You know the Empire is in trouble when they have to convene a council of elders to discuss the direction of foreign policy. Yesterday, Bush summoned the following luminaries:
Madeleine Albright
Colin Powell
James A. Baker III
Lawrence Eagleburger
Alexander Haig
George Shultz
Defense secretaries:
William Cohen
William Perry
Harold Brown
Robert McNamara
Frank Carlucci
James Schlesinger
Melvin Laird
Just seeing a list of the people that have been responsible for our foreign policy over the last 40 years was a sobering jolt. These incompetent hacks are doling out advice? It explains a lot about how we got to where we are today.
Is there some law that our Secretaries of State have to be partisan thugs and warmongers?
And the idea that these people are dissatisfied with the direction of our foreign policy ought to give anyone pause.
The president then offered a quick summation of his strategy in Iraq that, while not getting into detail, appeared unchanged.
I’d like to know what Robert McNamera had to say. He’s seen this song and dance before. Hell, he choreographed this song and dance before.
Bush and Rumsfeld should take a page out of LBJ and McNamera’s playbook, and resign.
I’m astounded that the White House had the hubris to do this. They can do a presentation? To this audience? And be convincing?
Reverse-Midas strikes again will be my first guess. If, however, they get this group to agree to their program (or whatever they’re selling), or give them cover I will be looking for the fix or threat they used.
A possibility is that they are looking for ideas of how to get out of Iraq.
Another possibility is they are selling invasion or bombing Iran and/or Syria. They’d really need this bunch for cover on that possibility.
yeah, it is a new kind of event for this administration and it smacks of a little depseration.
Missing from your list of luminaries is George F.Kennan,who, unfortunately is deceased.May be GW can channel Kennan’s spirit.In his favor, I can add, Kennan was the old Ivy League Imperialist who set our country on the irreversible slide toward a predatory, militaristic foreign policy under the guise of Containment of Communism.That policy has metastasized into our Imperial Masquerade ( apologies to Lewis Lapham)under GWB. Kennan, along with the ever alert courtier Walter Lippman, also led to the degradation of our Press and turned it into a propaganda organ of the state.All the luminaries listed are either Kennan clones in some way or subscribe to the notion that he was not imperialistic enough.I blame all the Ivy League Poli Sci schools for fostering this mentality just as much as I blame the Harvard B-school cabals for the degradation of our businesses over the past fifty odd years by inculcating the short term gains fervor in their students.
Conspicuously absent is Henry ‘The K‘ Kissinger, he of the memorable phrase:
A perfect fit with Bushco™
Peace
good PR to convene strategists and henchmen of former wars and warlords to make the point that all support the crusade, but believe that Mr.Danger should schedule additional bleat repeats.
I don’t know if I would characterize it as desperation so much as just another dollop of the overcaution we are accustomed to see coming from Washington, probably one of the most visible and well-known example is the cover ban on return of expendable assets that have become unusable, stemming from the (in my opinion) mistaken notion that the voting classes support for the crusade might soften if CNN showed too many flag-draped coffins.
They underestimate Americans’ Resolve.
Another possibility is they are selling invasion or bombing Iran and/or Syria. They’d really need this bunch for cover on that possibility.
That’s a frightening — & very plausible — explanation.
Especially considering all this stuff that I just noticed on google news:
What a rogues gallery!
My favorite is Al “I’m in charge here” Haig.
what’s funny about that is that Baker used that as a way to push Haig out the door. They had been fighting Haig over whether Bush or Haig should control foreign policy.
Constitutional authorities in the room at the same time.
The new Bush Constitution, that is.
Madeline Albright – she’s the one who when asked in 1996 about the report that a half million Iraqi children had died since 1991 as a result of US-orchestrated sanctions stated that it was “worth the price.” Nice lady.
Among our power elites, there is sort of mad race to outdo each other in who can be the “toughest”.It is very similar to the one among our chattering classes (Limbaugh, Hannity, Hume , O’Reilly) who can be more “provocative”.
“Bush and Rumsfeld should take a page out of LBJ and McNamera’s playbook, and resign.”
I used to feel that way Booman but not anymore. I want these MFers to be tried for War crimes, crimes against humanity, treason and anything else we can prove they committed. These Fascists need to be taken out permently to a very isolated prison some where with no hope for parole EVER!
I want to Tivo the trial everyday so I can basque in watching the arrogant bastards squirm. They, in my opinion are really not much different from Saddam.
either going in or coming out of this soiree. He was saying that the media should play the Howard Dean statement that we can’t “win” the war in Iraq every day. I think he said it was “disgraceful”.
What do ya expect from a guy with three sons who are all named Lawrence Eagleburger?
Looks more like the Council of the Corrupt to me.
If Bush is actually willing to listen to their counsel, this might be a slightly good omen. That’s a solid list of “Washington consensus” types the neo-cons have rejected. If Bush were capable of changing a thought in his head, this would be encouraging, but that last quote makes it clear he’s just pimping for establishment support for a mind already made up like a bed.
What topsy-turvy world! I can’t imagine another time when I’d have read that list of advisors & felt anything remotely like a shiver of hope. Or cheering Pat Buchanan on tv (talking about the CIA leak — he supports the NSA spying).
