donderdag 23 februari 2006

February 23, 2006

Napoleon’s Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, once said of an incident that it was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. This aptly sums up the decline and fall of militant Republicanism in the United States, as manifested by the corruption and utter incompetence of the Bush Administration.

This has been an administration whose course has been marked with blatant lies, vicious ad homonym attacks on any critic and policies dominated by a fatal mixture of hubris and utter stupidity. The WMD deliberate lies, the badly botched military actions in Iraq, the utter failure to anticipate both the savage and effective Iraqi resistance and the pending civil war, the bumbling and gross incompetence during the long-anticipated hurricane damage in New Orleans, the daily manifestations of cronyism, corruption and lies, the contemptuous arrogance of a Vice President who has done more damage to the Republican Party than any Democratic strategist could conjure, are a growing litany of moral bankruptcy.

The present uproar over the Bush people’s attempting to give vital U.S. port supervision to a dubious Arab country was highlighted by a petulant President who stated in public that as he had decided this was “good for America” he would veto any attempt on the part of an outraged Congress to demand further investigation. By antagonizing Congress and painting himself into a public relations corner, Bush has once more demonstrated his utter lack of fitness to run the United States and if Congress, as it has strongly indicated, passes a bill to nullify Bush’s latest folly, they can easily override any Bush veto. If that should happen, it would be the turning point in the Bush Follies and power to govern would finally pass to Congress.

We would then have three more years of open warfare between the fanatics in the Administration and Congress, which certainly would benefit no one. Bush has shown himself totally incapable of any kind of common sense or compromise and that which will not bend, will break.

If, on the other hand, the Republican leadership is able to penetrate the Stygian gloom that seems to be the permanent condition of Bush’s consciousness, and he backs off the deal, no matter how much his and his aides finesse it, Congress will have won.

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