SIXTH COLUMN

"History is philosophy teaching by example." (Lord Bolingbroke)

New Email Address: 6thColumn@6thcolumnagainstjihad.com.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

A Battle Has Just Begun and the Carnage Will Be Terrible



No, I'm not talking about a site in Iraq or the Islamo-fascists. The battle that's about to begin is right here at home, and the Potomac will run red with its blood, for waging war against entrenched Washington bureaucrats could be more vicious than that against the most intractable jihadist. The President, with his nominations, Rice, Goss, and Rumsfield, has signaled these people that he is serious about cleaning and sprucing up the Military, the Intelligence Services - C.I.A and F.B.I., and Foggy Bottom itself, the diplomatic corp and the State Department.
Those that have seen these departments metamorphose over the years say that skirmishes have gone done over the years through a succession of presidential administrations, but, with this president, real combat is about to commence.

...Poor Bush has so much to learn about governing and leadership.

 But even more shocking to Washington veterans is his insistence on nominating for his cabinet men and women who actually share his vision and want to help him carry out his agenda. If Bush had only chosen cabinet secretaries who would quietly undercut his policies and directives, Washington insiders would have gladly let the president continue to call for whatever he wants -- and compliment him as a true leader who is uniting the nation (around the losing liberal agenda). But picking people who agree with him is where Washington draws the line.

 With the nominations of Condoleezza Rice at State, Porter Goss at CIA, Donald Rumsfeld (or an equally tough replacement) at Defense and Stephen Hadley at the National Security Council, the president has created an all-Patton foreign and defense team. Moreover, he has a team that understands that among the necessary targets of their firepower must be not only our foreign enemies, but also the slouching, sly, insubordinate bureaucrats under their chain of command.

 While we know less about the president's domestic staffing, the appointment of loyalist Alberto Gonzales at Justice suggests that he, too, will be in hand-to-hand combat with the fourth of Washington's Bureaucratic Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Justice, State, CIA and Defense. On the day after Gonzales' nomination, an old Justice Department hand told me that they were going to "eat Gonzales alive."


While keeping a low profile, the men and women that we DON'T ELECT that really run Washington D.C. and our various agencies are a special group, some with powers that mimic those of the old Soviet bureaus that existed during the Cold War. Now that THAT war is over, ours must be revamped, but will it be possible without blood in the streets. Of course I am satirizing this point, but, perhaps not, and I hope I'm wrong.

I know these people. They mean it. He better go over there with a battle-hardened Washington team. The only thing those senior 'crats respect is the cold-hearted exercise of brutal power by their political master. The battle at Justice will be similar to our battles in the Middle East. Any gestures of goodwill or cooperation by Gonzales will be seen as weakness and will have the same effect on the bureaucrats that blood has on the nostrils of a shark.

  These four bureaucracies are manned by the most heartless Beltway warriors and led by veteran, tribal warlords. Each of these bureaucracies has many trophies of prior Washington wars: either the scalp or the testicles of their nominal political masters. (Donald Rumsfeld, God bless him, remains intact.)

 Every entering secretary has a binary choice to make. Either turn over your manhood (or the female equivalent if the secretary is a woman) to the bureaucracy, in which case they will make you look good in Washington (so long as no one gets a peak at the vacancy in your nether parts); or prepare to be undercut by your own employees -- from the janitor to the senior civil servant in your building.


And even more shocking to me in this sad story the outlining the lack of cooperation and undermining of the nation's elected officials is the fact that none of the elected can trust the bureaucracies to faithfully do the nation's business, the business for which they were hired and being well compensated, and these bureaucrats often push partisan politics.

Trust no one other than those you bring with you (and keep checking to see if any of them show signs of going native). You can be certain that clever bureaucrats will subvert important studies you order to support the president's policies and report out conclusions remarkably consistent with the worldview of Ted Kennedy. When you go up to testify on the Hill, your employees will have briefed their friends on the committee with the most embarrassing things to ask you.


We are waging a war unprecedented in our history against an enemy that will sweep away into the dustbin of history those that they don't enslave. Washington bureaucrats act like it's business as usual. That business has always been unacceptable and now that we are faced with a different kind of enemy exhibits a stupidity beyond belief. For this reason I approve of the carnage that is about to begin on the banks of the Potomac. We need to rid ourselves of those that aren't working in concert for THIS COUNTRY, not for their own personal fiefdoms.
Sadly I would put many of our elected politicians in the category for disposal, but at least there are mechanisms in place for their removal: impeachment or the ballot box. But for the only way to rid ourselves of incompetent or disloyal bureaucrats that see senior administrative officials as the enemy rather than the Islamo-fascists is a painful process of litigation and ultimate firing along the civil servants chain of command.

So don't be disturbed if you notice the metaphorical blood in the Potomac or the scalps hanging from the Cherry tree, or the heads rolling down the mall. This metaphorical carnage will mean success in revamping of services that have too long worked against the best interest of this country.

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