr. Secretary, the only thing that we did fail to understand in time is that your incompetence, your arrogance and your hubris would take such a human, political and economic toll.

Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld, you must be stupid, stupid, stupid.

Good riddance.

The Rats Deserting the Ship?

Just how bad have things gotten for George W? Now Richard Perle and Ken Adelman are going public with their strenuous criticism of the administration’s handling of Iraq. You remember Richard and Ken, don’t you? Perle was the author of the January 26,1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton castigating the President for failing to take a harder line with Hussein and later a principle author of the Rumseld strategy for deposing Hussein and inserting a democratically-elected government in Baghdad.

Ken Adelman not only joined Perle, Rumseld, Cheney and Scooter Libby as signatories to the PNAC mission, but joined the likes of Joe Lieberman and other conservative luminaries in revitalizing the Committee on the Present Danger (see my prior posting, “Don and Dick’s Excellent Adventure” and "What's Driving Senator Joe?"). Still don’t remember Ken? He was the author of the February 2002 Washington Post op ed piece which vigorously took issue with those who raised alarm about the Rumsfeld plan for invading and occupying Iraq (the small matter of troop numbers, for example) with the dismissive retort: “I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk … This President Bush does not need to amass rinky-dink nations as ‘coalition partners' to convince the Washington establishment that we're right”. Mr. Adelman was not simply commenting in the abstract. He was, in fact, a participant with Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumseld and Cheney in the development of the plan to “liberate” Iraq.

Now both Perle and Adelman say that dysfunction within the the Bush administration has rendered the Iraq policy a disaster. In an upcoming interview in Vanity Fair, Perle tells the interviewer that he would have considered other strategies for dealing with Hussein had he known how poorly Bush et al were to handle the effort to change the Hussein regime. Moreover, Perle lays blame squarely on Bush’s shoulders saying that W has to be held responsible for failing to understand and recognize that the strategy was poorly conceived and poorly executed. For his part, Adelman concedes that his “cakewalk” commentary was mistaken.

Said Adelman: "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era," he said. "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Do you think they make life vests small enough for these rats and will there be enough to go around for all those to follow? Inquiring minds want to know.

Will Your Vote Count?

The polls, the pundits and the prognosticators tell us that the public’s anger about the war in Iraq and the country’s direction as a whole will turn the Republicans out of office from both the House and Senate and vote in a Democratic majority in both houses. But lest those yearning for change place those chickens before the cart (a joke, son) and contemplate a world where there exists a true check and balance to Bush policies which have wrought so much carnage and incompetence at home and abroad, understand that the election and its outcome are not a foregone conclusion. It is not that the polls, the pundits et al are wrong. Indeed, I truly believe that the public is yearning for a change in Washington and will vote for that change. It is that because the mechanism of the election is so fraught with potential for abuse and manipulation as to raise the real possibility that its outcome, regardless of how the votes are cast, will produce a result that will likely ensure that there remains a Republican majority in both houses.

The problem lies with the electronic voting machines which will see their wide-spread use for the first time in the 2006 mid-term elections. You need look no further than Robert Kennedy Jr.’s brilliant article in the October 12, 2006 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr_
will_the_next_election_be_hacked) to begin to understand the nature of the problem and extent of its threat to our democracy. The problem, as he writes, is that we, the citizens of the United States, have vested nearly sole responsibility for counting our votes to four private concerns, Diebold, Election Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic , which currently count eighty-six percent of all the ballots cast in the United States. Of these four companies, three – Diebold, ES&S, Hart InterCivics and Diebold, have very close ties to the Republican Party. Chuck Hagel, for example, was the Chairman of ES&S before becoming the senior senator from Nebraska; Tom Hicks, to whom George Bush sold his controlling interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team, is a principal investor in Hart InterCivics. As for Diebold, consider that when Bush signed into law the “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA) in 2002, committing $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation’s voting system, the Act’s prime sponsor was the now-infamous Bob Ney of Ohio (he of the Abramoff influence-peddling scheme and one of the first House members to plead guilty for his acceptance of Abramoff money) and that Abramoff apparently received at least $275,000 from Diebold to lobby Ney and others for the voting machine contracts which were to be let under the HAVA mandate. Begin to see the dimensions of the problem?

