When Bias Shapes Policy….



This is a hard subject to talk about because it reflects on us.



If we choose someone to lead us who is not equipped by background or disposition to lead, who does not have the mental processes intact, it reflects on us...or at least those who made the wrong decision.



And then we are stuck for four years with the wrong choice.



Americans seem to be very good at making bad decisions and defending them.



We are good at waving the flag and announcing our pride, whatever that means.



But the truth is often hard to face and may reveal some insights to our own character.



Any way you slice it, like Pogo says, we have seen the enemy and he is us.



In truth, there is no deniability that If such a mental pygmy had surfaced in Britain, he would have been run out on a pole with a lack of confidence in the first meeting of Parliament.



We are stuck with our choices...



And each time this president stands at the lectern to offer his thinking, it makes a lot of us cringe.



Why?



Because this is a man who mouths words he doesn’t believe and I’m not sure he fully understands.



He is a man of limited qualities and a tendency to make policy on the fly fully influenced by petty views.



Nobody is fooled by the actions of the White House or that anyone believes in the photo ops or speeches that seem crafted by itinerant journeymen posing as skilled diplomats and experienced hands.



The excesses and failures have been remarkable. Our wealth has evaporated in insane adventures to promulgate our strength; but it has had the exact opposite effect by showing our limitations to the world.



We are now seen by many as incredibly naïve, a wealthy power that has misspent it’s energies in the pursuit of wisps of smoke led by incipient War mongers who cannot and will not dialogue with anyone who disagrees with us.





To put it succinctly, it’s no secret that Bush is very vulnerable to his own limitations, which—as we have seen in case after case—are defined by fuzzy logic, inherent biases, and support for anything that supports his skewed, myopic view. It goes without saying that his skewed perspective tends to devolve into a sloppy subjective, poorly thought out policy that is doomed as we have seen in case after case. And yet, remarkably, it continues with a dearth of objective commentary.



Why?



There are certainly brilliant minds still about that must chafe from such pedestrian thinking and simplistic arguments.



There is one answer: Fear. And the threat of consequences.



Therefore, the Philistines rule.



Nobody will go up against Bush for they see in him a vengeful being capable of destroying a man’s reputation and future. We have seen his penchant for absolute loyalty with the replacement of literally dozens of military advisers and generals who did not agree with his distorted view of the world.



These limitations are on full display as Bush's Surge plan increasingly reveals itself for what it is. Little more than a pay-off!



Yes, originally, the contextual framework for Baghdad made a modicum of sense if it were used as intended, as a vehicle that would allow the elected government to take charge. Petraeus said as much.



This has not happened not even by one's wildest imagination.



Even though the White House has cut back on expectations, the government has failed to seize the opportunity.



The reason why the Surge has worked is because of pay-offs and the separation of Shia and Sunni.



Many Sunni have simply been moved out of the path of the Shia....and that has helped keep the peace.



There is no question about that.



In some cases, it is rumored that the US is paying off Sunni Arabs at the rate of $250,000 a day for peace within a small geographic district.



The Shia' on the other hand, is simply biding its time and its intermittent cease fire has only lasted because of internal negotiates among al-Sadr and those in Iran.



We do not know their real intent.



Nevertheless, it seems that peace is tenuous at best proven by the fact that fighting has broken out again.



Bear in mind, that this is not Al Qaeda, regardless of what John McCain might think but the outward manifestation of a budding Civil War that is not going away any time soon..



Despite conditions that are jerry-rigged, Bush keeps clinging to a bankrupt policy that will clearly explode the first chance it gets.



It is his limitation and defines those characteristics that have sunk his terribly disconnected regime of misfits who cannot think their way out of a paper bag.



I have no problem with their self-destruction.



What I have a problem with is the fact that they represent our leadership and they have dragged us all down to the very bottom of the pit. They have destroyed our democracy, our rights and our economy.



They simply destroy everything they touch.





And why has not the media told the truth in this regard.



But let’s not stop there.



Bush’s inability to change says more about the man than almost anything else..



He is a dangerous man who sees the only solution in carrying his one man crusade to Iran and igniting the middle East into a conflagration that seemingly will never end while distracting us from the real causes.



Sadly, his future replacement, does not have a vision that extends beyond that of his patron.



Let me caution us all: Any new government must recognize that it has an obligation and a duty to initiate the legal processes that will restore respect for the law; that will restore our freedoms, our rights and all that is decent about our system; something that has evanesced with an administration that has gone hay-wire in pursuing its own ends.



If we do not take such necessary measures, we can be sure that they will come back and haunt us. And we will have lost an opportunity that will never come again.





Les Aaron