November 18, 2004
A Plague of Toadies
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
I went to see the magical "Pericles'' at the
Shakespeare Theater the other night.
In ancient Greece, the prince of Tyre tires of all the
yes men around him. He chooses to trust the one courtier who
intrepidly tells him: "They do abuse the king that
flatter him. ... Whereas reproof, obedient and in order,
fits kings, as they are men, for they may err.''
Not flatter the king? Listen to dissenting viewpoints?
Rulers who admit they've erred?
It's all so B.C. (Before Cheney).
Now, in the 21st-century reign of King George II,
flattery is mandatory, dissent is forbidden, and erring
without admitting error is the best way to get ahead.
President Bush is purging the naysayers who tried to temper
crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney and the neocon crazies on Iraq.
First, faith trumped facts. Now, loyalty trumps
competence. W., who was the loyalty enforcer for his
father's administration, is now the loyalty enforcer for his
own.
Those promoted to be in charge of our security, diplomacy
and civil liberties were rewarded for being more loyal to
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney than to the truth.
The president and vice president are dispatching their
toadies to the agencies to quell dissent. The crackdown
seems bizarre, since hardly anyone dared to disagree with
them anyway and there were plenty willing to twist the truth
for them.
Consider George Tenet, who assured Mr. Bush that the weak
case on Iraqi W.M.D. was "a slam-dunk.'' And Colin
Powell, who caved and made the bogus U.N. case for war.
Then, when he wanted to stay a bit longer to explore Mideast
opportunities arising from Arafat's death, he got shoved out
by a president irked by the diplomat's ambivalence and
popularity.
Mr. Bush prefers more panting enablers, like Alberto
Gonzales. You wanna fry criminals or torture prisoners? Sure
thing, boss.
W. and Vice want to extend their personal control over
bureaucracies they thought had impeded their foreign policy.
It's alarming to learn that they regard their first-term
foreign policy - a trumped-up war and bungled occupation, an
estrangement from our old allies and proliferating nuclear
ambitions in North Korea, Iran and Russia - as impeded. What
will an untrammeled one look like?
The post-election hubris has infected Capitol Hill.
Law-and-order House Republicans changed the rules so Tom
DeLay can stay as majority leader even if he's indicted;
Senate Republicans are threatening to rule Democratic
filibusters out of order.
In 2002, Cheney & Co. set up their own C.I.A. in the
Pentagon to bypass the C.I.A. and conjure up evidence on
Iraqi W.M.D. Now Mr. Cheney has sent his lackey, Porter
Goss, who helped him try to suffocate the 9/11 commission,
to bully the C.I.A. into falling into line.
In an ominous echo of the old loyalty oaths, Mr. Goss has
warned employees at the agency that their job is to
"support the administration and its policies in our
work.''
Mr. Bush doesn't want any more leaks, like the one
showing that he was told two months before invading Iraq
that such a move could lead to violent internal conflict and
more support for radical Islamists.
Mr. Goss has managed to make the dysfunctional C.I.A.
even more dysfunctional. Instead of going after Al Qaeda,
he's busy purging top-level officials who had been going
after Al Qaeda - replacing them with his coterie of hacks
from Capitol Hill.
Mr. Cheney is letting his old mentor, Rummy, stay on.
What does it matter if the Rummy doctrine - dangerously thin
allotments of forces, no exit strategy, snatching State
Department occupation duties and then screwing them up - has
botched the Iraq mission and left the military so strapped
it's calling back old, out-of-shape reservists to active
service?
Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley did not do their jobs
before 9/11 in coordinating the fight against Al Qaeda, and
they did not do their jobs after 9/11 in preventing the
debacle in Iraq. They not only suppressed evidence Americans
needed to know that would have debunked the neocons'
hyped-up case for invading Iraq; they helped shovel hooey
into the president's speeches.
Dr. Rice pitched in to help Dr. No whip up that imaginary
mushroom cloud. Condi's life story may be inspirational. But
the way she got the State Department job is not.
Not only are the Bush officials who failed to protect the
country and misled us into war not losing their jobs.
They're getting promoted.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
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