The problem described by Mr. Kennedy and others involves Diebold and the other Republican-connected machine vendors embedding small software applications on the memory cards that are inserted into the voting machines to tally election results. Those “applets” can be pre-programmed to ensure that voting favors one candidate over others by the use of complicated software-based algorithms and have already apparently affected the outcome of voting in Georgia for both Governor and Senate in 2004 with Republicans prevailing in both races when their Democratic opponents, according to polls taken on or just before Election Day, found both Republican candidates trailing badly in those polls. The problem is further complicated by the failure of Diebold and the other companies to provide for a paper receipt for the vote cast in order to permit a recount in the event of machine failure.

With so much at stake this November, it does not take much imagination to expect that the Republican party will not go quietly into the night as the populace demonstrates its anger in the polling booth. It and its candidates will predictably use every available resource to ensure that it and they not lose control of Congress. As the Times reported on October 19^th, Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are expected to experience the most problems with the vote because of electronic voting technology whether those problems are the result of manipulation or a simple failure to function as intended. Research finds Diebold machines turning up in vast numbers in all of these states raising the specter of voting irregularities in each jurisdiction that may raise serious concern about the outcome of the vote totals. At the very least, one can expect that if the outcomes do not match the results on November 7^th, the entire election process will likely not find resolution without judicial intervention and if the 2000 election has shown us anything it is that the Courts simply do not belong in the election process.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the very essence of our democracy is at stake. I would urge you to let Congress know that the current situation is not acceptable and requires more oversight and accountability than is currently provided.

Please go to moveon.org at http://pol.moveon.org/repairthevote/ and sign the petition asking Congress to support electoral reforms. Your vote depends upon it.

The Devil You Know...

In addition to all of the justified and justifiable reasons why this country should never have entered Iraq or perhaps central to all of those reasons is that Saddam Hussein provided the world and the West, in particular, with the security that is blatantly lacking as we today face a conflagration of unmatched proportions. Sure, Hussein was a despot with dreams of asserting himself as a player on the world stage. Sure, he was a mass murderer who killed without conscience or remorse. Sure he was and is the head of a criminal enterprise intent upon gutting his own economy for personal financial gain. Sure, all of these horrific attributes are true, but Saddam Hussein was a devil we knew and understood; a big man with big dreams and aspirations but lacking the capacity to do anything more than bully his own people. In truth, Hussein posed no threat to anyone other than the Iraqis he ruled, lacking the resources and wherewithal to do anything more than draw attention to himself through his propaganda machine. What Saddam Hussein was, however, was our best protection against the spread of Islamo-terrorism in Asia and the Middle East. He was assuredly no friend of the radical Islamist. Try as Bush/Cheney might to connect Hussein with Osama Bin Laden and the attacks of September 11th, Hussein had as much use for Bin Laden and his ilk as he had for the Kurds who inhabited his northern provinces. Moreover, as a Sunni Muslim, he had and would have had no interest in aligning himself with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and likely would have viewed him with suspicion as a potential threat to the stability that he had created (albeit through terror) throughout much of Iraq. Hussein stood between Islamic radicals to his east in Iran and to his west in Syria and, with support from the west (in the form of a package of incentives that would have permitted Iraq to emerge from years of economic isolation imposed by the allies following the 1991 Gulf War), would have continued to provide a nearly impenetrable barrier to the type of regional domination by radical Islam that has pushed us toward the precipice of a global conflict.

