Executive Dysfunction

I was just a young reporter when Richard Nixon faced impeachment but that feeling has returned, that sense that the man in charge is boxed in and unable to govern. Nixon, of course, resigned his way out of his troubles, an option that's not open to George Bush.

Nixon's problem was criminality, Bush's is criminal stupidity. Of the two, Nixon was the brighter man and, by far, a stronger president. You knew it was Nixon, not Spiro Agnew or Gerry Ford, who was running things. At the moment it appears that the Cheney gang is no longer in command, that George Bush is running things and that he's fresh out of starch.

It took a few years but Nixon eventually was left with some legacy such as opening relations with China. Bush's legacy will be Iraq and a war in which everything went wrong.

Bush has no good options available for Iraq. He's been told to hold talks with the Iranian and Syrian leadership and that could buy him several months. He's been told to transform his soldiers' role in Iraq from combatants to advisors. If you're old enough you may remember when Nixon put US forces in Vietnam through this same thing in preparation for bailing out.

It is widely predicted that if (when) American forces leave (cut'n run) Iraq the country will descend into a maelstrom that will make Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge look tame. Maybe, maybe not. We won't know until that happens. Freed of the American occupation there is some chance that Iraq's factions will feel sufficiently insecure to settle their differences.

What is most unsettling is the US administration's apparent indifference to the burning fuse in the Persian Gulf, the proxy war underway between the Saudis and Iran. That may have to be played out in a full-blown military clash most likely to be fought in Iraq. Persian versus Arab, Shia versus Sunni - a grand showdown.

If Washington was able to broker some rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, it could find at least a partial answer to the conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories. The prospects of this are highly unlikely now given that Bush is weak and has already wasted most of his political capital in the Middle East.

Bush may have become too dysfunctional to find a means of settling Iraq and the looming Iran/Saudi conflict. In this too he reminds me of Nixon who, in his final days, became so preoccupied with his own political fortunes at home that he was completely unable to deal with the North Vietnamese conquest of the South.

Given the position that George Bush has crafted for himself, he may well just keep stalling for time until the Middle East players take matters in their own hands. Oh dear.