UNITED STATES: AN ADMINISTRATION ADRIFT

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WASHINGTON, Apr 1 2006 (IPS) - Behind the recent personnel changes at the White House lies a single objective: protecting Bush from further investigation and scrutiny from Congress. In the end he is guilty of all the disasters that his successor will inherit, republican or democrat, writes Joaquin Roy, \’\’Jean Monnet\’\’ Professor and Director of the European Union Centre of Miami University. In this article, Roy writes that Defence Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a magnificent job as lightning rod. Behind the recent criticism of him by a dozen retired generals lies the feeling that the war in Iraq is not being shouldered by the American people as a whole but rather by a poor minority, isolated and made to carry out dubious orders and play the role of occupier, torturer, and executioner. While it is unthinkable that the generals would rebel against civilian authorities in the middle of a war (it wouldn\’t occur to them), their outburst could nonetheless harm the country. Their indirect intervention in politics, cloaked in military expertise, is a risk that the US can hardly afford to take.

In government office buildings, tense functionaries make their way through security agents and anti-terrorism barriers, their patience exhausted. Washington exudes uncertainty, pessimism, anxiety, and an aggressive superiority that masks its search for its muddled identity.

While the Chinese president was visiting George W. Bush, the usual columnists let slip references to a mistrust of Europeans, now that Tony Blair can no longer counterbalance the rampant anti-Americanism spreading across the planet, capturing previously unconditionally conservative sectors loyal to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. With Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi defeated, and in agreement with Romano Prodi on a single issue (out of Iraq by the end of the year), the periodic and pathetic overtures of former Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar, now a lecturer at Georgetown University, do not resonate even in the White House.

The recent changing of the guard in Bush’s cabinet seems part a transition between administrations, part inertia, and part window-dressing in desperation at plummeting approval rates. In his rush to plug leaks, Bush is only increasing the confusion of the entity that after everything and despite disagreements will always be the US’s most loyal albeit competitive ally: Europe. In Brussels, where it is trade policy that fares best in difficult times under the EU’s precarious shared sovereignty, they still don’t know the phone number of the US trade representative because it changes so frequently their business cards pile up without ever being used. Just as Euro-commissioner Peter Mandelson was getting used to dealing with US trade negotiator Rob Portman, Bush is recycling him to focus on the skyrocketing budget, replacing him with his associate Susan Schwab, who does not seem destined for a long tenure.

The first domino in the series was the replacement of veteran chief-of-staff Andrew Card and the resignation of press secretary Scott ”no comment” McClellan, while the all-powerful guru of the polls Karl Rove is focusing on tackling the problematic November mid-term elections which have the republican majority shaking with fear. However, significantly, two icons of the Bush regime remain firmly in place: Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Note the moderation and evident discretion that has marked the secretary of state in recent months; it is not clear whether this is to protect herself for a possible presidential run against Hillary Clinton, or whether she is simply laying low like her predecessor Colin Powell in order to appear to be simply obeying orders and not stand out as the architect of the numerous strategic blunders since 2001.

In contrast, Rumsfeld remains in the eye of the hurricane and has already passed into the annals of US political and military history thanks to the severe judgement pronounced on him recently by a dozen retired generals that recalled, in reverse, the veiled criticism that previous defence secretaries levelled at military brass for the lamentable policy pursued in Vietnam and Korea.

Now despite the thinly-disguised joy radiated by critics of US foreign policy, the unprecedented act of the generals should be a cause for worry, one more element in the already tempestuous situation the country faces.

Behind the generals’ irritation lies the feeling that now the war is not being shouldered by the American people as a whole but rather by a poor minority, isolated and made to carry out dubious orders and play the role of occupier, torturer, and executioner.

While it is unthinkable that the generals would rebel against civilian authorities in the middle of a war (it wouldn’t occur to them), their outburst could nonetheless harm the country. Their indirect intervention in politics, cloaked in military expertise (which is superior to that of Rumsfeld), is a risk that the US can hardly afford to take, trapped as it is in a confused and manipulated battle for its identity by unstoppable immigration.

Remember, on the other hand, that Bush’s crop of disasters grew with the infiltration of former CIA agents that turned the job of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte into a ”mission impossible”. The more than 100,000 spies deployed high and low throughout the world, with contradictory and underhanded functions, are an invitation to disaster, as citizens live in terror.

It should be pointed out, however, that behind the recent personnel changes lies a single objective: protecting Bush from further investigation and scrutiny from Congress. In the end he is guilty of all the disasters that his successor will inherit, republican or democrat. Rumsfeld is doing a magnificent job as lightning rod. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)