<![CDATA[Bob Woodward publishes excerpts of a memo written by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in The World According to Rummy – washingtonpost.com:
The broader [U.S. government] structure is still in the industrial age and it is not serving us well. It is time to consider a new Hoover Commission to recommend ways to reorganize both the executive and legislative branches, to put us on a more appropriate path for the 21st century. Only a broad, fundamental reorganization is likely to enable federal departments and agencies to function with the speed and agility the times demand. The charge of incompetence against the U.S. government should be easy to rebut if the American people understand the extent to which the current system of government makes competence next to impossible.
“Society made me do it,” used to be a conservative taunt of liberal government programs, now it has become the conservative battle cry.
This is an extraordinary case of buck-passing. Rumsfeld, having made a complete botch-job of Iraq specifically and the Department of Defense generally, argues that it was not his fault, but the systems. So, the Secretary suggests, let’s change the system. The conservative project of destroying government for the people has already gone too far, demonstrating in the cost to the nation’s global standing and the many deteriorating features of life for the American middle class that the conservative agenda has nothing to do with serving the people.
Rumsfeld has the gall to suggest in a national security strategy that the reason for policy is to respond “to the charge of incompetence.” Unfortunately, all the Bush Administration has done is govern to achieve politically advantageous perceptions rather than results. The path out of the problems we face today is not to gut the governmental system in the United States, but to elect someone who cares about governing well in the service of the people.
Technorati Tags: accountability, Bush, democracy, Rumsfeld
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