The Cherry Orchard

George W. Bush, today:

“I get criticized a lot from different corners, and that’s just part of what happens when you’re President.”

No, it’s really not. Our besieged administration is still trying to pretend that the United States of America still has any confidence in its leadership, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This wall of defense has become so thin that often the personal angle is the Bush administration’s only remaining talking point. For instance, the White House’s official reaction to Jimmy Carter’s blessedly honest statement that this administration’s foreign policy has been the worst in the nation’s history is to attack Carter for committing a social faux pas, as if their biggest concern is how this will affect dinner place seatings at future ex-Presidential gatherings.

I love it that Jimmy Carter is willing to speak the truth, and once again I sincerely appeal to the insiders of the Bush administration to consider the common sense behind an honorable resignation. We are at war, and our country cannot afford another year and a half of confused no-confidence leadership.

I try to keep it fresh here at the Orchard, but sometimes I have to dredge up a story of my own from a few weeks earlier, just because it is my self-appointed role to ask the more established members of our journalistic community to do a better job at reporting the news, and everybody — EVERYBODY — seems to be missing the obvious subtext of the weird showdown taking place in Washington DC right now between the executive and legislative branches over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

So, Take Two. As I said before. To repeat myself. THE ALBERTO GONZALES AFFAIR IS NOT JUST ANOTHER SCANDAL, and THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL. Disgraced government officials come and go, and it’s not shattering news when a key member of any US president’s cabinet gets into trouble. But it is shattering news when:

1) that US president is facing intensive investigations of his conduct in office and is stonewalling key pieces of information relevant to these investigations.

2) the disgraced government official is the Attorney General, with vast power to influence (or impede) the progress of criminal and civil investigations involving the White House.

3) this disgraced government official refuses to resign against an absolute barrage of damning testimony and evidence against him, including (now) a highly unusual congressional vote of “no confidence” against him.

One plus one plus one equals three. And it is as clear as glass that the reason Alberto Gonzales is refusing (against all rational advice from both Republicans and Democrats) to resign is that the Bush administration is terrified of what a less sympathetic Attorney General could investigate.

I said it before, and I cannot be the only American doing the math here. Why do the major news outlets not explain this equation to the American people? I truly don’t understand.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is all over the news this week, following his unconvincing Senate testimony last week (here’s one of the stories going around, and there was a lot of hilarity after President Bush claimed that Gonzales’s testimony helped his case). Still, I have a strange sense that most news outlets aren’t communicating exactly why this is such a high-stakes situation for the Bush administration and for the House/Senate leadership, and why the Bush administration is clinging so stubbornly to the hope that Gonzales will not be eventually forced to resign. There’s a hidden story here, and most Washington DC journalists know it and hint about it, but for some reason few journalists are coming right out and explaining what’s going on in this case.

The fact is, Gonzales is not just another high-ranking Bush appointee. He’s the Attorney General, which means he has the authority to investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of committing a federal crime, including top administration officials up to the level of the President’s top staff, thus encircling the President himself. As a longtime friend of George W. Bush and a key member of the Bush/Cheney team, Alberto Gonzales is not going to prosecute anybody close to the Bush administration for any number of wrongdoings. A different Attorney General, however, might.

Even though the Attorney General is a Presidential appointee, the appointee must be approved by the Senate, and our current Senate is not going to approve a candidate who does not demonstrate a basic willingness to investigate the Executive office independently of Presidential influence. So, if Gonzales were to resign, an extremely contentious nomination/approval process would begin for his replacement, and since this nation cannot survive long without leadership in the Department of Justice, some compromise candidate would have to eventually be approved. This new Attorney General could prove very hazardous for the Bush White House as our Congress and Senate continue to conduct aggressive investigations into the workings of the Executive office.

This is what’s at the core of the Alberto Gonzales showdown: our government is somewhere near a state of constituional crisis, similar to the constitutional crisis of 1973-74. Remember Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre? This was one of the most critical turning points of the Watergate scandal, and it all revolved around the Attorney General’s office.

I’m not sure why so many journalists aren’t stating this clearly to the American people, but the Alberto Gonzales case is all about the viability of the Bush/Cheney administration. And I don’t believe it for a minute when Gonzales says he’s made his own choice not to resign. He’s not resigning because George W. Bush is begging him not to, and I bet he’d zoom out of Washington DC like a rocket if Bush let go of his arm. Gonzales has nothing to gain and nothing to lose at this point, but George W. Bush needs him sitting in that chair.

