How failure became self-sustaining

With the collapse of public support for the Iraq disaster and the Republicans' loss of control of Congress, isn't it interesting how many people intimately involved with the launching of the Aggression are suddenly washing their hands of it?

The UK Independent has a long list of former war cheerleaders who've changed their tune. The list includes pretty much every major architect of the war with the exception of Pres. Bush, Vice-Pres. Cheney and British Prime Minister Blair.

There's part of me that admires that many of these people were honest enough to change their minds in the face of overwhelming reality. But there's also part of me that resents the fact most of these former officials didn't have the guts to speak (or see) the truth when they were actually in office, actually in a position to affect the course of events. I would've liked to have seen someone resign in protest rather than implement a policy they knew to be disastrous. But I suppose this is really antithetical to the Bush administration's modus operandi.

I've always said that the greatest flaw of George W. Bush's governing style is not the policies he advocates, as disastrous as they are. It's not his alleged lack of intelligence. The greatest flaws in his governing style are his lack of curiosity, his preference for personal loyalty over truth and the greater good, his disinterest in or outright hostility toward hearing differing points of view.

While many on the left smugly and with great self-satisfaction focus on Bush's alleged intellectual and mental deficiencies, they're missing the point. Cheney is, by all accounts, an extremely intelligent man. But he suffers from the very same character flaw as Bush: not wanting their opinions challenged.

This administration has created a culture that prized 'yes' men above all else; that rewarded loyalty over competence; that viewed the admissions of the slightest failing to be almost treasonous against the person of Mr. Bush.

Any administration is going to make mistakes, because they are made up of fallible humans. But an open-minded administration will be open enough to new ideas to correct their mistakes. In a closed-minded culture like the Bush administration, they don't even acknowledge the mistakes in the first place so they can't fix them. In the absence of such corrective measures, failure becomes self-sustaining.

Maybe the appointment of Robert Gates to the Pentagon shows they're realizing this. In confirmation hearings yesterday, Gates was asked if he thought we were winning war in Iraq and he replied flatly, "No." This is in stark contrast to the perpetually rose-colored glasses' assessments of his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld and of Cheney and Bush.

Maybe the appointment of the Iraq study group (ISG) means they're realizing this too. Some have described the ISG's work as signifying that play time is over and that the big boys are now running the show.

I'm not sure that competence has really replaced loyalty and corporate militarism as the administration's guiding principle. You can't erase 6 years of arrogance with a few vague statements by someone with a dodgy history and a commission of insiders. I'm not optimistic but I can hope, can't I?