Hail to the Chickenhawk in Chief
Just as water inevitably finds its own level, it has taken the sad Walter Reed Army Hospital saga to finally lay bare the scandalous lack of leadership that President Bush has shown regarding the care and healing of the troops that he endlessly tells us we should support.
Heads finally are rolling in a purge that reveals the depths of hypocrisy in an administration that has paid lip service to meeting the pressing needs of active-duty soldiers, as well as veterans at home, while cutting back on their programs and benefits because the war in Iraq has bled the national treasury of an extraordinary $404 billion with no end in sight. Oh, and now there’s going to be the obligatory bipartisan investigation into a mess for which an administration now in its seventh year of mismanaging America’s most precious assets — its own citizens — bears much of the responsibility.
TMV readers responded with their own comments and concerns to a post the other day titled Why Does America Treat Its Soldiers & Vets So Badly? But it has taken a scandal of this magnitude to reveal that the rot starts at the top with the commander in chief himself, whom you will recall had to be force fed newsreel footage of the destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina before he was prodded into action.
Shame on George Walker Bush, who once again reveals himself to be a chickenhawk extraordinaire. Compassionate conservative, my butt.
America’s men and women in uniform and veterans are owed an apology. We’re waiting, Mr. President, we’re waiting.
(Author’s Note: The original image has been replaced because of my concern that it would deflect attention from the importance of the subject at hand.)
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29 Responses to “Hail to the Chickenhawk in Chief”
BDS strikes again. To hold him personally responsible for the individual failings of every government bureaucracy is ridiculous.
I am sure you believe he sat in the White House getting daily briefs on the conditions there, and cackled as he thought of new ways to increase their suffering.
AustinRoth:
Please note that I said that Bush bears “most” of the responsibility.
But where else would the buck stop but with him? The guy has had going on seven years to ascertain — with or without the help of his aides — as to whether the troops that he endlessly tells us to support are getting the support that they need for their physical and psychological needs, and then as discharged veterans are getting help.
It is obvious that Bush either didn’t care or didn’t bother. This doesn’t trouble you in the least? The second Katrina catastrophe (the man-made one) didn’t bother you in the least? Taking responsibility for one’s actions or inactions after being in charge for years doesn’t register with you?
There are many things that are beyond the control of any president, let alone one so unencumbered by the details of managing a nation. But this is not one of them.
Shaun: stop picking on the mentally handicapped, you bully!
AR – Three names sum up the ChickenHawkinChief – Joe Allbaugh, Mike Brown and Mr. Kate O’Beirn, all competent appointees of W. Cater is ctitised for simillar incompetence, but no one uses CDS to slight his detractors.
[...] Followed immediately by co-blogger Shaun Mullen posting this picture: [...]
AustinRoth,
I believe you suffer from a form of BDS yourself – nothing is ever, ever this man’s fault even when repeatedly he has been exposed for the lying, incompetent, dangerous, hypocrite that he is. Wake up, smell the coffee, save our country.
BTW – isn’t it funny how from 2001 to 2005 everything was the result of Bush’s decisive leadership and foresight? He – and his supporters – were willing to heap him with praise for his leadership then. Now…it’s always someone else’s fault.
Pathetic.
Shaun the part of this that is the most odious is about another contracting scam. Several years ago the army decided , in its infinite wisdom, to privatize support services at WR. This meant replacing about 300 federal employees there (the number of federal employees is now about 60) This decision was found to have had a direct result on WR’s ability to provide care for steady streams of wounded soldiers coming out of the two wars we are currently engaged in. The private company that won the contract was IAP.More here:
“IAP is one of the companies that experienced problems delivering ice during the response to Hurricane Katrina,â€? the letter signed by Waxman and Tierney said. “The company is led by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official who testified before our committee in July 2004 in defense of Halliburton’s exorbitant charges for fuel delivery and troop support in Iraq.â€?
Another well-connected Bush/Cheney donor wins a contract valued above $120 million, and once again provides substandard service, with little or no oversight. These problems did not happen overnight; they had been going on for years,ever since IAP took over.
AR- Bush loves to compare himself to Harry Truman, who was unpopular in his second term due to the Korean War. His legacy was later rescued by historians, who lauded him for doing the unpopular thing at the right time. But Truman’s mantra was “the buck stops here”.
The leader of an organization sets the tone and standards. It seems to me that the GOP supporters are generally anti-government and celebrate leaders who downsize bureaucracies rather than invest in making them more efficient.
