What, Them Worry?

One idea that floats around in my mind and occasionally alights long enough for me to think through its implications is this: suppose Bush's prosecution of the war in Iraq is not incompetent, as it is so frequently described by liberals, but is going exactly according to plan?

The liberal critique is based upon a false equivalence between Bush's values and liberal values, in my opinion. The critique misses the mark precisely because it presupposes that Bush's overarching presidential agenda has something to do with the commonweal, i.e., is directed toward improving the lot of the "ordinary American."

Another approach taken by the Left and by Administration critics generally is to call Bush a tool of Big Business and a corrupt neo-Fascist, who serves only the interests of the Big Money whose agenda he faithfully executes. I would surmise that Bush's more-or-less constant support at about the 35% level is comprised of 2 principal groups, (1) a cynical tycoon class lacking public ethics and (2) religious and militaristic morons. 65% of the American people fall into neither class and thus see Bush for what he is. But what is that?

I descry a tension between these two viewpoints. In a sense, it can't really be both. How could Bush be incompetent at protecting and advancing the interests of the American commoner and competent at retaining the support of Big Business for his actual agenda? Competence or incompetence is more of a piece than that. Bush can accomplish what interests him. It is simply that the welfare of the American people, as a whole, does not interest him at all. This, I would argue, is the true meaning of debacles such as Katrina, and why Bush strenuously argued for giving the United Arab Emirates, home of Flight 175 Pilot, Marwan al-Sheihi, control over America's main sea ports. He just doesn't give a shit.

I never see this paradox discussed. I think it's because the Left is so busy describing Bush as an idiot they overlook the inherent contradiction. Bush is not an idiot; he is an intellectual mediocrity, to be sure, but numerous corrupt leaders with autocratic tendencies have been intellectual mediocrities. The limited intelligence is not a serious obstacle to achieving corrupt goals when the leader is backed by the full force of a police and military apparatus, as Hitler was, as Stalin was, as Castro is. In Bush's case, he has the full backing of a solid Republican majority, duly elected, whom he has never vetoed, and who will enact any legislation he really cares about (tax cuts and war funding) and will only resist on symbolic issues Bush does not really care about (immigration and gay marriage) for reasons of local electoral politics.

So Bush has gotten nearly everything he wanted and accomplished the main goals of the money class. Iraq fits into this picture very nicely. Halliburton, for one egregious example, was trading at $20 per share in 2001 and is at $70 per share now. Cheney holds 433,000 stock options on Halliburton, all of which are now in the money to a greater or lesser extent. The VP signed an agreement to donate any profit on the exercise of these options to charity as a means of avoiding serious conflict-of-interest problems. Worrying about Halliburton and Cheney specifically, however, is another hobby horse of the Left, who let such easy targets obscure the view of the larger picture. A broader picture would encompass a perspective that a slow, grinding, protracted stalemate in Iraq is perfect for Big Business. No other approach can yield such high financial returns from the prosecution of the war.

Consider the alternatives. A quick and efficient victory, turning over a stable government to the Iraqis, would end the gravy train, frustrate bomb and munitions makers, deny defense contractors huge paydays for Humvees, personnel carriers, helicopters, etc., and probably result in a decrease in the defense budget generally. Similarly, a rout of American forces (which won't happen) would also terminate the feeding frenzy. What works perfectly, like Baby Bear's porridge and bed, is a protracted stalemate in the desert. We neither win nor lose, and any call by the Democrats for withdrawal is called "cowardly" cut and run politics which will "embolden" America's enemies.

That's actually pretty good, when you think about it. Bush deliberately screws around in Iraq so that the conflict consumes his entire presidency and then (successfully) complains that any criticism is "defeatist." The National Priorities Project places the current cost of the war at $292 billion, and of course a compliant Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, will authorize any further funding requests from Bush so that they can claim to "support the troops."

Ah yes, the troops. That is one possible downside of playing rope-a-dope in Iraq. Over 2,500 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and probably 6 times that number have been seriously wounded to such an extent their lives will never be the same. From each fatality or wound, effects like ripples on a pond spread in all directions to affect sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives. They are, however, "volunteers," and cannot be pitied (so the reasoning goes) for being asked to do what they contracted to do. In this case, as George Carlin neatly summarized, their job is to carry out the war plan. That plan is to ride around in a truck until you get blown up.

I think until the American public as a whole simply accepts how deeply cynical, venal and plutocratic the Bush administration really is, it will never accurately analyze why BushCo does things the way it does. The arrogance of the Left is that it imagines that its very simple analysis, that America doesn't "have enough troops," or that we failed to secure the ammo dumps, or that we disbanded the Iraqi Army too soon, etc., were all tactical blunders that only the Left can see, and "Bush" (actually, Rumsfeld and his High Command) were unable to perceive. This seems fanciful to me. Of course they could see the same things, and the option has always been available until recently (when troop deployments have been overextended) to dramatically increase the manpower in Iraq.

But why do that? Why not keep cutting checks to Halliburton, to Bechtel, to KBR, to Sikorsky and Bell, to Martin Marietta, to United Technologies? Think about it. The federal government's hands are tied by entitlements to a useless payout of pensions and health benefits under Social Security and Medicare. A large part of the budget is spoken for before Congress and Bush even start talking about what can be spent on favored, inner-circle defense businesses. But that residual, that remainder, commands a lot of respect and loyalty among defense tycoons, and the American arms merchants, whatever the fate of the rest of America's moribund manufacturing industries, continue to lead the world. They make big money peddling death, and they depend on the federal government to promote war, to stir up hostility in the world, even to turn the world against us, so their services never become unnecessary. And when they make all that money, they keep it, thanks to Bush's other great obsession, "tax relief."

He's not incompetent. He accomplished what he came to do, to shift the burden of government onto the backs of America's disappearing middle class, and to suck off the federal largesse for the benefit of the fat cat cronies. Mission, that is, Accomplished.