[Mb-civic] A MAJOR Op Ed Piece!

[TSawyer456 at aol.com]

IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS:
 
LA Times Op Ed - October 25, 2005
 
The White House Cabal
By Lawrence B.  Wilkerson (LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to 
Secretary of  State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 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 America 
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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