[Marxism] The White House Cabal

["Tony Lawless" <lifesunquietdream@xxxxxxx>]

I believe the word "cabal" was introduced into this discussion by Louis 
himself. But I guess this is one of those weird discussions
where a term is being used in invisible quotation marks that only Louis can 
see!  
 
At any rate, for me, and I think Wilkerson would agree here, a cabal is a group 
of individuals, some elected, some not, who bypass
the normal channels of decision-making. It is in this specific sense that the 
White House cabal is secret. Obviously, in another sense
 the Project for a New American Century is not secret. But then US voters voted 
for the Republican Party -- not for the Project for a New
American Century.
 
But I begin to wonder if the guy with the hard hat in Houston was not sending 
out secret radio transmissions to Louis Proyect's brain
that have had the effect of making him chronically intolerant of and incapable 
of representing other people's opinions accurately!
 
Tony
 
 
 
 
The White House cabalBy Lawrence B. WilkersonLAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as 
chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.
October 25, 2005
 
IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. 
national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq
 — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small 
group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When I first discussed this group in a speech last 
week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments
caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary 
of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.
 
But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were 
sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes
with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor 
Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.
Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the 
decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy.
This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency 
of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were
reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its 
dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."
But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of 
disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with
implementing them would not or could not execute them well.
I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four years at the 
State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months, I had a door adjoining
the secretary of State's office. I read virtually every document he read. I 
read the intelligence briefings and spoke daily with people from all across 
government.
I knew that what I was observing was not what Congress intended when it passed 
the 1947 National Security Act. The law created the National Security Council
— consisting of the president, vice president and the secretaries of State and 
Defense — to make sure the nation's vital national security decisions were
thoroughly vetted. The NSC has often been expanded, depending on the president 
in office, to include the CIA director, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the Treasury secretary and others, and it has accumulated a staff of 
sometimes more than 100 people.
But many of the most crucial decisions from 2001 to 2005 were not made within 
the traditional NSC process.
Scholars and knowledgeable critics of the U.S. decision-making process may 
rightly say, so what? Haven't all of our presidents in the last half-century 
failed
to conform to the usual process at one time or another? Isn't it the 
president's prerogative to make decisions with whomever he pleases? Moreover, 
can he
not ignore whomever he pleases? Why should we care that President Bush gave 
over much of the critical decision-making to his vice president and his 
secretary
of Defense?
Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the ring with the 
bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should care. First, such 
departures
from the process have in the past led us into a host of disasters, including 
the last years of the Vietnam War, the national embarrassment of Watergate (and
the first resignation of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra scandal 
and now the ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.
But a second and far more important reason is that the nature of both 
governance and crisis has changed in the modern age.
>From managing the environment to securing sufficient energy resources, from 
>dealing with trafficking in human beings to performing peacekeeping missions
abroad, governing is vastly more complicated than ever before in human history.
Further, the crises the U.S. government confronts today are so multifaceted, so 
complex, so fast-breaking — and almost always with such incredible potential
for regional and global ripple effects — that to depart from the systematic 
decision-making process laid out in the 1947 statute invites disaster.
Discounting the professional experience available within the federal 
bureaucracy — and ignoring entirely the inevitable but often frustrating 
dissent that often
arises therein — makes for quick and painless decisions. But when government 
agencies are confronted with decisions in which they did not participate and
with which they frequently disagree, their implementation of those decisions is 
fractured, uncoordinated and inefficient. This is particularly the case if the
bureaucracies called upon to execute the decisions are in strong competition 
with one another over scarce money, talented people, "turf" or power.
It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it also takes a 
willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can 
analyze,
synthesize, ponder and decide.
The administration's performance during its first four years would have been 
even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed,
Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the 
carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced president's hand. He told him 
everything
would be all right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did 
— everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance 
aircraft
was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary's 
constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in 
relations over
the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.
Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president 
who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a
secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our 
overstretched armed forces (no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former 
Army
Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).
It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an 
efficient cabal every time.
 
 
 
 
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