"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;"
-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
Last night, Rachel Maddow gave a brilliant introduction to her show, dissecting the Mubarak strategy of first alleging, then fomenting violence in order to represent himself as the only possible savior--and presenting it in the context of other similar examples, from Tiananmen Square to the stymied 2009 Iranian Revolution. It was about as incisive and on-point as American network tv ever gets:
But then, of course, she shifted to live coverage of the unfolding street battles around Tahrir Square, and it became heartbreakingly clear that Mubarak had gotten what he was aiming for: his thugs had created a state of escalating chaos that Mubarak could use to argue that he alone could solve the immediate crisis that he alone had caused.
What also became heartbreakingly clear was the utter and thorough incompetence of the Obama Administration, which flows directly out of his Burkean conservative governing philosophy. Just as Obama's first two years were dominated by his somnambulistic choice of an economic team composed almost entirely of those who had caused, enabled or mis-managed the crisis he inherited, it now seems ominously all-but-certain that his next two years will be haunted by an analogous foreign policy disaster--sharply, painfully at odds with the promising picture he painted early on with his historical Cairo speech early in his presidency.
Burkean conservatism is based on the idea that the existing status quo--based on centuries of tradition--is inherently worthy of deference, as are the elites who preside over it, and that any change should be gradual and incemental, undertaken only after a comprehensive consensus has been achieved. This philosophy never made much sense in Burke's time, itself a period of tumultuous change, and makes less sense in our time. But that is clearly Obama's underlying philosophy, as utterly unsuited to reality as it may be.
Because he shunned creative, critical, inquisitive, independent-minded advisors in virtually every area of governance, Obama has virtually assured that he will fail in one area after another. In foreign policy, as we are seeing right now, he has yet to show any evidence of thinking even one silly millimeter outside the disastrous parameters of Bush's "long war"--and because of that, it is axiomatically impossible for him to come up with a coherent policy response to the problems we face--much less come up with pro-active initiative.
[O]fficials at the Pentagon, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House were running various scenarios across the region in an effort to keep up with events.
What would the covert American war in Yemen look like if the supportive Yemeni president were to be forced out? Will Mr. Mubarak's successor duplicate his support of the Middle East peace process? Will the shifts in the region benefit Islamic extremists, who will try to capitalize on unrest, or will it show the Arab street the power of a secular uprising?
The obvious problem here is that no one thought to run such scenarios before the last 24 hours. But the deeper problem is the no one seems to have thought about such scenarios and reached the obvious conclusion that the entire foreign policy approach was delusional, and needed to be scrapped without a trace.
None of this means that Obama won't get re-elected. After all, Bush managed that trick, despite an equally abysmal record of failures. But it does mean that people need to shake off their illusions born of listening to Obama speechify. Instead, they need to focus like a laser on what he actually does--and utterly fails to do. He has inherited deeply failed policies on every front, and has proposed only the most modest, Burkean of changes. It is a recipe for catastrophic disaster. Bad as things may stand now, they are poised to get tragically worse.
Where is the Obama people thought they were voting for? Surely, he could save us. If only he actually existed.
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