Are We Any Better Than Myanmar?

The Justice Department’s inspector general and legal ethics chief issued a report today indicating that the Bush administration violated federal law in hiring for non-political jobs. Their investigation revealed that the administration refused to grant interviews if job candidates had any smell of liberal leanings or were even remotely connected to the Democratic Party. But this only points out that the most corrupt and incompetent administration in history just has no clue on how to govern.

Remember all the big hullabaloo about the military junta of Myanmar rejecting all of our offers of assistance when a hurricane destroyed large sections of the former Burma? Lurch pleaded with the junta: “Let the United States come to help you, help the people. We’re prepared to move U.S. Navy assets to help find those who’ve lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation. But in order to do so, the miltary junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country.”

Maybe I missed the foreign offers of assistance when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, so I was fascinated by Walter Brasch’s reporting on the offers we rejected. He recently published a book, “Unacceptable: The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina.” We all know how pathetic the administration’s response was when we hear those famous words of the commander-in-chief: “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie.” Yes, Brownie certainly did that.

But I had no idea until Brasch’s book that Lurch rejected the help of over 20 countries, and only accepted help from “friends and allies” after dithering for a week. At a post-Katrina press conference Bush shocked people by saying: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars (!). But this country is going to rise up and take care of it...You know, we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed.”

Here’s a partial list of what Bush rejected, according to Brasch’s book:

Venezuela offered $1 million in cash, in addition to oil and humanitarian supplies.

Cuba offered 1,600 physicians, mostly specialists, and tons of medical supplies.

Our close friend Germany sent a plane with 15 tons of emergency supplies. We refused to let it land.

According to Brasch, Russia, at that time led by the guy with “soulful eyes,” offered medical supplies, evacuation equipment, water purifying systems, a rescue helicopter, and 60 persons specially trained in search and rescue operations. Rejected by Bush.

The administration was so screwed up it even rejected or blocked assistance from other parts of the government or from state governments. Examples:

Even before the storm hit, Amtrak offered trains to help in the evacuation. The offer was ignored.

After several fires broke out in flooded New Orleans, the Forest Service offered water-tanker aircraft to help fight the fires. Brownie ignored the offer.

The U.S. Coast Guard, flying over 20,000 rescue flights, offered 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel to Jefferson Parrish for use in boats and trucks. Brownie refused to allow the delivery.

A U.S. Navy ship offshore offered to send men and helicopters for rescue operations, offered 100,000 gallons of drinking water per day, offered her 600-bed hospital, and to provide onshore medical assistance. Brownie ignored the offer at first and then delayed it.

The feds ordered the Red Cross and Salvation Army to stay out of New Orleans for the first week, stating the city was not secure!

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico offered 400 National Guard soldiers to assist on the day Katrina hit. It took him four days to get through Washington red tape in order to send them.

The city of Chicago offered firefighters, police, health workers, sanitation workers, a mobile health clinic, trucks, boats, and cars. All were rejected.

The Florida Airboat Association offered 300 fully equipped boats with trained pilots. Also rejected.

About 75 private companies volunteered to use their own corporate aircraft to fly in supplies to regional airports. The feds ignored the offer but the companies did it anyway, flying in 65 tons of emergency supplies.

The International Bottled Water Association gave 10 million bottles of water for evacuees, but the feds refused to even return the organization’s phone calls.

The word “pathetic” isn’t descriptive enough for this situation. Does “Bush-Cheney” do it?

Daddy, Have We Won Those Wars Yet?

When flag-wearing Republicans remind us liberals and malcontents that the U.S. mainland has not been attacked since Lurch had the bizarre idea to invade Iraq, I think of the poor Indian student living in Greenwich Village who cadged one free meal after another from a restaurant owner who felt sorry for him. One night the irritated owner told the student: “You never offer anything except a Hindu prayer. What do the words mean?” The student says, “May this house be safe from tigers.” The owner said, “What a silly statement! Tigers in New York? Look at all the good food I’ve given you!” The student replies, “Well, have you been bothered by tigers lately?”

Osama Bin Laden was absolutely elated when we invaded Iraq. He no longer had to buy airline tickets or hijack airplanes to kill Americans on the “Homeland.” His boys could simply walk across a border and steal munitions from the millions of tons cached by Saddam.

I have always been of the opinion that an Iraqi “coalition” of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds will never work. The tribes have been killing each other for 1,400 years.

The Brits tried to make Iraq a single country for 40 years, failed, and walked away. And they were professionals at imperialism.

It isn’t going to matter whether we stay there for five minutes, five years, or fifty. When we leave there will be a civil war for what’s left. We are simply postponing the inevitable by staying.

We have no clue as to what is happening in Iraq now. In 2003 we had 740 registered journalists in Iraq giving us some news. There are now 22 journalists in Iraq passing on Bush administration press releases to our mass media.

We have destroyed our military while spending $5,000 a second, $411 million a day, and $25 billion a month in a religious war where we can’t even win a stalemate! Not only have we lost over 4,000 dead, we currently have 300,000 military suffering PTSD or depression--and another 320,000 who have probably suffered traumatic brain damage from IEDs. Estimates are that if we quit now, the total cost of the two wars will be close to $3 trillion after making disability payments to the wounded for 50 years.

If Lurch and his chickenhawks had had any military experience they would have followed the advice of Army General Eric Shinseki when he told them it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to pacify Iraq. But Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Condi Rice and the rest of the neocons thought they knew better--so they forced him to retire. The Crawford village idiot never did have the intellectual capacity to know better.

In those desperate Vietnam War years we had the Saigon “Five O’clock Follies” where the military and the Johnson and Nixon administrations lied to the American people about where the Ho Chi Minh train was in the tunnel. In the Iraq War we had a Pentagon desperate for heros try to make Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman into heros, both victims of a puzzle palace that thinks we can win never-ending wars with volunteer and mercenary forces.

I hereby dedicate Calvin Trillin’s poem, “Patriotism, 2008” to all the flag lapel boys who back the Iraq War--and to those civilians who have shopped til they dropped from brain injury:

I backed the war in Nam OK,
Though I used to pull away.
A patriot? But can’t you tell?
I wear a flag in my lapel.
My company’s now based offshore;
We don’t pay taxes anymore.
A patriot? But can’t you tell?
I wear a flag in my lapel.
That clean air stuff’s not meant for me.
I drive a German SUV.
A patriot? But can’t you tell?
I wear a flag in my lapel.
We needn’t build a grand memorial
To patriots. It’s all sartorial.

New Flag Pins And Old Tombstones

Readers have been sending inscriptions from tombstones since I included a few in a column a month ago.

This one is from a tumbleweed-strewn wooden plank in a boot hill cemetery: “Here Lies Les Moore /Four Slugs From A .44 /No Les No Moore.”

In Thurmont, Maryland: Here Lies an Atheist, All Dressed Up And No Place To Go.

In Silver City, Nevada: Here Lies The Kid/ We Planted Him Raw/ He Was Quick On The Trigger/ But Slow On The Draw.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England: On The 22nd of June, Jonathan Fiddle Went Out of Tune