Today’s Topic: This Presidency’s Results Were a Dead Government from Day One
A couple of things I read in reports yesterday, plus William Rivers Pitt’s article (Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond, 26 Nov 2007) on truthout.com were basically some level of rehash of articles I’d written months to years ago.
On Friday, 6 Nov 2006 I talked about presidential failure due to using politics to make policy. This wasn’t the first time I’d talked about the subject, but only the easiest to locate in my some 1,000 pages of blog printout. One of the areas I was speaking about then was "how many things so imperative to the good and faithful execution of the laws of this country depend on the integrity of a man and not the ideologies of political parties." My concern then was that we didn’t elect politics to run the country but rather politicians whose expressed concepts of what government should look like appealed to our individual ideals as voters.
I further said, in reference to this administration using politics as policy and thereby harming Americans and our system of government,
"it is the ill-conceived and aggressive political ploys that have continuously placed Americans in harm’s way."
Of course, in 2006 I had not read Jack Goldsmith’s "The Terror Presidency" because it had not been published yet, and thus did not really have a grasp on just how insidious and widespread the poison of politics as policy had grown. And it only took me until page 24 (hey, I just got it yesterday) to find the most clear cut case of politics undermining the proper functioning of our government. The appropriate eye-opening passage is quoted
"(John) Yoo (second in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel) saw (John) Ashcroft much more than Jay Bybee (Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel) did, but he took his instructions mainly from (Alberto) Gonzales, and he sometimes gave Gonzales opinions and verbal advice without fully running matters by the Attorney General."
There are two self-evident statements in this one passage that illustrates just how badly the concept of chain of command was misunderstood within the administration. First, Ashcroft met with the OLC’s second in command more often than the man in charge of the OLC, Jay Bybee. Secondly, the fact that John Yoo, as second in command of OLC, seemingly ignored the appropriate chain of command and worked most directly for the President’s White House Legal Counsel.
Some of the conflicts are simply outrageous in the first place, that being if Jay Bybee was such an incompetent fellow as to be ignored in his Assistant Attorney General position then how the hell did he get his job and who was stupid enough to put an incompetent person into that important position?
And while I’ll admit that there is strength in people networking there is no acceptable reason for Alberto Gonzales to be giving direction to John Yoo without the direct knowledge and approval of Yoo’s boss. And in Gonzales’ position as the White House legal counsel, he virtually had no presumed nor hypothetical power to direct ANY Department of Justice official. Nor anyone at all in any department of the executive branch. There are no Constitutional powers given concerning the Chief Counsel to the President.
Conversely one cannot fault John Yoo for being forthcoming with advice and legal determinations requested by an office which favors the President’s office in its quest for extended power. Undoubtedly in the same circumstance anyone may well have assumed that his or her inclusion on the President’s War Council would automatically have been approved by one’s direct supervisor. The higher level of political direction would most likely be lost on anyone far lower on the totem pole. The choice to ignore such important a person as the Attorney General isn’t available to those below the AG’s rank.
And if policy were to be deemed the fundamental and normal working of this administration, indeed John Yoo’s participation and behind-the-scenes advise would have been viewed as being approved by the Attorney General’s office. Following the above quote, Jack wrote
"This arrangement was an understandable affront to Ashcroft, who worried about the advice Yoo was providing in the Attorney General’s name."
Obviously John Ashcroft was not privy to what was being represented as his words to the President.
And one need remember that after the Ashcroft’s international announcement of the detention of Jose Padilla, John Ashcroft simply fell off the political map in Washington. His next important statement was of the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as the independent counsel of the Valerie Plame (Wilson) outing.
From that point on the Attorney General was no longer an effective or even respected member of the executive branch, regardless of whether it was John Ashcroft or his successor, Alberto Gonzales. It is somewhat ironic that the same office Alberto Gonzales demeaned in his effort to ignore John Ashcroft ended up providing Gonzales with his own demise, and precisely for the same concept of politicizing the Department of Justice. Obviously George Bush doesn’t really recognize the cherry appointee jobs for he killed Alberto Gonzales’ public life almost as swiftly as if he’d come out and said Alberto Gonzales was a liar or a thief. Perhaps being a close friend of George W. Bush isn’t all that much a good place to be.
No, it doesn’t matter who you are in the Bush administration. Over the long run, the use of politics as policy will initially kill the people placed in administration appointments and ultimately will dismantle that position’s power and independence for which they were designed. There is no better way to kill government than to simply make all of the governmental position worthless.
For instance, we currently have a highly politicized governmental entity called the Environmental Protection Agency, whose mandate was to provide protection for the environment and subsequently offer the American people a safe and clean world within which to raise their children and supply the country with it’s future. Today’s EPA seems to be working for the companies that historically have polluted the environment with impunity by virtually stopping all investigations into corporate malfeasance and purposeful environmental abuses. How much more could one kill a highly effective agency than to politically change the fundamental balance of mandate vs. corporate influence via politicization?
The same question can be asked about the functionality of the Consumer Protection Agency, whose mandate is to protect the people from unsafe consumer products being sold on American markets. And, of course, since the time that politicization has been in place we’ve seen nothing but more and greater degrees of imported products being harmful. Not only to our dogs and cats, but also to our people in general, and most importantly, to our children, who are the future of this great country.