Instead, we have and continue to bear witness to a global upheaval that is unmatched in our history. The list of failures that have come to dominate our ill-conceived venture into Iraq has become almost (quite unfortunately) clicheic. Chief among them is that Iraq predictably became a breeding and training ground for Islamo-terrorism, something that certainly never would have happened had Hussein remained. Urged on by a Bush doctrine that believed that Iraq was ready for the application of a western version of Democracy, the Iraqi people have elected a Shiite government that certainly will eventually find that its best chance for success lies with developing strong alliances with the Shiite-based governments in Iran and Syria. Regardless of the grandiose ideals which may have guided the Bush doctrine in Iraq, no one can take comfort with a Shiite government in Iraq that is likely already taking its leads from Mr. Ahmadinejad and the radical mullahs in Iran. It is likely irrelevant to the Iranians, in particular, whether Mr. al-Maliki is able to bring about a consensus among the various warring factions in Iraq and put an end to the unrelenting cycle of violence that has caused so much death and destruction throughout the country. Indeed, it may very well be that the violence is being fomented and directed from Tehran and that, in truth, the interests of both Iran and Syria are best served by chaos and not stability.

In any event, with Hussein’s removal and the events which followed and continue to unfold, the political map of the region has changed dramatically and with it, the security that so many in this country bought into by so blindly vesting in Mr. Bush et al a trust he never earned. Today radical Islamic fundamentalism enjoys control of a nearly unimpeded swath of territory that stretches from Iran’s western border with Afghanistan through Iraq and Syria to the West Bank and Gaza strip, interrupted, albeit briefly, by what remains of Israeli territory. If the Taliban are successful in resurrecting their government in Afghanistan and driving out Mr. Karzai from Kabul, this vast swath of territory will stretch all the way to Tajikstan and China. Certainly, the Chinese cannot be happy to observe Mr. Ahmadinejad and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov reaching bilateral agreements last January to share hydroelectric power as it puts the Iranian president on China’s western doorstep.

The effect of this spreading Islamic state is most readily apparent in the conflagration spreading through the Middle East. It is, after all, Iran (and perhaps to a lesser extent, Syria) which has struck the match which is having such an explosive effect in the region. Let no one believe it a coincidence that while Iran sought (innocently) additional time to respond to western proposals concerning its nuclear aspirations that this conflagration has taken root.

All that we observe in the region today is directly the result of arrogant, ill-advised and mis-guided decisions by Messers Bush, Cheney, Rumseld et al. We are now confronted with a devil (whether it be Mr. Ahmadinejad or all that he stands for) that we do not know...a devil that we have consistently misunderstood and under-estimated. The price of those decisions will be with us for a long time to come.

My Apologies

It’s been a while since I last put fingers to keyboard to vent my spleen over the state of the world. That’s not to say that I haven’t sat with my ThinkPad considering what to say and how to say it. It’s just that for so long, the story remained the same -- Over- reaching by the Bush administration, abuse of personal freedoms, trampling on the Constitution.... Having said my piece in a series of essays during the fall and winter of last year, I found myself almost exhausted by how repititious, unrelenting and seemingly unending the story had become.

For succumbing (however briefly) to my own ennui, my profound apology.

"The Cartoon Controversy"

The following is my letter to the editor of The Nation. The articles at issue can be found at www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/younge and www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/editors.