McNamara is really the odd one on that list, at least if the regrets he expressed in the movie about him were genuine. If so, I’d love to know what he had to say to Bush.
i wonder about Warren Christopher’s health, since he didn’t make it.
Eagleburger was invited even though he only served a month or two as Secretary of State.
The interesting thing is the tension between the Republicans. Haig, Carlucci, Schultz, Baker, Powell…
A lot of history there. Not much of it friendly.
Eagle burger was invited to eat from the buffet.
he might be sick.. or he might have found their lot too much to stomach (unlike all the others who may have been thrilled to have been tapped into play again).
Hope springs eternal, anyway
invitation would and should invite special favors and approval from people no matter what their moral obligations to self may be. These people in the WH are so sick and arrogant I wouldn’t have ever believed it could be possible had I not witnessed it in my lifetime!
It’s a military trade show to entice vendors for participation and what to expect. Those are the folks who own us by way of private equity groups. It’s also a chance for all of them to have a similar story for the questions coming up on the past 40 years of history. To survive this, they all have to be in agreement to the ‘terrorist threat’ development.
pretty much says it all, Rumi.
At this point, there’s not much we can do to change the course, is there?
probably not.
but you have to consider the obvious. If you want to put an end to BushCo. you have to run a campaign that makes these yahoos feel at least somewhat comfortable. You can’t go to the American public with an agenda of ripping up the whole bipartisan rot and replacing it with a much stronger Congress, with all kinds of anti-corruption, anti-lobbying laws.
Setting aside the possibilty of getting Oswalded, the media will go nuts and marginalize your candidate.
But wait!! Isn’t the current climate of corruption and warmongering conducive to exactly that type of agenda?
Yes. It is. But power is power. What we are talking about is a need for revolutionary change, when the country as a whole is not in the mood for revolution, and the powers-that-be just want to tinker around the edges.
So, the hope comes from electing a new wave of Congresspeople that will enact the reforms we need, not in having an ’08 Presidential candidate that scares the fuck out of the Establishment.
Again, go back to 1974. And 1976. First the Congress was taken over by the Watergate babies, then a total outsider was elected President. But Carter made people feel comfortable. He ran on restoring honor and integrity to office. ‘I will never lie to you’.
Then he passed a lot of important legislation, like the FISA court, to try to clean up the mess.
Congress needs to be purged before we can make any progess.
That comment was very realistic and still offered a measure of hope for the future. Thanks again for all you do in making this site possible to share this type of thinking.
Nice post. Sobering.
IMHO, This confab is more than meets the eye – considering such a conference happening into the 6th year of his presidency. Is it kinda late or just in time?
I had decided to include a wire service photo from this gathering when I developed today’s diary.
I normally don’t include images of any of these folks, because they live in a very different and isolated world, far from the people who suffer from the effects of their decisions.
But it was that very contrast that prompted me to include this as one of the images, and to select Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” as the accompanying text.
The people at the polished table are, in the end, pretty much all of the same mind, and from the same priviledge.
and how long has it been going on?
Too many associations crackling together between your comments and the pictures of death and that club of dispassionate killers.
What choice has the American public had since the late forties when the decision was made to mount a permanent war?
Was the threat primary, or the desire to exercise military power?
And was the exercise of military power primary, or the hunger for subjugation and killing?
Where do those people at the conference table go to see the results and measure their success?
Was it ever really against a real threat, or just the sum of pet projects of careerists with too little imagination or humility?
Would those luminaries been less eminent if they did not wield the baton of violence?
The biggest con here is not the continuity of foreign policy. It is the continuity of the state of emergency that eclipses domestic ambitions.
Right, I get it now. Thanks.
Those are powerful and sobering questions.
To me, it reinforces the fact that no matter who we vote for, it’s still a small group making all of the decisions for their own benefit at our expense.
Every circus needs somebody to shovel up the elephant poop. george has gathered quite a group of volunteers.
That photo is a most pitiful display of the old boy’s club that Wahington has become on our watch. It is to gag….
to see this list all in one place. I bitch ad nauseum about the venality and incompetence among our “leaders” in both parties, but it still stuns me to realize that not a one of these top policy dogs going back half a century could possibly have an opinion worth shit. Once again we see that returning Dems to power is a necessary first step, but not nearly enough.
PS– Has anybody else reached the point of puking everytime they hear Bush telling us what he “understands”? Kinda like listening to a eunuch bragging about all the women he’s impregnated.
You know that The Boy King isn’t going to listen to the opinions of others. Not really. But that gathering does provide a couple of things:
I will believe we have a sincere effort to make a course change here when 1/3 of the folks at this meeting spend the first hour verbally bitch slapping the current White House til they bleed. Everyone one knows that we have President who cannot stomach hearing the truth. Until it’s apparent that mindset has been changed this meeting is nothing but window dressing. The toughest decision for most of the attendees was having to decide if they wanted their own reputation tainted by being IN THE SAME ROOM as Bush because they have a good understanding that there is only a snowball’s chance in hell that Bush is going to actually take advice from anybody at this point in time.
The only meeting of this sort which will do any real good at this point is one that starts with Mr. President, you’re fired, you’ve got one hour to get your sorry ass on Marine One and chopper out of here.