California Conservative

Earlier this week, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, declared that U.S. foreign policy is being made in secret by a small “cabal” of powerful people like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Wilkerson’s other ‘indictments’ include:

• “we have courted disaster in Iraq, North Korea and Iran”;
• if there is another attack in the U.S. such as a nuclear explosion in a U.S. city “you are going to see the ineptitude of this government.”
• accused President George W. Bush of “cowboyism” in dealing with foreign leaders; and that Cheney and Rumsfeld and others could not be kept under control by a president “not versed in international relations and not too interested in them either.”

Well.

Let’s take a look at his first ‘indictment’, that Dick Cheney led a “cabal of powerful people” to hijack US foreign policy. This is what happens when know-it-all lifetime bureaucrats react to the Vice President doing part of his duties as assigned by the President. (Notice that I didn’t say that it was part of his Constitutionally mandated duties.)

The last I looked, Vice President outranked State Department chairman in the White House’s organizational flow chart and it surely outranks smarmy bureaucrat in the State Department.

Next let’s look at his statement that this President isn’t “versed in international relations and not too interested in them either.”

That sounds like the words of a frustrated, bitter, liberal bureaucrat*. As is frequently the case for liberals, he’s ignored the accomplishments and progress:

• our military has made in standing up Iraqi troops;
• that’s being made on the diplomatic side;
• that’s being made on the political side;
• and the reduction of attacks from terrorists and Saddam loyalists. (There were 387 attacks for the January 30th elections, 13 for the Oct. 15 elections.)

If those are the results of a president not “versed in international relations and not too interested in them either”, then give me more presidents that are similarly credentialed.

Mr. Wilkerson doesn’t finish there, though. Here’s more from his tirade:

Wilkerson accused Bush of “cowboyism” and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as “extremely weak.” Of American diplomacy, he fretted, “I’m not sure the State Department even exists anymore.”
And how about Karen Hughes’s efforts to boost the country’s image abroad? “It’s hard to sell [manure],” Wilkerson said, quoting an Egyptian friend. The man who was chief of staff at the State Department until early this year continued: “If you’re unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you’re declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you’re doing a host of things that the world doesn’t agree with you on and you’re doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you’ve got to pay the consequences.”

That first sentence says it all. He views Condi Rice as “extremely weak.” Even those opposed to her foreign policy beliefs don’t think that she’s “extremely weak.” She’s more forceful than Wilkerson’s former boss, Colin Powell. Some will argue, successfully I believe, that she’s got a longer list of accomplishments already, too.

In short, Mr. Wilkerson sounds like a bureaucrat that’s frustrated that people didn’t listen more to him. He likely thinks that if they had, the world would be alot better place.

Personally, I’m thankful that he’s out of government. This is the type of bureaucrat that would leak to undermine the President’s foreign policy. I don’t have a tolerance for bureaucrats like that.

Cross-posted at BoxerWatch

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.