At the outset, let me say that I am an avid reader of The Nation's print and web publication and share most of the opinions offered in both media. That said, I must take issue with both Gary Younge's article and your recent editorial commentary concerning the Jyllands-Postem cartoons. Both pieces appear to not only validate to some degree the Muslim response to the Danish cartoons, but offer apology and excuse for the emotions which have prompted and promoted that response. While it is certainly true that the emotions which are giving voice to tens of thousands of Muslims throughout the world have a historical and, in some instances, legitimate basis, it is also true that this most recent demonstration of Islamic "muscle" is being driven by forces that have far more to do with politics than genuine religious belief. While it is true that the demonstrations in response to the cartoons were limited and peaceful, it is equally true that in those demonstrations, the more radical leaders of the Muslim world, most notably Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saw in those demonstrations a platform for vitriol that has emerged from Teheran since he came to power several months ago. As has so often been the case over the past several decades, Arab leaders have seen those with legitimate concerns (i.e. the Palestinian people) as pawns to be employed and deployed throughout Europe and the Middle East (and the American media) in their never-ending war with the West to gain respect and leverage. That war, in truth, has far more to do with political and economic power than with any religious ideal that might be driving the "man in the streets" of the West Bank, Cairo, Teheran and Damascus and to ignore that reality is simply naive. It is no coincidence that this conflagration was truly ignited when Mr. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts walked out of the Organisation of the Islamic conference (OIC) held in Mecca last December. From that point on, what had been a peaceful albeit legitimately determined protest, became a tour de force, engineered by Mr. Ahmadinejad, in particular, who saw the controversy as a way of responding to and diverting attention away from the European (including Russian) and American concerns over Iran's likely intention to develop a nuclear weapon. That both Mr. Younge's article and your editorial focus upon "the causes" of the controversy without making any mention whatsoever of the complicity of Iran and other more radical elements of the Islamic political landscape is to ignore the political realities of the growing tension between the Muslim world and the West.

Opportunities Lost

Every administration will face any number of domestic and international crises during the course of its tenure which will have the potential of dramatically affecting and possibly changing the course of human events. If the response is inadequate, it can have longstanding and tragic effects on our lives and the lives of our children. In the case of the current administration, its tenure has been marked by a seemingly endless litany of crises, both domestic and global, which have been mis-judged and mishandled. The first such mis-step may very well have been the government’s failure to recognize signs of an impending attack by Al Qaeda which were apparent during the summer of 2001. The latest, at least through the last week of January, was the failure…admitted by the nation’s Secretary of State…to recognize the possibility of Hamas’victory in the recently concluded Palestinian elections. That victory, unanticipated by Ms Rice and Mr. Bush, certainly poses a risk to Israel and any hope for some sense of peace and stability in the Middle East. However, the Hamas victory and its implication for that region, provides but a sidelight to the forces which have been unleashed in Iran as a result of the Bush administration’s failure to understand and anticipate the consequences of their ill-advised invasion of Iraq in March 2003; that in destabilizing Iraq, they and we were not saving, but actually destabilizing the entire region and giving license to creatures like Iran’s Ahmadinejad to gain currency not only within in his borders but throughout the Muslim world.

Like a series of dominoes, the administration’s failure to anticipate the risk we faced in the summer of 2001 has led to a series of decisions and resulting events which has spawned a shift in the fundamental intercourse between this nation and those it considers both its allies and enemies. Like those falling dominoes, the policy decisions made by Messers Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks has triggered a series of crises, one set off by its predecessor, that has ultimately de-stabilized regions at risk and, in turn, the world as a whole.

They created a paper tiger, lied about the threat he posed to the United States and its allies and insisted that the only way to secure a lasting peace in the region was to invade and remove the tiger from his lair. At no time does it appear that the Bush administration understood or even considered that there would be dangerous consequences for displacing the paper tiger. Never expected or understood, for example, that our invasion of Iraq would so destabilize the region that there would be little left to govern by the time the Iraqi people fully embraced democratic principles; never understood or expected that our troops would not be greeted in the streets of Baghdad by Iraqi citizens waving American flags and offering flowers like some movie from a by-gone era; never anticipated or expected that after George stood on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln and declared victory, that the war was, in truth, only then just beginning and that rather than flowers, the Iraqi people would greet our troops with IEDs and RPGs that would take its toll with thousands of our finest horribly maimed and killed; never expected or understood that Iraq’s economy would not be up and running within weeks or months and that its failure would, in turn, lay waste to our own economy; never apparently anticipated that whatever democracy might take root in Iraq would be fundamentalist in nature and have more interest in rekindling its long dormant relationship with Iran than in furthering its relationship with the West; and, of course, never anticipated that by removing Hussein from the scene they were removing the biggest check against the true gathering storm in the region -- the developing turmoil in Iran.

