April 14, 2006, MBA Governance
Not exactly fair to all MBA holders, or even Harvard MBA holders, that the President of the United States is among their ranks. Unfortunately, he would seem to represent an all too prevalent trend among American managers, of rewarding friends and cronies from the same social circles regardless of (and indeed, frequently despite of, or at best, oblivious of) their actual job performance. Hence, executive compensation continues to head to the stratosphere, even as stock prices, earnings and other measures of corporate performance do not, and layoffs and plant closings increase, even as top executive compensation increases more.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that, just as after Abu Ghraib, and numerous other times that any normal president would have asked his SecDef to resign, in the face of criticism by a number of recently retired generals and other senior military officers, and even as it becomes apparent to all but committed partisans and Bush cultists that Iraq is devolving into a hopeless civil war and American casualties will go on mounting, the President chose this time to extend a personal vote of confidence to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Not much else to say, really... except... this also comes shortly after contentions have emerged regarding Iran plans, involving Mr. Rumsfeld.
If the contentions made by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker regarding Bush Administration plans to deploy "tactical" nuclear weapons against Iran are true, and Mr. Rumsfeld is participating in those plans (or even knows about them and is not stopping them), then he is an extraordinarily dangerous psychopath and would-be mass murderer who must not only be fired, but probably stopped at all costs. If Bush and/or Cheney are privy to those same plans or conversation, well... ditto. (The good news is that the President has, at least, attempted to deny these contentions, so far. The fact is, offensive use of nuclear weapons by this country is not even a legitimate option to be discussed.)
I don't know why I have to say this, since it should be self-evident to any functioning homo-sapien, but Americans, of late, seem to have problems in that area. The offensive use of nuclear weapons, for any reason, let alone the perverse reason of preventing nuclear proliferation, would qualify as the gravest crime against humanity since the Holocaust... and would put this country in the same league as the Rwandan Hutus, the Khmer Rouge, the Third Reich...
Anyone who participated in such an act would be guilty of crimes against humanity. Period. The only purpose for such weapons is deterrence, or God help us if deterrence fails, retaliation against a nuclear attack. Period.
If, after the misguided Iraq adventure, we haven't learned that "preemption" is no longer a legitimate means of "defense" (particularly when it is deemed the first and only means of conflict resolution-- i.e., "diplomacy" is simply used to by time in order to build-up to "preemption")... if this "preemptive regime change" of another country is the only means of defending this country... then I am afraid that this country is no longer worth defending.
Comments
Sadly, when moral compasses were issued, these guys had "other priorities" or were protecting Houston from the Mexican AF or something.
Posted by Linkmeister at April 14, 2006 9:40 PM