One of the things that football coaches, basketball coaches, and baseball managers always remind their teams is not to underestimate their opponents. The Democrats have forgotten that for the last six years. Just because a guy won’t pronounce “nuclear” in a standard way, they think he’s dumb. It’s not so.
I heard a commentator on NPR a few weeks ago say that although a common criticism of the Bush administration is that it’s incompetent, that’s not the case. They have been extremely successful at governing in the interests of corporate America and rich individuals.
An example of this is Bush’s remark to the head of FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, “Brownie, you’ve been doing a great job.” As I see it, that was not evidence that Bush was out of touch with what was going on, but rather exactly what he meant to say: FEMA was doing very well at what the administration wanted it to do, that is, funnel federal money to their friends.
The insight that the administration knows what it’s doing leads to a reevaluation of what’s been going on in the country. Now, I have no evidence at all for what I’m about to say, but it makes too much sense to dismiss out of hand.
I’m convinced that the only real reason for the war in Iraq is to steal the Iraqi oil industry for Halliburton. There was no exit strategy for the war not because the administration didn’t think far enough ahead to realize it needed one, but because there was never any intention to exit. We’re hearing recently that we may need to maintain a presence there for fifty years as we have in Korea. Once you realize that the administration is not stupid, it becomes obvious that that was always Cheney’s plan. That’s just what will be necessary to maintain control of the oil industry there, known as “defend American interests.”
That’s also why it’s so important to the administration to have their loyalists filling all the U.S. Attorney’s positions. If contracts are written with Halliburton or other companies working in Iraq saying that the U.S will be responsible for protecting them, it will be difficult for Congress to say that we have to pull all our troops out. If they go to the Justice department to ask if the country is really obligated to stay there, what will the lawyers there say? If they’re Cheney loyalists, they’ll say, “Sorry, there are contracts that obligate us to say.” If they’re really impartial, they’ll say, “There are contracts that we’ll have to think a long time before we figure how to get around.”
I know people say not to attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. In this case, I really don’t think stupidity is the explanation. Too much hangs together.