Was Hussein a tyrant and a criminal? No question. Did he pose a threat to the United States and his allies? No, and, more importantly, as a Sunni, he had as much in common with fundamental Islam as Ariel Sharon. He was no friend of Osama Bin Laden and certainly would not have looked favorably upon an Islamic fundamentalist like the newly-elected President of Iran. Indeed, he, as we, would have looked upon Mr. Ahmadinejad as a threat to a then-stable (albeit hostile) Iraq because his vitriolic rhetoric would certainly have stirred the passions of the repressed Iraqi Shiite majority and urged them to insurrection. With Hussein removed, however, Iraq’s first foray into genuine democracy has produced a Shiite-dominated government that is already establishing close ties to the Ahmadinejad regime.

As for the Iranian tyrant, as Newsweek reports in its current issue, Ahmadinejad is someone who harkens his people back not only to the revolution which overthrew the Shah, but to their long fight with Hussein’s army. He and they are a people who feel themselves entitled to mount the steps of national and global leadership having paid their dues on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war. Though the recent publication of cartoons characterizing the Prophet as a terrorist (among other images) which have ignited Muslim violence throughout the world was itself not foreseeable, the groundswell of violence certainly has been brewing for years and should have been very much expected by the West. If it were not the Danish cartoons which set off the latest conflagration, it would have been something else, spawned by the rhetoric of the increasingly popular Ahmadinejad who speaks not to the West with his anti-Jewish and anti-west diatribes but to the millions of young fundamentalist Muslims who appear increasingly hell-bent upon demonstrating their strength in numbers and their religious intolerance through rioting, terrorism and war.

While these fires of hatred were being fanned in Iran, George, Dick and Don fiddled, their backs to the fire, ignorant to the events unfolding behind them.

There are without question lessons that need to have been learned from the last several years; lessons about the need for consensus, lessons about understanding who and what poses the greater threat to our safety and security, and an understanding that there are consequences, both expected and unforeseen, that must be accounted for before embarking upon any policy with such far-reaching effect.

What is not clear is whether the lack of foresight and lack of understanding has unleashed forces which we will no longer be able to control.

The Worst is Yet to Come

As painful and distasteful as election campaigns have become over the past several years, I fear that the upcoming mid-term elections may prove to be the bloodiest in our long history for what is at stake is not simply the balance of power in both chambers of Congress, but the viability of the Bush Presidency. Each day we bear witness to mounting evidence that this President and his advisors either lied or conspired to mis-lead the nation in virtually every aspect of its agenda, whether it be the war in Iraq, the so-called, “war on terrorism”, taxes, healthcare, social security or education. Indeed, in some instances, the conduct of this administration has bordered on the treasonous if the suspicions about the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity are born out and traced to the Vice President himself.

At the very least, this administration has been grossly negligent in its conduct of the nation’s business, both home and abroad, and should be called to task for that negligence and the damage that it has caused now and for much of the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, however, it may be the administration’s warrantless wiretapping of US citizens that provides the strongest argument for proceeding to impeachment proceedings. The FISA legislation makes clear that any person who willfully engages in electronic surveillance in any fashion other than that prescribed by the legislation is subject to criminal prosecution. That language would certainly extend to anyone who orders another to engage in such illegal surveillance and that would certainly place Bush in jeopardy of impeachment under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” clause of the Constitution.

The question, of course, is not whether an argument can be made that Bush is guilty of criminal conduct under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but whether there are reasons to believe that a prosecution will be successful. The arguments, unfortunately, are not as clear as one would hope and expect given the amount of attention that this issue has and is continuing to receive.

On the one hand, on their face, neither the FISA legislation or the Authority for Military Action (AUMF) granted by Congress on September 18, 2001 would appear to give the executive the authority to spy on his constituents without warrant. That interpretation has received wide-ranging support throughout the political and apolitical landscape including, interestingly enough, the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the Congress. The CRS, in a January 5, 2006 Memorandum proffered the opinion that the President is without authority to ignore the limitations imposed by Congress in enacting AUMF and amending FISA noting, however, that the Supreme Court has yet to take a position on Congressional authority in the acquisition of foreign intelligence.