I was away on a very refreshing vacation for a few days, which means I didn’t watch the evening news (or my regular favorite, Keith Olbermann, or my regular un-favorite, Bill O’Reilly) for about five days in a row. Here’s what I found on my return, when I checked in on the TV sound bites:

1) It’s impossible not to feel sorry for George W. Bush at this point, despite the incredible damage he has done to our country’s security, our country’s budget and our planet’s progress towards international understanding. It’s a telling fact that he has failed to follow the longstanding Presidential tradition of opening the baseball season by throwing out the first ball at a chosen stadium. The reason is obvious: there is no stadium of baseball fans in America, not even in Texas, that wouldn’t boo him off the pitcher’s mound.

But the President did address a captive audience of soldiers at California’s Fort Irwin yesterday, and the tapes show a tired, confused man straining to infuse his own words with conviction. Please watch his body language the next time you catch this politician on TV, and I think you will notice the same thing I’m seeing: Bush barely seems to believe his own words about Iraq anymore. My guess is that there are massive internal divisions plaguing the Bush/Cheney team at this point, and I wonder if the President might be smart enough to start realizing (a few years too late) how badly he has been duped by his closest advisers. The front man is starting to falter, and when I say “front man” I’m not talking about Tony Snow.

2) I’m pretty disgusted at all the talk about Democratic 2008 Presidential candidate fundraising. As I’ve said before, I really don’t give a fuck who’s raised $26 million and who’s raised $25 million. I’ve got one dollar and one vote to offer to any candidate who promises to manage our country’s future responsibly and intelligently, and all this talk of tying up the nomination with big-money bonanzas just makes me feel like we don’t live in a democracy at all

I’m also disgusted at the thought that three senators — Obama, Clinton and Edwards — are spending so much time campaigning for 2008 when there is so much important work the Senate needs to do now. My mind is not yet made up who I will support in this race, but my big one dollar and one vote just might go to the one politician of the three who convinces me that they are working hard NOW to help our country by their actions in the Capitol. Let’s live in the moment, candidates, okay? This type of electoral shenanigans is more palatable in peacetime — in time of war, it’s really very offensive.

3) I’m also sick of our nation’s romantic notions of a savior celebrity President. Most democracies on this planet are led not by their Presidents but by their Prime Ministers, who correspond most closely to our Speaker of the House. As far as I can tell, the most important elected official in the United States government right now is Nancy Pelosi, and I am very impressed by her focus, her cool unflappability and her resolve to forge her own path towards solving our problems. Why the hell shouldn’t I support Nancy Pelosi for President? She’s working hard to run our country, while the rest of these celebrities are working hard to look good on TV. Screw that nonsense — we’ve got problems to solve.

There’s my Spring Break catch-up. Go, Nancy, go!

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is almost definitely going to resign. Yay. One more liar down.

I don’t usually gaze into crystal balls, but here’s a rare Cherry Orchard political prediction just for the fun of it. Dick Cheney will resign the Vice-Presidency “for health reasons” by mid-summer. Condoleeza Rice will replace him, in an attempted “sacrifice fly” by the White House administration. Whether the sac succeeds or not, time will tell.

You read it here first.

So the Scooter Libby verdict is in. Like many Americans, I am happy to hear that Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff has been found guilty (and I’m happy to rub this in Fox News’ face by displaying their write-up of this news). But, of course, the wrong guy is going to jail.

Scooter Libby lied under oath about the justification for the Iraq War, and he’s now facing up to 25 years in jail. Libby’s boss also lied repeatedly to the American people about the justification for the Iraq War, but since he did not lie “under oath” he doesn’t face criminal charges for perjury.

It sure seems to me that anytime a United States Vice President speaks to the American people about a decision to go to war, his words are “under oath”. What oath? Gee, I don’t know … the oath of office, maybe? It’s sad to see a hapless bureaucrat like Scooter Libby face jail time for his boss’s crime, based on the technicality that he lied under oath whereas his boss simply lied.

Enough about that. I still hope — naively, perhaps — to see both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush eventually cooling their heels in minimum security prison for their dishonest and harmful leadership of our country’s foreign policy. But maybe I need to let go of my anger and think about where this country will head next. This is a subject I touched on in a brief piece I just wrote for the PBS blog, Remotely Connected.

The subject of this article is an engaging documentary about an earnest but underfinanced young politician named Jeff Smith trying to beat the odds and get nominated by his Missouri district’s Democratic party to run for U. S. Congress. Does money really count for everything in modern electoral politics? If not, why do we hear so much about certain candidates “locking up” their nominations by fund-raising? If not, why did Tom Vilsack give up? If not, why does the press coverage speak of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the only two viable Democratic Party presidential candidates?