And there’s the politicization of the CIA with the appointment of Peter Goss and that appointment’s outcome was indicative of just how destructive politicization is. Many of the best the CIA had to offer simply resigned in protest, just as a number of highly qualified people in the Department of Justice had resigned.
The American people were informed of this process of politicization early in the administration’s first term when it became known that PBS was under assault, and that normal news presenters were coming under contract to the administration to "present news" that was not news but rather an insidious form of propaganda. Taxpayer’s money was spent to sway the taxpayer towards the government’s way of thinking.
So we have a new method of clearing out all of those whose jobs were to determine the best for America by virtue of keeping the environment clean, keeping consumers protected, and keeping America informed by use of good intelligence and Americans protected by a Justice Department that held the law higher than the particular person holding the office of President.
Is it any wonder that William Pitt thinks that Bush is trying to kill the government? My only problem with his speculation is that he didn’t take it far enough.
The last and only time other than the Presidential election of 2000 this country was close to a coup was directly after Franklin Delanore Roosvelt was elected President in 1933. At that time it was a corporate conglomerate that chose Marine General Butler to lead some seemingly peaceful 500,000 WWI vets against the government to demand pension payments due to be paid in 1945. If General Butler had the lack of character this president displays, America would have been dead 70 years ago. Well, not only did General Butler have the character to expose the plot, but FDR had the character to employ those same WWI vets in the WPA program, thus giving them a reason to continue working FOR America rather than against it.
I see no reason to allow America to become a dead system of governance now. Too many people have fought and died for the principles this country was founded upon. Too few are currently trying to kill the current government to be effective unless the American people continue to succumb to a malaise of indifference.
For America’s sake remember the fallen and those who strive to perpetuate the goodness American represented over the past centuries. Today there are maybe two WWI veterans still alive. WWII veterans are dying at the astounding rate of 1000 per day. Korea and Viet Nam veterans are succumbing to PTSD and committing suicide, along with current soldiers and Iraq/Afghanistan vets, at the rate of 120 per week.
The DOD is dunning wounded Iraq and Afghanistan vets for a return of the enlistment bonus promised them on the successful end of their tour of duty. Excuse me, but if you are enlisted to fight and can no longer fight because you suffered incapacitating injuries, you have successfully fulfilled your term of contract. You fought until you couldn’t fight anymore. In the game of death one cannot expect anything more.
Apparently this administration can expect more. They obviously have the last vestige of governmental functionality in their sights before they leave office. While they nay-say the public knowledge of programs and pogroms and distillation of governmental functionality, they conspire, cajole and commit theft in the names of the American people, leaving us to do the cleanup of $2 trillion in war debt and wounded lives, of lost opportunities for the victims of Katrina, and squandered opportunities of solid diplomacy.
At the end of all that this administration has to offer we have the hope that this president cannot travel overseas just as Donald Rumsfeld cannot. Why? Because Donald Rumsfeld has already been indicted in Germany for War Crimes. I hope George W. Bush REALLY LIKES Crawford, because he won’t be going overseas anymore after 20 Jan 2009.
It is too bad that this Congress cannot see the criminal intent in this man’s presidency. Apparently America now sees, at the least, a man that is not competent to lead America anywhere, which is why they voted in a Democrat majority in both houses. Unfortunately the voters have been left out in the cold.
Lastly one of the main points I want to bring up is the administration’s concept that international law limits the power of the President.
Well, yeah, but hey, treaties have to ratified by a majority of the Senate and as such then become the law of the country. One cannot say that a treaty gives away American power but rather the ratification process places American power within the framework of law where Americans want to be. A large number of international treaties were actually instigated by America. The concept is pretty easy to divine. As America stands for human rights simply because a human being has rights amongst all other human beings just for being a human, there is no conflict. You cannot ignore any treaty that specifies humane treatment of humans no matter where atrocities occur. The concept is located in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence as our "inalienable rights".
The concept of illegal aggressive war was initiated by the United States as a pre-requisite to the establishment of the United Nations, and yet this administration and its supporters suggest that such law isn’t a requirement for which America needs to adhere. This is simply false. The entire representation of sovereignty over international law shows a marked and intensely stupid view of how law comes into place and the same negates the advancement of a people whose history is steeped in freedom and democracy. Indeed a rising tide may well raise all boats, but only if those boats actually float.
The problem which exists today is that people in America are no longer certain of where America stands on issues such as human and civil rights since we still have our own problems at home. But with an administration that turns an ugly blind eye towards human rights abuses from governments it supports, one has to assume that human rights aren’t really all that big of a problem for this government to ignore.
The solution is to pronounce human rights as the absolute for which America will support the necessity of war, and only if the end result is that an institution of civil rights becomes law. After all, there is some advantage to being the strongest military might on the planet.
However, this administration just likes to flaunt such possibilities in your face as President Bush signs a "letter of declaration" with Iraq, thus perpetuating permanent bases in Iraq and a negation of the all important "oil law" that gave selected companies the right to exploit Iraqi oil reserves over the objection of the Iraqi people.
This "letter of declaration" seemingly has all of the power of a treaty but does not require the ratification of the Senate. I believe this is just another abuse of law by this administration.
So what do we do? Well, apparently we declare war on anyone that has resources we’d like to control, and along the way simply devise a method that negates the American people’s wishes by making up some quasi-legal document that bypasses all of America’s history with regards to negotiations with foreign countries.
I haven’t read my newly received book "Broken Government" by John Dean, but it’s the next on the list.
1:43:58 PM 
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