It also seems to me that the Democrats tend to want to invest in making the bureaucracies more efficient which unfortunately is interpreted as increasing the size of government.
As a moderate independent I support what every size of government is necessary to efficiently deliver necessary services. My hope for the GOP is to become the party of “efficient government”.
Paul:
Well said, and a worthy goal for Republicans not in the thrall of Ann Coulter.
I look at veterans services as entitlements, and in their own way more important than Medicare, Medicaid and other such programs.
Unfortunately for Republicans, Democrats and taxpayers of all stripes, the cost of caring for newer veterans and their myriad physical and psychological needs in coming years will not be offset by the steadily dwindling numnber of WW2 and Korean War vets who get their care from the VA and government-contracted private vendors like Lockheed and IAP.
The system is in crisis now and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
But once again this is where we have a current example of conservative ideas being implemented badly, and you guys (Kim and Paul) are using that to draw the conclusion that the conservative principle itself is wrong. It looks like the private company did a poor job, so that means that there needs to be more accountability. If there are competitive companies that could provide the same service, then the private construct is actually a much better one than the public (bureaucracy) one to remedy. In the case of private contracts, a company that isn’t providing the appropriate level of surface can be replaced but if administered by a bureaucracy, it’s much harder to hold anyone accountable.
In a lot of the cases where no bid contracts are awarded, there aren’t any competitors and I think we need to look at why that is. If there are conditions of graft that create monopolies for these types of service providers, then those are the problems that need to be addressed.
It should have happened much sooner, but I applaud Gates for addressing the situation. It seems to me that Walter Reed has been a festering wound which has opened up under the pressure of increased patient burden. That should have been anticipated and addressed, and for the lack of proaction, I do fault the highest levels of the Bush administration but if they begin the remedy now then good on them.
CS- I guess I’m looking at the fact that it took a WaPo reporter to call attention to the private companies neglect of conditions at WR, a company that was politically connected and had a history of unacceptable performance. Years of complaints by patients and families went unanswered, so I don’t see where there was much accountability by using a private company. Theoretically, what you are saying should work, but its not working that way now. Most of the time no one looks into who is getting these contracts, and it takes a catastrophe like this one to reveal cronyism, graft and war profiteering. I would prefer to make the bureaucracy more efficient, if we have such poor oversight on privatization.
If theoretically what I’m saying makes sense to you, then why not call for more oversight of private contracts? Why would you think that we’d be better off asking for more efficient bureaucracy (which would still require more oversight, but would make it less likely that the oversight could actually result in improvements anyway because of the nature of the bureaucratic beast)?
There are some services that shouldn’t be privatized and it’s important that the processes be open to competition and that they are transparent. It’s also important that even if govt isn’t providing the service directly, that there is a govt official who’s directly responsible for overseeing the contract with the private company. That seems so elementary that I can’t understand why it doesn’t happen that way, except that the public hasn’t demanded it and that means the situation is ripe for exploitation and corruption. So let’s try to fix it, but let’s not say that we need to trade back one exploitative and corrupt system for the old way which was even more unmanageable.
I have a difficult time putting a purely politican spin on this; ie., the medical needs of soldiers and vets have been neglected because conservative Republicans have been running the show.
As I have noted previously, the Clinton administration also cut back on benefits. It is unlikely that the first ceiling tile fell or first rat scurried through a billet or the first suicidal case was neglected at Walter Reed after Bush was elected.
But it is impossible to not connect the president’s words with his deeds, or in this case lack of deeds.
As noted, he and his aides have had going on seven years to make sure that their umbrella of compassionate conservatism was keeping the rain off the heads of the many needy soldiers and vets. As we are now well aware, compassionate conservatism was merely a concept that tested well with voter focus groups.
Shaun,
I’d agree with you that the Bush administration has been a terrible example of compassionate conservatism, but the reason that the phrase played well with focus groups is that most of us know that the phrase isn’t an oxymoron. Unfortunately now that Bush has failed to live up to it though, more and more people will believe that it is.
CS- you are right- it doesn’t matter as long as the services are provided efficiently, at a fair cost, and with some oversight. It bothers me that so much of this administrations contracts have gone to politically connected companies who then seem unable to perform, just as it bothered me that so many of those in Bremer’s CPA were chosen for political connections and ideological allignment with the Bush administration, rather than for qualifications for the jobs they were to perform. I’m not saying this would not happen with a Democrat, but because its happening now under the GOP, I am holding them more accountable.