I don’t want the race for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination to be “locked up” in fundraising bonanzas. I want at least ten candidates in this race. I want to hear debates — big, loud, angry, intellectually substantial debates. I want John Edwards to keep throwing curve balls. I want to get Al Gore back in the game (and if I could choose any favorite among them all at this point, Al’s my man). I even want to get Yellin’ Howard Dean and John “Investigate and Indict” Murtha into the mix.

It’s only March 2007, and our two front-runners for the Democratic nomination are already too bland, too careful, too poll-conscious for my tastes. Voters, let’s reject the idea of an early victor and demand a better race.

Of course, bringing this whole thing back to my earliest point of the article, I have to say that I don’t think the next American president will be a Democrat. I’m guessing the next President will be a Republican — John McCain, perhaps, or Tom Ridge, or Condoleeza Rice. That’s because I’m still guessing (and hoping) that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be out of Washington D. C. and safely ensconced with Scooter Libby and a bunch of other felons in a minimum security prison sometime before the next Presidential election takes place. I’m still guessing Cheney will resign and go to jail first, and whoever Bush picks to replace Cheney will be our next President, because I think Bush will resign and go to jail soon after.

So our next President will be a Republican. But the winner of the 2008 Presidential election will be a Democrat. You heard it here first.

I’m surprised I haven’t heard this suggestion — a completely serious one — more often as we Americans review our policy options following the collapse of Republican party support for President Bush, the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld and the release of the Iraq Study Group report. There is widespread agreement that we face no easy options in the Middle East, and I think a strong non-partisan case can be made that a Bush/Cheney resignation is in the best interest of national security. In fact, it could make all the difference for our future.

The Bush/Cheney administration has lost too much credibility with the American people to effectively govern for the next two years. Would any Fortune 500 company in the United States retain a CEO with this kind of track record? Of course not, and as former business executives both George Bush and Dick Cheney must see the simple truth here. Resignation should not be a last resort, nor need it be a disgrace. In fact, resignation may be Bush and Cheney’s best chance to avoid the disgrace of history. They tried, they failed, they moved aside. It would prove that they put the nation’s well-being above their own personal considerations.

How should it happen? Cheney should resign first, and Bush should work with Congress and party leaders to select an acceptable replacement (John McCain? Colin Powell? Neither have perfect records, but both could be trusted to carry out the duties of the office, as could many other experienced Republican politicians). Once the new Vice-President is in office, Bush should follow with his own resignation.

This happened once before, of course. In fact, it’s fascinating to look into an intriguing question — what exactly were the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s exposure in a financial scandal and subsequent resignation in the midst of President Nixon’s Watergate scandal? The subtext was always clear: Agnew was widely disliked and distrusted, and an Agnew Presidency in the wake of Watergate was inconceivable. He had to be cleared out of the way before Nixon could resign (the fact that an Agnew scandal — unrelated to Watergate — was conveniently uncovered at this time seems almost too good to be true).

I’d like to write more about this aspect of the Watergate scandal in a future post here here. There are many interpretations of the Watergate affair, but I’ve always seen the whole mess as the necessary convulsion of a world power stuck in an unwinnable war. It was definitely about Vietnam — specifically, it was about getting us out of Vietnam, which Richard Nixon could not do because he was committed to past promises and beholden to a pro-military power base. Woodward, Bernstein, Segretti and Sirica … in the end, it all amounted to a peaceful coup d’etat that allowed our country to declare defeat in Vietnam and move on.

It’s 2006, and we need our Gerald Ford. Of course, it took many months of agonizing press/legislative hounding before Agnew and Nixon resigned, and I hope we wouldn’t have to work that hard to get rid of our current failed leaders. Perhaps Bush and Cheney could be persuaded by their own associates and trusted advisors to make the move that is clearly in the best interests of the United States of America. Nobody’s asked them yet if they will resign as a fair consequence of their mistakes. That seems like a good first step, so here goes: President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, will you please consider resigning so as to allow the United States of America to best move forward?

It was worth asking, but it will probably require trusted advisers closer to the White House to make a stronger case. Are they ready to ask the President this question? Take a look at this guy’s face and tell me if you see an answer there:

Here’s a big scoop: the political phenomenon known as Islamic fundamentalism has nothing to do with religion.

