Editor & Publisher Online - March 16, 2004
'Chicago Trib' Reporter Stayed the Course to Get Deserter Story By Mark Fitzgerald
<snip>
The Tribune story broke the news about Mejia, who served as a squad leader during fighting in Ramadi, Iraq. A native of Nicaragua, Mejia went into hiding after being granted leave last October to return temporarily to the United States to renew his permanent resident card. The day the Tribune story ran, he emerged publicly at the gate of Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, where he told a press conference organized by anti-war activists that he would seek conscientious objector status.
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"A native of Nicaragua, Mejia went into hiding after being granted leave last October to return temporarily to the United States to renew his permanent resident card."
Extraordinary and very revealing.
I'm sure past imperial powers carried their share of absurd bureaucratic baggage. Still, it seems to me this sentence captures a good bit of what's uniquely wrong with this 'war' and how truly inefficient and crudely managed the US' empire-of-some-still-to-be-labeled-type is.
You would think a soldier serving in a combat zone would be granted immediate citizenship -- or, at the very least, rubber stamped renewals of permanent residency paperwork. I think even the Romans, who knew a thing or two about imperial longevity, would have given that much.
But immigration is a sub-rational topic in America so it's difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to expect this sort of thing.
Back to inefficiency for a moment...
I believe it's very, very meaningful that:
a.) It appears the Bush admin believed Hussein's government possesed WMDs -- a remarkable lapse (or absence) of critical thinking
b.) Despite the admin's best efforts, Chavez remains in power (calm down Chavez critics, I'm not lionizing the fellow)
c.) Aristide was deposed but manages to return to the Carribean in defiance of US wishes
d.) Spain's new government announces, within hours of assuming power, Spanish troops may leave Iraq within a few months
e.) let's not even get into their domestic economic team's very public gaffes
f.) and so on and so on...
I've written about this before but I think a more complete view of the Bush admin's ineptitude is now available.
Here's a theory of sorts, submitted for your approval --
Bush admin clumsiness is the end-result of the kind of thinking found within and nurtured by corporations, which talk and talk and talk about 'vision' but only concern themselves with the narrow goal of profit.
The CEO could be a medieval scholar or speak fluent Korean or have deep knowledge about the intricacies of global power flows but if the numbers don't look good he (in fewer cases she) is out the door after receiving a generous goodbye check.
In short, knowledge is nearly worthless if it doesn't seem to support the one true goal.
For the Busheviks, the 'profit' in question is the fulfillment of a set of ideologically determined objectives none of which make any sense for the long term goals of the United States as a great power (saner conservatives understand this) or the world as a functional, livable place (our area of concern).
But as in a corporation, where pursuit of the profit objective over all results in what seem to be strange and counter-intuitive actions from an operational point of view (for example, firing knowledgeble employees with deep expertise to shave some points off the expense column) the Bush government, religously pursuing its own profit objective, is heedless of the benefits of information.
Just a thought.
DRM