From Molly Ivins, the inimitable:
Us vs. us?
Slash-and-burn Bush administration makes U.S. government out to be
biggest enemy
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Always interesting to come
into The City Where Everybody Says Exactly What
Everybody Else Says just to run my own reality
check. If I'm out of step with the conventional
wisdom, I'm doing fine. The minute I find myself
saying what everybody else says, it's time to leave
town.
Bushwacked: Life in George
W. Bush's America
By Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
from Powells from Amazon
Here in our nation's capital, the political reporter
from the boonies is most often asked, "Is this
Howard Dean thing for real?" Hey, THEY never
heard of Howard Dean; Howard Dean never did time
on The Hill. How are they supposed to have a read
on him? Their provincialism is truly charming. In
politics, when people ask, "Is the guy serious?" it
means, does he have money? So, OK, Howard Dean
is serious. Next question.
But Bush is SERIOUS is the next argument. Have
you looked at that money? Well yes, and I certainly
say that $200 million makes him serious as a stroke.
But you tell me what he can run on. The economy
is in terrible shape, and I'm not just talking about
lost jobs. People's lives go to hell in a lot of ways
beyond no jobs -- no unemployment insurance; no
health insurance; cost of health insurance spiking
double, triple; lost pensions; Bush wants to take
away overtime -- you start adding all this up, and
even out in the "red states" (it's so cute, the way
they say things here), it's not looking so good for
Bush.
But security -- he's strong on defense and
security, right? One of those moments of clarity
that demonstrate HERE IS THE PROBLEM in an
unforgettably dramatic fashion occurred last Friday.
American troops shot and killed nine Iraqi cops and
wounded nine more while the cops were in hot
pursuit of some bandits. Our guys mistook their
guys for the bad guys. The firefight lasted three
hours, with the Iraqi cops screaming, "We're the
police!" the whole time. Unfortunately, we didn't
have anyone who could understand what they
were saying. That's the problem.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has gone into
full ostrich posture. As Maureen Dowd observed,
Donald Rumsfeld is starting to sound like Baghdad
Bob, Saddam Hussein's fabulous flak. Vice President
Cheney, who can tell whoppers with more
portentous gravity than anyone since Henry
Kissinger, said Sunday there is no reason to "think
the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed." No
reason at all -- not a bit, not a whit, right, Dick?
Forget about the coffins and the wounded coming
back in a steady stream, and the increased hatred
and vengeance-seeking in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the president, who even sort of looks
like Alfred E. Neuman, continues to assure us that
he "was 'elected' to solve problems, not leave them
to future presidents and future generations."
Uh, that would sound better if he hadn't just
informed us he is borrowing another $87 billion, on
top of the $79 billion we have already spent, to
continue this famously successful policy that has
no flaws and does not need to be changed. As The
New York Times observed, those who will be paying
off Bush's $87 billion with interest didn't hear his
speech because they had already been put to bed
by their parents.
If you will recall just three short years ago, this
country was a going operation. Eight years of
peace, prosperity and the busy, busy Republican
scandal machine trying to convince us it was all an
illusion.
Since then, we've started two wars, still don't have
Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein and have
spent millions on people who make us take off our
shoes at the airport, and we are still as vulnerable
to terrorist attack as ever. The Republican
response on that is their favorite ploy, "Blame Bill
Clinton," but the record shows that the Clinton
administration was a lot more active in going after
Al Qaeda than the Bush administration before Sept.
11.
Perhaps you have noticed, the only terrorists we
have actually rounded up have all been caught
through police operations, often with the
cooperation of the Pakistanis, the French, the
Spanish, even the Saudis, sometimes. Bombing two
countries doesn't seem to have done anything to Al
Qaeda except reinforce and reinvigorate it. A
connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda at last!
They moved in after we got rid of Saddam Hussein.
Meanwhile, the economy is in the toilet; even the
optimists who think it will recover are predicting a
"jobless recovery." Won't that be nice -- we can
certainly look forward to whatever that is. And
when we get our "jobless recovery," the
government's in the hole for $500 trillion this year
and most of the upscale Bush tax cuts haven't
even kicked in yet. As we march bravely toward
oceans of red ink (leaving behind no problem for
future presidents or future generations), we also
face a looming crisis in Social Security.
Let me be the first to say -- we shoulda listened to
Al Gore. Al Gore was right, oh Lord, he was right.
We shoulda put that money into a lockbox for
Social Security. We are in a world of trouble now.
As Paul Krugman pointed out in a Sunday New York
Times magazine article, getting ourselves into a
such a dire financial mess that we have to kill off or
at least dramatically reduce Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid is not just a slight
miscalculation on the part of our leaders. They
want to undo both the Great Society programs of
Lyndon Johnson and the New Deal of Franklin
Roosevelt.
But I think there is something even worse being
taken, being stolen, by this administration. As Jim
Hightower observes in his excellent new book,
"Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our
Country and It's Time to Take It Back," what
they're really stealing is the very idea of this
country, the idea that there's a common good, that
we're all in this together, that we all do better
when we all do better.
In this country, we have the most extraordinary
luck -- we are the heirs to the greatest political
legacy any people have ever received. Our
government is not THEM, our government is US
(with room for improvement, to be sure). All this
right-wing propaganda about how the government
is The Enemy, the government needs to be
strangled, needs to be starved, needs to be
hocked off, as though schools and hospitals were
horrible things -- it's all nuts.
It's our government, we can still make it do what
we want it to when we take the time and put in
the energy it takes to work with other people,
organize, campaign and vote -- we can still make
the whole clumsy, money-driven system work for
us. And it's high time we did so.
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