You heard me right — nothing at all. Islamic fundamentalism is a radical political movement that aims to topple governments and redistribute wealth, and if we want to understand the conflicts in the Middle East better we need to take a serious look at what really motivates believers in this cause. Hint: it’s not about virgins in the afterlife. It is about power, territory and money.

Radical political movements occur when the fault lines between the “haves” and “have-nots” in any society grow too vast, and when large segments of a population feel disenfranchised and abused by their leaders. Let’s take a look at some examples from history:

• The French Revolution

In 1789, hungry mobs began rioting in Paris, spurred on by intellectuals and progressive politicians in their midst. The “enlightened” new government famously killed King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, but in fact their real target was the entire French upper class, which was garroted over the course of several bloody years. More than anything else, the French Revolution amounted to a violent attempt at redistribution of wealth, power and influence.

• The Russian Revolution

In 1917, dissenting political parties representing masses of disgruntled Russian citizens finally completed their overthrow of the corrupt Tsarist government. Even more so than the French Revolution (which the Russian intellegentsia had always studied, admired and sought to emulate), the Russian Revolution quickly devolved into state-sponsored violence on a mass scale, as vast numbers of the previous “upper class” were killed or imprisoned. Economic theory and pro/anti-communist propaganda aside, the Russian Revolution amounted to a violent redistribution of wealth, power and influence.

• The Iranian Revolution

In 1979, protests by groups of dissenting religious and secular Iranians reached such fervor that the Shah and his entourage fled the country to save their lives, eventually allowing the Ayatollah Khomeini to emerge as the new supreme leader. The ascent of Ayatollah Khomeini was the first major victory of a new phenomenon known as Islamic fundamentalism. A difficult societal transition followed, and the new Islamic government had to fight many internal battles with various population groups that felt disenfranchised by the new government, including the former upper class. Like the other revolutions above. the Iranian Revolution amounted to a violent redistribution of wealth, power and influence.

I know there are many different ways to look at the kaleidoscopic horror show known as war. But we should always look for the simplest explanations, as a medieval philosopher named William of Occam taught us. His formulation, known as Occam’s Razor, states that the simplest answer to any question is usually the correct one. The simplest explanation for the current strife all over the Middle East is that the populations of various Arab countries wish to overthrow their own governments.

A close look at Osama bin Laden’s career as a terrorist, for instance, shows that his primary enemy is actually not the United States of America and not Israel but rather the kingdom that rules the land of his birth, Saudi Arabia.

In Iraq, unbeknownst to the U. S. Department of Defense which figured this out only too late, Saddam Hussein’s long dictatorship was deeply grounded in Iraq’s historic “caste” system. Saddam is a Sunni, a representative of Iraq’s privileged minority class, and a powerful proportion of the Sunni population favored Saddam’s dictatorship because they feared the alternative: an uprising of the nation’s under-priviliged Shiite majority. This is the fault line George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld foolishly tripped over when they took down the guy at the top.

I find that the mathematics of current Middle East politics work out very easily if I use just two variables: greed and suffering. Conflicts happen either because people are greedy, or because people are suffering. Islamic fundamentalism is no different in kind from Bolshevik Marxism, or Robospierrian Jacobinism. I don’t see how anything would be much different in the Middle East if the populations were romantic panthiests, like the French radicals, or austere athiests, like the Russian insurgents, instead of Muslims. It’s not about Allah, despite all the hype we constantly hear by hysterical and shallow political analysts in the USA. Just apply Occam’s Razor, just look for the immediate causes, and a lot of bullshit falls away.

The next time somebody hits you with that familiar nonsense about “Muslims are devoted to taking over the whole planet and making us all wear burkas”, or “Jews will never share Jerusalem” or any of this other mythical crap, just look them in the eye and remind them that the simplest answers are the best ones. The wars in the Middle East are about power and wealth, and that’s all they’ve ever been about.

More on this in my next post!

It’s ironic that, several months after starting this blog with the express purpose of allowing me to vent my thoughts and frustrations on political and global issues, I find myself so overflowing with things to write that I end up writing nothing at all. (And, yes, that is my excuse for not posting much here in the last couple of weeks).

I’ve spent more time in the last few weeks reading up on politics and keeping up with the latest news than I have in many years. I check several of the political blogs listed on the front page of this site many times a day (most often Daily Kos and Huffington Post), and I watch a lot of Jon Stewart (when I need to laugh) and Bill O’Reilly (when I need to get pissed off). But my characteristic ability to mouth off freely about politics is stunted. I have too much to say, and I don’t know what to say first, and sometimes it’s easier to just talk about books instead of “dwelling in the real”.