Unlike, Shaun, the chickenhawk charge doesn’t bother me as much as what I perceive to be political corruption at the expense of taxpayers and our troops.
Can you call someone a chickenhawk if they’ve done soem time in the military? That seems to be taking liberites with what should be an effective insult
CS- In this particular situation, the facility functioned at a higher level with federal employees than it did under privatization- so I guess what I’m trying to say is that just because there is a bureaucracy, doesn’t mean that its inefficient, or that replacing it with a private company will improve the facility’s ability to provide services at a reasonable cost. Bush’s betrayal came because he did position himself as a friend of the military, but under his administration, the army allowed an undeserving, but politically connected company to win this contract.
The private vs government agrgument seems a tad circular to me. You can’t compare a theoretically good method of providing servises with an actual bad way. Either they’re both actual or both theoretical
CSTAM;EU seems to feel that ‘private’ is better by definition. I don’t know, because I’ve yet to see a valid analysis. What I have read always leaves out the cost of contracting that the government underwrites.
For an efficient, quality privatizad system to work, the government would need to fund an appropriate staff to oversee the contracts and to oversee and evaluate the results. These costs are not cpmsidered in the reports I’ve seen. In fact, I get the impression that contract oversight itself is severely underfunded. Ironically, it requires a layer of government bureucracy in itself to manage the privatization.
Statistics get spun by all sides. It’s very hard to get to the bottom line in cost effectiveness analysis because the numbers are presented in horribly convoluted ways. Then each side picks out the numbers that fit its argument.
The whole process is convoluted, with the government part and the contractor and subcontractor part meshing at different points at dofferemt times. Sometimes I think it’s all a political game, and no one seriously cares what it all means, as long it sounds right to the voters.
I get Shaun’s point about Bush not insuring the welfare of the troops, despite the first poster and the “chickenhawk� distraction. This is not the first or the last time an administration has shown an inability to manage the sprawling bureaucracy that is the US government. I have my problems with Bush but unfortunately similar types of bureaucratic mismanagement has happened so often in the past that the assumption that Bush is showing callused disregard for the troops is not a conclusion I would jump to. That having been said this is a problem he is responsible for in that it was his choice as to the political appointments he made and the job they did in the performance of their duties.
Hasn’t the “chickenhawk” rhetoric been overplayed? If we’re not going to refrain from catch phrases, I suggest that we at least retire the old ones and come up with new ones.
ejoiner -
Well then, you obviously don’t read everything I post. I have repeatedly said the post-fall occupation of Iraq has been one of the worst handled operations ever, I have no use overall for the Patriot Act and the attacks on our (supposedly) protected rights, and I think Bush has led the charge to spend money like a drunken sailer (and as an ex-Navy man, my apologizes to drunken sailors).
I do not think Bush is infallible, and I do think he has been an overall ineffective President. That doesn’t change the fact though that the left continually wants to blame him for things beyond his control, or that he did not say, and place the blame for everything in the world directly at his feet.
The Katrina/New Orleans/Brown is a classic example. That there were real failures by FEMA and the Federal government is undeniable. However, the direct and immediate proximate cause of the failure was a combination of Army Corps of Engineering failures dating back decades, and a readiness and initial response failure that was clearly at the State level. But Bush takes all the blame.
Bush gets blamed for the Kyoto treaty, even though it was the Clinton Administration that refused to send it to Congress, and the 1997 Congress that voted 95-0 that it would not sign it in its current form. But the fact that Kyoto is not signed and ratified is Bush’s fault.
The damned thing is, even though I was a strong Bush supporter, and have cooled severely on him over the past couple of years in particular, I still find myself defending him, because people seem ready to blame for everything up to and including Brittany Spears’ meltdown.
BDS
AustinRoth:
So I can gather that while you blame Bush for the Mess in Mesopotamia, trying to deprive Americans of fundamental civil liberties and botching the federal response to Katrina, he gets a pass on soldier/veteran medical and benefit issues because it is sort of kind of like the blame he has gotten over Kyoto?
Nope, I dont’ blame him personally, and do give him a pass personally on this issue, unless you can show that reports were presented to him about the conditions, and he choose to ignore it.
I think what has/is happening at Walter Reed is a systemic problem of the military medical system, and the bureaucracy that runs it. I served in the late 70′s through the mid 80′s, and we all feared the hospital’s and doctor’s competencies then.
I have a lot of friends that have been career or lifers since, and none of them go around talking about how great military medical care is, I guarantee you.
