Reading coverage of Alan Greenspan's book, wherein he pulls an
Eisenhower as he heads out the door, alerting his countrymen to the
duplicity of US foreign policy, I add Greenspan's name to the list of
learned, sophisticated, ambitious men and women who will end their
careers, in some form, tarnished, defeated or shamed while serving in
the
Bush-Cheney outfit. Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Alberto Gonzales.
Note that the uber White Man, Donald Rumsfeld, runs for the hills with
nary an insight or comment to explain away any of it. Harriet Miers.
Petreus.
Even hacks like Robert Novak descend to the level of Super Hack
in pursuit of a corner of Cheney's ass to bury their nose in.
Some of these are decent men and women who squandered their energies,
careers and
reputations, believing they were serving their country. When I studied
politics at George Washington University in the late '70s, they taught
us that the men who would make the best public servants were opting out
of the process, post-Watergate. The people who would make the best
Presidents, Congressmen and Senators want nothing to do with the
process.
This country is in the worst condition I have ever seen. We are faced
with problems that
will destroy both this country and the world's environment if we stay
the course that the GOP
has piloted since 1980. A course that rapes the land, plunges our
nation deeper into
debt, crushes any hope of real and effective oversight of industry by
government regulators,
maintains a permanent underclass in our ranks and abroad, denies health
care, denies education,
prosecutes and imprisons the powerless, kills American men and women
needlessly in a trumped-up
war, allows fanatical US Christian conservatives to demand a war for
oil, rebukes honest and
empirically substantiated scientific discoveries and kills innocent
Iraqis by the hundreds of thousands
in pursuit of the Bush family's sick agenda in the Middle East.
This course must be altered, and drastically so, or we will see the twilight
of our great country in my lifetime.
More importantly, it can be altered in the next election if we are
rational. Brave and rational.
We must take risks in the name of American democracy. Risk that someone
with a new idea might really be on to
something. That is why this is Hell. The answers are there. But our
leaders are ignoring them. At times, they are
not only ignoring them, they are hiding them from us, willfully and
maliciously.
Posted September 20, 2007 | 11:29 AM (EST)