Do you think George Bush is smart? No, you don't. Even his conservative, Republican, oil executive supporters don't think he is smart. But that's okay. He is surrounded by smart people and he relies on their judgment.
That is logically ridiculous of course. Americans are suspicious of intellect-- we know. They somehow think that a down-home country guy with a little cunning surrounded by competent managers is the ideal leader. He won't get confused by details or messed up by the subtleties or ambiguities of complex realities. He'll just go with his instincts. Instincts are always better than closely reasoned judgments. Aren't they? They are in the movies.
Well, actually, less than 50% of the voters seemed to think that Bush was smart enough to be President. And, of course, a decisive majority of all the conservative Republicans on the Supreme Court, including the acute Clarence Thomas.
The trouble is, if you aren't very smart yourself, how do you know your managers and advisors are smart? And when they give you conflicting advice, as surely Colin Powell and Donald Rumsveld and John Ashcroft have been doing, how do you sort out who is right? You kind of feel for it, right?
Is that good enough in 2002? Is that good enough for the world's only remaining superpower, other than Europe, China, or India?
So you have this fixation on Iraq. Iraq is a crisis point for America right now because, well, George Bush Jr. decided Iraq is a dangerous threat. He seems to have made up his mind that he must invade Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein and set up a new government, so that oil can be extracted and sold by large American corporations, or democracy can be restored, or Americans can feel safe once again from all those Iraqi Scud missile attacks we've been experiencing lately.
Dick Cheney was so prescient about Iraq that while he was in charge of Halliburton, as recently as 1998-99, he did more than $23 million of business with Iraq. Didn't he know that Saddam was a monster? Not until George Bush Jr. announced the "axis of evil", apparently.
Do you think these men in charge of the White House have given thoughtful, intelligent consideration to these issues:
what if the Kurds, who are already itching to join the attack, decide, as they are likely to, to set up their own little country in Northern Iraq, right on the Turkish border? How would Turkey like that? Or Iran, which also has a substantial Kurd population that it is struggling to keep in check. Neither Turkey nor Iran would tolerate a breakaway Kurd republic on their borders.
Bush has
extracted promises from the Kurds not to seek an independent state. And these guys
are smart enough to believe them....
what if the hard-line Moslems react to the war by tossing President Pervez Musharraf and setting up a hard-line Islamic republic? With a bomb. And with an incendiary situation in Kashmir?
what if the same thing happens in Saudi Arabia or Yemen? What if hard-liners in Iran come to believe that the U.S. won't be satisfied with deposing just one pole of the "axis of evil"?
what if the Shiite Moslems in the South of Iraq decide they would be happier united with their brethren in Iran than with Baghdad's Sunni minority, whatever form that leadership might take in a post-Saddam Iraq?
what if the overthrow of Saddam doesn't stop terrorism? (It won't-- it will probably increase it.) Who's next?
can the officials of this administration name a single instance in which concerted military action (as opposed to negotiation and compromise) put an end to terrorist activities, anywhere in the world?
After Iraq, terrorists hiding out in Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere will continue to target U.S. military installations, diplomatic buildings, and the U.S. itself.
Since the U.S. seems incapable of actually tracking down and capturing real terrorists, it will have to find someone else readily available for a good bashing. Iran? North Korea? Somalia?