The problem is endemic to military medicine, and transcends our country, century, and millennium. does that mean we should ignore it? No, and despite the unwillingness to give credit, the Bush administration is at least making a start, for this case.
Will that attention last? Very unlikely, and that is true no matter who you put in the White House. Why? The sad reality is that it isn’t a Presidential-level issue, it is a military Staff-officer level problem, and always has been. Also, when push comes to shove, the money earmarked for improvements gets shifted as soon as the heat is off.
Ask the Veteran groups – when was the golden age of the government taking care of its wounded and aged soldiers? Just make sure they aren’t armed when you ask.
First, Bush is responsible. It goes with the job title and it was discovered on his watch, period. End of discussion (imho) on tht point. However, fault is a different matter entirely. So far Gates is doing something, and Bush is at least making noises like he cares. Okay, not that that historically results in any real action from the frat boy, but there have been some changes lately in his inner circl so we shall see.
That said, if you add up whats been said
1) W and crew cut cut most of the department/agency in charge
2) Its a Haliburton subsidiary
3) Cheney + Haliburton
4) An adminstration that actively blocks legal action angainst contractors for consequnces of war profiteering
Well, you do not get a flattering picture. Okay, I mean its not like bad stuff does not happen regarldess of who’s watch it may be. But the old W crew has such a well demonstrated wanton disregared for anything resembeling decency and accountility that this sort of thing could easily stick as purposeful, rather than ‘simple’ negligence.
And, I will admit that there is a problem with being a repeat offender like W. We do tend to automaticlly assume this is just one more case of purposefull / negligent behavior. I suppose lets let the hearings/investigations ensue to see what can be seen. It may indeed not be a fault isssue, although I would have more than reasonable doubts in that regard. But, if we grant that sam resonable doubt to Jose Padillia, we can grant it to W, even if we have to hold my nose to do so.
Hopefully the situaiton will be made better as a result of this revelation. If nothing else, maybe the VA will get some more cash flow. As to actually learning what went on where and being able to connect the dots? I have my doubts. Afaik their are a lot of dems with Haliburton stock too ya know. The issue will have to be kept alive for quite a while for that to happen. Hopefully people will car enoguh that it does.
Exactly, that’s almost the Dutch style really. We call it political responsibility. In essence it means that while one cannot say that something is the other person’s personal fault, that other person is responsible for what happens under his or her watch.
CS,
Yes, the conservative principle of eliminating government employees in favor of farming government functions out to contractors is complete and utter BS. It comes from utter blind faith in business and executives.
You say that there are government functions that shouldn’t be contracted out but the truth is that the current administration that you love so much hasn’t found much that they won’t contract to outsiders. They’ve even eliminated so many government employees that they are contracting out the responsibility to investigate contractor corruption. They are firing the IRS investigators who were effective at recovering unpaid taxes from their wealthy friends. Look how much security in Iraq has been turned over to contractors. How many vital support functions are being done by private companies who are overcharging the government for the services rendered. Frankly, I think the fact that anyone still believes in this junk is yet another proof of the efficiency of ideological lobotomy.
“But once again this is where we have a current example of conservative ideas being implemented badly, and you guys (Kim and Paul) are using that to draw the conclusion that the conservative principle itself is wrong.�
I get your point CS, but the Liberals can also make that claim about the failed “Great Society� programs also. My feeling is that bureaucracies are inherently inefficient but at the same time necessary to implement policy. I have yet to see a way around that contradiction and I don’t see privatization working in every case, but would not rule it out as a possible solution.
Bush gets blamed for the Kyoto treaty, even though it was the Clinton Administration that refused to send it to Congress, and the 1997 Congress that voted 95-0 that it would not sign it in its current form. But the fact that Kyoto is not signed and ratified is Bush’s fault.
AR- This is partially true. Clinton did refuse to send it to Congress and the 1997 Senate refused to ratify it. But Bush also came out against Kyoto. Both Clinton and Bush should be blamed. Clinton was worried about the economic impact of the agreement. Al Gore signed the unratified agreement in protest. But Bush has actually punished government scientists for agreeing with the concensus on global warming.
Conservatives almost always prefer privatization over government bureaucracy–but we have seen abominable implementation of this principle over the last 6 years, with cronyism, massive contracting fraud, and political corruption—with almost no oversight from government agencies that are responsible for making sure that the private companies actually do what they have been paid to do at a reasonable cost to the taxpayer. I just object to the way the entire process has been politicized, with very little accountability. Whatever safeguards are in place to prevent this, have not been working. I’m not saying that it never could work, only that it hasn’t.