Michael Brown can moo, can you?

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!"

--George Bush to Michael Brown, post-Katrina

It's never fun being the fall guy, and I'm not certain I'm being made to be the fall guy. But if being the fall guy gets done everything I want to get done, fine.

--Michael Brown, a few days later


Panegyrick to a Crony

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Oh the wonderful things Michael Brown can do!
Michael Brown can go like a cow. He can go MOO MOO.
Michael Brown can do it. How about you?

He can go like the rain DIBBLE DIBBLE DIBBLE DOPP.
He can go to a hurricane HURRY UP AND STOP!
He can fake up a resume LICKETY SPLIT.
He can take the fall like a proper little s--t.

He can even be FEMA director.
He can do that, too.
Michael Brown can do it.
How about you?

-------

My two-year-old son is quite impressed by Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown, thinks him a remarkably accomplished gentleman -- after all, he can make a wide variety of zoo noises. So George Bush seemed equally impressed by Mr. Michael Brown. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" A good name for the gentleman in question, given that it was precisely due to his being a brownie (in the playground sense of the term) that he became head of FEMA.

Think about it. In the wake of 9/11, Bush promises to do everything in his power to protect this country from such disasters in future -- to preserve the country in the aftermath of such disasters should they occur. Yet he places at the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Joe Allbaugh, a political hack (manager of the 2000 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign) who has zero experience in emergency management. And then, when Allbaugh leaves the post for greener (consulting) pastures, he replaces himself with his college bunkie Mike Brown, a man with even less experience in emergency management than he (if it is possible to have less experience than zero . . .).

If you look up "crony" in the dictionary, you'll find Brown's picture in the margin.

So how seriously are we to take Bush's sworn commitment to protecting this country from terrorist-spawned catastrophe? In this administration, cronyism always trumps policy, always trumps moral principle. Everything is grist for the (Karl)Rovian political mill, including the lives of our citizens.

Oh the wonderful things Mr. Bush can do.

Let the Eagle Soar

Let the eagle soar,
Like she’s never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar!

--John Ashcroft, "Let the Eagle Soar"


Near the beginning of the war a colleague posted on his office door a cartoon of a bald eagle sitting on a stool sharpening his talons with a file. The implication was clear: after 9.11, it was lex talionis time. As our late, great Attorney General John "Jaysus!" Ashcroft put it, "Let the mighty eagle soar!"

The other day I was driving through the countryside, glimpsed in the distance a red-tailed hawk being tormented in flight by a group of blackbirds. The majestic hawk was soaring and swooping, doing its best to evade the smaller birds, who were darting in, pecking the hawk viciously, then darting out again -- instinctive guerilla tactics. The hawk was helpless. All it could do is keep flying and hope the blackbirds would eventually grow tired of the game and desist.

Which is the better analogy for our military and its predicament in Iraq, Ashcroft's triumphant eagle or my beleaguered hawk?

This Thing of Darkness

When can their glory fade?
. . .
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

--Tennyson


To my last post the blogger "Mausergirl" responds:

"You're making a basic mistake in your logic here - and that is to assume that every soldier is a grunt on the front lines. More than 80% of soldiers are not infantry or other combat MOSs, and individual experiences vary.

And let me tell you, soldiers gripe, moan, and whine about politics just as much as anyone else does. They question why we're where we're at, and what we're doing there."

Of course she's right that not all soldiers are combat troops. Of course she's right that lots of soldiers -- the vast majority, I suspect -- indeed do "reason why": reflect upon and analyze the war, its causes and consequences, and wonder if they are being abused by their leaders.

What I was getting at is that the soldier that the militarists exhort us to respect and revere is a mythological figure: He who does not question why and who has an absolute and unwavering devotion to Duty. This, the ideal soldier of their fevered dreams, is the soldier they hold up to the rest of us to honor and--this is most important--to emulate. "Pat Tillman did not question his leaders in time of war so neither should you." This mythic warrior is used by war propagandists as a rhetorical club to discourage critics of the war, to shame them into silence. "If only Cindy Sheehan could love Freedom as much as Pat Tillman loved Freedom! If only she understood Duty as that hero did! If only she could SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Reading the other day on The Washington Post website a chat session with a pro-Bush mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Whenever a reader would ask her a question about the causes of the war, whether they were legitimate or not, her response was "That's not my call to make." When further pressed she commented that she trusted the leaders she had voted into office to do the right thing. A sad case. A mother of a dead soldier unable to face the fact that she may be partially responsible for her son's death, given that her vote help put in office the man who sent him to his death. A very bitter pill to swallow.

The fact is that we live in a democracy, we vote our leaders into office, so ultimately it IS our call to make. We bear part of the responsibility, part of the blame, when they make mistakes or act badly. This is certainly how much of the rest of the world sees it. Why they hate US for this war, not just Bush. What was Prospero's line about Caliban? "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." Only if we all acknowledge responsibility for this war, this thing of darkness, can we act to end it.