The Cheney - Rumsfeld administration

You know, this foreign policy stuff is hard work. It's complex and it's serious stuff.

Unfortunately, George W. Bush has no grasp of the realities of foreign affairs or hard work for that matter.

Can you believe Republics voted for a man for president who for all intents and purposes had never set foot outside of the United States? This man was never a success at anything in his life until he became governor of Texas.

So why was George W. Bush elected president? Because Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld couldn't be. However, they could maneuver their way to become the two most powerful men in Government. And they did.

Who chose Dick Cheney to be Vice-President? Dick Cheney did. (For those who may have forgotten, Bush asked Cheney to lead the effort to select a running mate for the 2000 election. Cheney selected...Cheney.)

Here is a great article on the subject from Rolling Stone Magazine: The Curst of Dick Cheney, The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another.

Dick Cheney has served in key positions in four Republic administrations. Nixon, Ford, Bush I, and Bush II. With luck, Bush II will be the first of them to complete two terms. Why?

Cheney and Rumsfeld are bold thinkers. The problem is, they never think about the consequences of their boldness. Instead, they expect to win every "chess match" with one bold move.

So using their connections in the Republic establishment, they have used an intellectually incurious, incompetent man with a folksy manner and a Christian heart to gain the power to make the bold moves they have been hoping to make for decades, bold moves that Bush I and his administration refused to do.

And they made the bold move. In Iraq. And they screwed up. Because they thought they could make the bold move and the rest would take care of itself. Forget about the consequences.

They are trying to pin it on the CIA. "Slam dunk", "bad intelligence", and all that. The fact is, and this is beyond dispute, they cherry-picked the intelligence to support their bold move. The CIA believed that Saddam had WMD, but they knew there were reasonable and serious doubts.

So now here we are in a mess, a huge mess. The Right asks of the Democrats "where is their plan?" But this administration has put this country in a position where there are no good options.

And because this administration turned its back on many of our staunchest allies, because it pre-emptively attacked a country without being 100% dead certain of its justification, it gets little sympathy, much less help from other countries.

So our military, great as they are, victorious as they were in swiftly toppling Saddam, are stretched thin and tired. Few allies and tired soldiers leave us with fewer options in fighting this so-called World War III.

I read on blogs and from William Kristol calls for yet more "bold moves" again with respect to Iran and North Korea. They want more bold moves from men who have weakened our world position instead of strengthened it due to a series of cluster f**ks riddled with hubris mixed with incompetence.

And some on the Right lament that Bush is out of ideas? He's never had one. The ideas are Cheney's, Rumsfeld's, Wolfowitz's, and Rove's. And look where they've put us.

Some on the Right claim, "Democratic Party leaders want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine." This is absurd, of course. The US is years from peace, and the Democrats know that. They also know that this administration has put us in a bad place, and they know there's got to be a better way.

How can intelligent people on the Right possibly keep supporting this administration of failed ideology and bold f**kups?