I’m sure this won’t be a permanent condition, though. The upcoming USA midterm elections have many people on edge (witness the hysterical tones of every political blog, television news show and newspaper these days), and I certainly can’t remember ever feeling like so much was at stake in an non-Presidential USA election. I believe our current Iraq policy is a disaster, and I do not believe our President or Vice-President have the courage to admit their mistakes. Thus, we need to elect a Congress and a Senate that can take decision-making power away from the Executive branch, and this is why November 7 is so important. I will not be able to rest easy until I am sure that George W. Bush will spend his last two years as a lame duck.

Let’s say the Democrats do take the House and the Senate — what next? Well, first of all, impeachment proceedings can wait, and may not even be worth the trouble and the distraction. Instead, I want the new Congress and Senate to quickly pass legislation withdrawing past Congressional support for our current Iraq war, and to set a firm timetable for the fastest exit possible. I’d then hope for the beginning of a new kind of battle, which we can call a Diplomatic War (because the United States electorate really does love war, so let’s call it a war) to build an international coalition that can continue to work with the moderates in Iraq and contain damages to the best possible degree. Our current administration has gotten an F in diplomacy from day one, so the new Congress and Senate will have to work hard to establish new diplomatic channels that do not fall under the influence of the Executive office.

I pray that we wake up on Wednesday, November 8 and discover that we have elected a new government of the United States of America.

I used to hope for things like world peace. My expectations have been battered lately; the most I can hope for right now is a fresh start. Hmm, five days away …

I’ve occasionally tossed around poker metaphors when discussing politics.  Well, let’s be honest, I toss around poker metaphors when discussing anything (for example, I was recently trying to explain to a group of skeptical baseball fans why baseball is just like poker: pitching a fastball is a bet, a breaking ball is a bluff, a walk is a fold).  I’ve also been known to pontificate about poker as literature.

But poker as politics is a metaphor you can go a long way with, and in fact somebody has recently created an entire blog about this subject, PokerAndPolitics.com, which rightfully points out that George W. Bush must be a terrible poker player, based on the way he’s misplayed so many hands in Iraq.  Dummy, you don’t go all-in with a questionable hand when you’ve got a big stack!  So true, so true.

However, I’m worried that the whole poker metaphor might become commonplace, so I’d like to talk about a different game, Risk, which I played several times this summer.  What do poker and Risk have in common?  Well, they both teach one very, very important life skill that is essential to success in any field: restraint. 

 This is important, so I would like to say the word again: restraint.   Without restraint, you cannot win at poker, and you cannot win at Risk.  Witness: this past summer I found myself in a perfect position to take the entire continent of Africa from Southern Europe, thus wiping out my opponent Matthew and taking Matthew’s cards, which put me in great position to wipe my other two opponents Andy and Daniel out of Asia and North America and conquer the world. 

Never mind the fact that Matthew is my eleven year old nephew (familial bonds and mercy towards youth have nothing to do with game-winning strategy).  I needed Matthew’s cards, and that meant I needed Africa, and since I had nineteen soldiers to his eleven I had no doubt I could make this work.  The game was in my hands.

First roll: Matthew wins both dice.  I now have seventeen soldiers.

Second roll: Matthew wins both dice.  I now have fifteen soldiers.

This is where restraint kicks in.   I stood staring at the board for about five minutes, caressing the dice slowly in my hands (as Matthew squirmed and Daniel and Andy yelled at me to hurry up).  I caressed and thought, caressed and thought.  Then I slapped the dice down on the table, decision made: my turn was over.

I could win with nineteen against eleven.  I could probably win with fifteen against eleven but I didn’t like the odds.  I backed away and began thinking up a new strategy, and needless to say two hours later I took Kamchatka from Irkutsk and won the entire game.

Restraint.  Such an important lesson to learn, and this is one reason it’s so important for children to play games — not just dumb games but tough games, intense games, games that it kills you to lose.  You learn what it really takes to win in life.  And what it takes, more often than some people think, is not a whole lot of bluster and confidence.  If you’re not capable of carefully evaluating your own position, your own strengths and weaknesses, than you will play like a fool and be recognized as such by all your opponents.  If you tend to “go for it” because you believe you’re invincible, your game is as good as over, before it even begins.

Restraint.  This is what George W. Bush did not demonstrate when he decided to invade Iraq in 2003. 

I wonder if George Bush played a lot of games when he was a kid. 

I believe I could kick Bush’s ass at Risk.  In fact, I believe Matthew could kick Bush’s ass at Risk.  And Matthew’s just eleven, but he plays a lot of games.