The Bushies' Deadly Arrogance

You can't help but cackle over the statement released by Republican National Committee head Marc Racicot last Thursday, the one about the Senate Judiciary Committee's rejection of George W. Bush's nominee to the federal appeals bench. Racicot called the voting down of the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals "an extreme subversion of the will of the United States Senate and the American people," an action that was decided upon by "just ten Senate Democrats."

His outrage is funny because, as one reader pointed out to me, the very process that brought Bush to the White House itself was, to a great many of us, "an extreme subversion" of the will of the people, and a decision made by just five judges. We know all about "extreme subversion," Mr. Racicot, thank you. Here's a guy who is still getting a check from a lobbying firm while he's running the RNC?and is a former Enron huckster to boot?lecturing the rest of us about ethics and fairness. Cute.

The Republicans' whining is even more laughable considering their own past behavior. They torpedoed Clinton nominee after Clinton nominee to the federal courts and elsewhere in government, all qualified individuals who were turned into bogeymen. And let's not forget the refusal of then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott?who now says he is taking his friend Pickering's rejection "personally"?to allow a vote on the nomination of James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg for no other reason than that Hormel was gay.

Now, revenge should not be a basis on which to have sunk Pickering, and it wasn't. The clear and simple reason is that Pickering is an extremist who cannot be trusted to uphold civil rights?a choice that the Bush administration, in its arrogance, thought it could push through as another sop to far-right conservatives. Now the Bushies are complaining about the vacancies on the courts, trying to blame the Democrats when it is that arrogance that is to blame. It's the same arrogance that has Dick Cheney refusing to turn over even the most basic information about the meetings of his energy task force to House Democrats investigating the Enron debacle. The same arrogance that had the administration create a shadow government unbeknownst to the rest of us. The same arrogance that didn't let New York officials know about a possible impending terrorist attack involving nuclear material. The same arrogance that drew up a Pentagon plan to create an office of lies and disinformation. And the same arrogance that may have created a seismic shift in world politics, perhaps bringing us into an era of nuclear proliferation once again.

It was while Dick Cheney was in flight, on his way to London the weekend before last, that the Pentagon's secret wet dream to lower the threshold for launching "mini-nukes" against a good chunk of the planet?China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya?got leaked to the press. While Cheney was in the air the world was finding out that the U.S. was ratcheting up the nuclear arms race, planning to create so-called smarter nukes that will no doubt be copied by every country on that list (and others) in time. Already, North Korea has hinted that it may make more bombs in response.

When Cheney landed in Britain, he was hit with a barrage of questions from angry Fleet Street reporters wanting to know what was up, and in Britain public opinion was already going negative on the U.S. over hints of an invasion of Iraq. Like the rest of the administration, Cheney claimed that it was all a theoretical exercise and not an attempt to change policy?a claim that was utterly belied a week later when Bush said that "all options are on the table" when it comes to Iraq, including a nuclear strike.

By the time Cheney got to the Middle East a few days later, an entirely different issue cropped up: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arab leaders were actually upset about the escalating violence in Israel. Who'da thunk it? And they weren't eager to sign on to the Bush plan to take action against Iraq unless, at the very least, the U.S. did something about Israel. Imagine. So what's an arrogant administration to do? Presto! Just change its Israel stance?again. And so, George W. Bush soon held a press conference in which he observed that Israel's increasing violence in Ramallah was "not helpful."

You can't help but wonder: Do these guys make it up as they go along?

In the first days following Sept. 11, an administration that previously showed little interest in the Middle East was suddenly pushing for a peace plan and calling for a Palestinian state, knowing it needed Arab states on board for the war on terrorism. So pronounced was the administration's stance of holding the Israelis as equally responsible as the Palestinians for stalling the peace process and fomenting violence that Ariel Sharon, you may recall, was accusing the U.S. of abandoning Israel.

All that rhetoric got lost in the dust by Christmas, however, as the Bushies entered the heady days of the Afghan war. With the Northern Alliance as human shields, U.S. forces overtook the Taliban more quickly than anyone imagined. Bush & Co. were feeling pretty good about themselves at that point. Who needed a damn Arab-Israeli peace deal? As a new wave of deadly Palestinian suicide bombings got under way, the pressure shifted again to Yasir Arafat. And the administration signed off on Israel's dramatic escalation of the violence in response to the Palestinian attacks.

But now that the administration needs those Arab leaders for its new Iraqi plan, everything is all about Israel once again?with the President even having the gall to take credit for the UN Security Council's resolution that got tough with Israel. It's quite clear now that the Bush administration doesn't care a whit about a peace plan, neither for the sake of ending the bloodshed nor for the U.S.'s long-term interests. Everything it has done in this regard?the waffling Israel policy it has demonstrated, including sending special envoy Anthony Zinni back and forth to Israel like a yoyo?has all been to serve the administration's short-term interest, which is also the only foreign policy it seems to know: war.

Forget diplomacy. Just rattle those sabers, build those all-new mini-nukes and do whatever it takes to get us on the road to Baghdad. Saddam Hussein may indeed be a danger to his people, to the U.S. and to much of the rest of the world, and military action may be necessary to stop him. But threatening nuclear strikes against Iraq and others willy-nilly is just plain stupid. The blind arrogance that motivated the Pickering nomination and the Cheney secret files debacle has resulted in some bad p.r. fallout for the Bushies. Now it may lead to a fallout of an entirely different and frightening kind.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).