Soapbox

Why Don’t They Ever See it Coming?

It could well be the catchphrase that describes the entire Bush presidency: “no one could have forseen….� Fill in the blank with any major event of the last 5 years.

After 9/11, Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor, said “I don’t think anybody could have predicted… that they would try to use… a hijacked airplane as a missile.â€? This despite how many Presidential Daily briefings warning that Osama bin Laden and al Qaida was determined to attack in the United States? Forget all the warnings that people tried to pass on of men of middle eastern descent were taking flying lessons who didn’t want to learn how to land; forget Richard Clarke running around ‘with his hair on fireâ€? saying that al Qaida needed to be the number one national security concern, and forget the repeated warnings by the FAA to airliners to watch for hijackings: when George Bush attended the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, the Italian government declared airspace above the summit site a no-fly zone and deployed anti-aircraft guns at Genoa airport to defend against possible terrorist attack from aircraft filled with explosives. If that wasn’t someone predicting an airplane used as a missle, what was? But somehow, when it finally happened, the Bush administration just didn’t see it coming.

They also were caught by surprise when the Iraqis did not welcome American tanks and bombs as liberators, when the number of troops deployed turned out to be insufficient to stabilize the country, and of course, when the famous WMD’s that they had “no doubt� were all over Iraq turned out to not be there at all. Wow! Who could have predicted this?

Well, maybe General Shinseki, who was forced into retirement for his pre-invasion statement that the United States would need at least 100,000 troops in Iraq to keep the peace. He pretty much predicted this. Maybe the many experts on Mideast policy who said that Iraq, once destabilized, would quickly break down into factional fighting, and perhaps the U.S. intelligence analysts who strongly disputed reports on WMD’s but whose opinions were exised from official statements. Oh, and don’t forget Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who traveled to Africa and determined that the stories of Sadaam Hussein buying yellowcake uranium there were untrue.
Remember Joe? He made the administration so angry when he spoke out that his wife’s undercover CIA operation to prevent Iran form getting nuclear weapons (real WMD’s) was blown apart in an attempt to punish and discredit him.
Yet despite all these warnings, when the reports from Iraq came back that absolutely no WMD’s had been found, the Bush administration was surprised, saying they had no way of knowing that Sadaam no longer possessed them. They just didn’t see that coming.

“No one could have anticipated the levees breaking� President Bush said in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina savaged the gulf coast and destroyed most of New Orleans. No one except the National Weather Service, who kept sending out frantic warnings as the hurricane approached that if it hit where they thought it would and with the force they expected, it would flood New Orleans and cause significant loss of life, not to mention huge property damage. Disaster drills had been run just a few months before, all predicting that it would not take that much to overwhelm the levee system, and local officials had been warning for the last 2 years, ever since President Bush cut funding for upkeep on the levees, that one good hit from a hurricane could put the city underwater. Still, President Bush didn’t see that one coming either.

The president also could not forsee that Hamas might win the Palestinian elections, despite warnings from many analysts that this is exactly what might happen. This put the U.S. in the akward position of telling the people “You must have elections right away! That’s how democracies work: the people choose!â€? and then having to say, “Oh, but wait, you can’t choose them!â€? Bush is so enamored of elections, of being able to say “Look at me! I created another democracy!â€? that he just pushed blindly ahead, unable to predict what everyone else saw coming.

Now comes a report that experts believe that Iran, once contained by Sadaam Hussein on their eastern border, has become the threat that Iraq never was. How could we have taken our eye off Iran? Iran is larger, wealthier and more powerful than Iraq. Iran once held over a hundred Americans hostage for more than a year and considers America “the great satan�. The hard-line Islamist theocracy, once beginning to wane in Iran, has come roaring back with a vengeance, fueled in part by being able to point to the United States invasion of the land right next door. Iran is now believed to be supporting the Shiite insurgency that has caused so much pain and death in Iraq, is pressuring Afghanistan to turn back to the Taliban, meddling in Lebanon and Syria, etc. Iran is also defiant in the face of international pressure to stop trying to build a nuclear bomb, now that the United states is so hopelessly embroiled in 2 useless wars that we have little left to threaten them with. Once again, experts are coming forward and saying that they warned years ago that they believed this could happen, but to George Bush, it was as unpredictable as a hurricane.

So the question is: why, with his own admitted and stunning blindness, does the President portray himself as being the only one who can keep us safe? If he can’t see the anti-aircraft guns outside his hotel and realize that planes might be used as weapons; if he can’t hear his own generals tell him that he cannot win the war the way he is fighting it and realize that they might know more about it than he does; if he can’t hear warnings from the National Weather Service and his own FEMA director and realize that a major national disaster is about to hit New Orleans- can he see anything at all?

How can a man who can’t see his own hand in front of his face protect this nation?