Bush, on the other hand, through his Attorney General, of course, takes a very expansive view of his role as described by the constitution, particularly that of Commander-in-Chief, believing that that status somehow imbues him with sweeping power to reinterpret and ultimately disregard established civil and criminal law in the name of national security. The argument, however, ignores the very basic principle that the commander in chief’s authority is limited to his command of the military and its affiliated agencies. He is otherwise simply an elected official occupying one of three equal branches of the government and without the right or authority to ignore or evade laws enacted by and at the will of the People. While the President may have broad and perhaps unlimited authority to direct and control the military, including establishing and defining the rules and laws under which the military operates, he enjoys no such authority over the general population.

There are without question ambiguities and gaps in the legislation and judicial interpretation of the authorities and limitations imposed by the legislation. The CRS Memorandum makes this reality abundantly clear. Consequently, it may ultimately come to pass that whether these criminal violations are, in fact, confirmed as such will rest in the hands of the Justices of the Supreme Court and its newly appointed Chief Justice Roberts and soon-to-be confirmed Associate Justice Alito. Given that both men share an expansive view of executive authority with Justices Scalia and Thomas, it is certainly unlikely that neither man was nominated and pushed to confirmation and appointment at this precise moment in time by happenstance. It is indeed ironic that Mr. Alito will be replacing the Justice who authored the Court’s seminal decision on Presidential authority after the enactment of the AUMF and made clear in her plurality opinion that a state of war is not a blank check for unlimited executive authority.

Were the Court to rule in the President’s favor it would certainly damage, though not irreparably, any move toward impeachment, particularly on the basis of his having engaged in the unlawful surveillance of his constituents. Whether and to what extent the nation has the stomach to press on toward impeachment in the face of a judicial acknowledgment of the President’s nearly unlimited authority over his citizens remains to be seen. Unfortunately, incompetence in itself is not a basis for impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution and whether Congress will be of a mind to pursue impeachment will depend, in large measure upon the composition of Congress and, in turn, the interpretation of the facts which underlie the gross incompetence that has dominated so much of the Bush Presidency. It is not enough to simply say that we were misled by this President into going to war. It is not enough to simply say that we invaded Iraq without a strategy for success. It is not enough to simply say that we threw our troops into harms way without the basic resources to protect themselves against the onslaught which has produced so much death and destruction. It is not enough to simply say that Mr. Bush appears to care more about rewarding political cronies with jobs for which they are unsuited than in protecting and preserving the Republic. There has to be a provable belief that those acts rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. The current Congress can be expected not pursue the type of accountability from our executive that we are entitled to even if the Court, for example, were to opine that the President acted without authority under FISA and is thus indictable for a criminal violation of its provisions. While one would expect the vast majority of Democratic legislators to take issue with the expansive view of executive prerogative adopted by Mr. Bush, it is remarkable (though in this climate not surprising) that Republican and Conservative Democratic legislators seem untroubled by Mr. Bush’ abject disregard for the authority and responsibility imposed upon Congress by the Constitution. Perhaps it is the expectation that through their support for this unsupportable view of executive authority (and concomitant denigration of their own authority) that these legislators stand the best chance of surviving the electoral process they face in the Fall.

It will certainly require a manifest change of the political landscape in order to bring Mr. Bush to account and the first opportunity for that change lies in the Autumn of the year. It would not be far-fetched to expect that with a change in the majority of either or both houses of the legislature, articles of impeachment would likely occupy much, though not all of the Congressional agenda during 2007 and beyond. At the very least, a change would subject Mr. Bush to the bright light of accountability that he has long avoided.

Yes, the stakes are high though not without reward. Let us hope for the strength to endure what promises to be a very rough journey.