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Inside
Karl Rove's Diary:
"Things
Aren't Going So Well"
by
Bernard Weiner
September
4, 2003
Dear
Diary:
Things
aren't going so well. We were on a good two-year roll there after 9/11. Our
in-your-face hardball politics had so frightened and flummoxed the opposition
that it looked like we were going to get everything we wanted, not the least
another term in the White House.
Now
there's: Iraq imploding on us; the economy still in the tank, with 2,500,000
who've lost their jobs since we took over; investigations proceeding on the
9/11 cover-up, and maybe also on our outing of Wilson's wife as a CIA agent and
our lying about the air-quality in Lower Manhattan for nine months after the
WTC collapsed; and a pack of mean Democrat dogs out there yapping away at our
domestic and war policies.
The
total control we've exercised over the mass media -- conglomerate ownership
sure has paid off for our side -- is beginning to crack. We hear that even some
conservative GOP stalwarts are beginning to see vulnerabilities in our approach
and are wondering whether to hedge their bets and start looking for others to
lead the fight.
Granted,
President Dim Bulb isn't what we would have wished for -- someone with some
brights who can articulate our vision and not mess up all that often -- but
he's a nice enough guy who still thinks Cheney and I are geniuses, so he does
what Dick and I tell him.
The
problem is that Rummy's nice, tidy Iraq scenario that the neo-cons had worked
out (in their heads!) isn't playing out that way on the ground. They told us
what the Iraqi exiles told them: that the U.S. forces would be greeted as
liberators and that the Iraqis would cooperate with us in getting Iraq back on
its feet in joint projects with our American corporate friends.
But
Rummy and the boys made a few miscalculations: They thought we could win the
war and the peace with the small army we sent in -- but, since they anticipated
an easy post-war period, they didn't plan for an alternative transition. For
chrissakes, we've got 150,000 combat troops over there trying to nation-build
while riding around in heavily armored vehicles. And the natives are restless,
with nightly guerrilla attacks and sabotage and mass-bombings. The press-sharks
are starting to smell the blood of Vietnam in the Persian Gulf waters.
I'd
never admit this out loud, but, diary, I guess we should have listened more to Powell
and the diplomat boys, who said we shouldn't do this all on our own. Instead,
we took all our cues from the PNAC playbook, which said that in order to
maintain our superpower dominance and total control, we had to keep everyone
else out of our way. The result was that we so humiliated and insulted our
would-be allies before the war that now, when we need them, they don't want to
come in and help us run the place. Or, more importantly, help pay the cleanup
bill.
Neo-con
strategy works in theory -- "we big superpower, you no stop us, get out of
way" -- but apparently not always in practice. Now the U.N. won't go in
without a new Security Council resolution and without the U.S. agreeing to
share some of the authority. The allies won't cough up the bucks needed to
reconstruct Iraq, and are delighting in reminding us that we shouldn't have
deconstructed it in the first place.
If
we don't get the troops and money we need, it means we have to do it all alone,
everything. Well, the Brits will help a bit, but that assumes Tony Blair keeps
his job and moral authority in England -- ha! good joke, that -- and that's no
sure thing. He ate all the bullshit pie we served him on his WMD plate -- just
like our gullible Americans -- and it's no wonder he's suffering from political
indigestion.
Now,
granted, we want to bankrupt the social programs the Democrats have established
for decades, and we have a good excuse that permits us to do that: "The
Treasury has no extra money because we're fighting a war on terrorism and
reconstructing Iraq; protecting the homeland is expensive." But jeezus,
we're going into a half-trillion-dollar deficit next year and, while it'll be
great fun slashing-and-burning Head Start and privatizing Social Security and
Medicare, we won't be able to pay for any of the programs WE want, and the
economy will keep going further into the toilet.
There's
even serious re-thinking among some conservatives about the huge tax cuts we
gave ourselves and our friends. I couldn't believe our luck when the Democrats
didn't stop us; thank God the populace is scared silly and doesn't care what we
do as long as there are no al-Qaida attacks inside our borders. But that
acceptance can't cancel the criticism about us being incompetent bunglers, with
the economy, the war, the veterans, whatever.
The
scary thing is that it's not just the Democrats making those charges; a lot of
Republicans are starting to voice doubts about how we're handling the war and
the economy -- and even some traditional, small-government conservatives are
looking at Ashcroft's Patriot Act with amazement and anger.
A
lot of GOP politicos look at Bush's re-elect numbers, around 40% now, and the
likelihood that Wesley Clark will jump into the race, and they're scared
they'll lose their own re-election bids in 2004. Hell, even the new Clinton,
Dean, might be able to beat Bush. (Oh, diary, this is good! I'm salivating at
the idea of secretly helping Kucinich get the nomination!)
I
keep trying to tell our GOP scaredy-cats that we've covered all the bases.
We'll take care of the Democrats in California and Texas and Florida and
Colorado and elsewhere. There still isn't a lot of mainstream agitation about
our friends in the computer-voting industry -- but why in hell did that Ohio
computer-voting executive get caught promising to deliver the vote to the GOP
in that state? And we can arrange for a good ol' patriotic surprise that will
reinforce the support-the-president-during-wartime mood before the 2004
election.
The
problem is that even though the Cheney-Rummy-Wolfy agenda calls for another big
move in the Middle East -- using our leverage in Iraq to get the other Arab
leaders to do what we want or there may have to be another "regime
change" scenario -- we may be so bogged down in Iraq that we won't be able
to initiate it with the required force behind our threats. And then there's
that crazy midget in North Korea that could upset all our apple carts with his
nuclear chess game.
The
result of all these things going wrong is that I'm having to use up a lot of my
political ammunition and threats way too early. But The Genius will just have
to do what I know works: When on the defensive, get on the offensive as quickly
as possible, by hook or by crook. Take the heat and attention off the scandals.
Get Schwarzenegger into the race. Report some more terror alerts. Trot out some
heart-tugging 9/11 stories. Have Bush visit a few more national parks to
counter his environmental record. Denounce gay marriage and cry over the Ten
Commandments case to lock up the South. Whatever it takes.
And
I mean that "whatever." We've got to get the Man-Child re-elected,
and I don't much care what we have to do to accomplish that end. If we don't
get the next four years, we can't fulfill our domestic or foreign goals -- and
set it up for Jeb -- and we'd open the door for the liberals and pinkos to
re-enter and ruin things. If we truly want to destroy the Democrats and prepare
the way for the one-party rule that will make our program fully possible, we
can't afford to lose any of the big electoral-vote states in 2004.
Given
Bush's, how shall we say, intellectual limitations when dealing with the fibs
that he's told, and the scandals that cling to our administration -- and to
such vote-magnets as Schwarzenegger -- it might not be as easy as it seemed some
months back.
But,
as I say, we'll do what we have to do to win (for sure keeping those
voting-machine software codes secure in the corporate vaults). And if the
voters don't like our victory results, then they'd better get used to the New
World Order -- or hasta la vista, baby.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., is co-editor of The
Crisis Papers, where this article first appeared (www.crisispapers.org). He has taught at
various universities, and was a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle
for nearly 20 years. He is author of Boy Into Man: A Fathers’ Guide to
Initiation of Teenage Sons (Transformation Press, 1992). Please consider supporting the good
work of Crisis Papers.
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