Abstract

Stupid Leaders, Useless Spies, Angry World

The stark fact that significant portions of our planet are under the supervision of exceptionally stupid and ill-informed people is provoking unwonted expressions of anger and alarm. here we have Lakhdar Brahimi, a UN Under Secretary General and adviser to Kofi Annan, erupting like a soapbox orator. "There is no doubt," Brahimi told France Inter radio, "that the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians, as well as the perception of all of the population in the region, and beyond, of the injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support…of the United States for this policy." Brahimi's ripe denunciations were echoed by a squadron of fifty-two retired British diplomats who fired off an unprecedented Striped-Pants Manifesto to Bush's poodle at 10 Downing Street. Anyone questioning the charge that we are enduring remarkably stupid leaders need only skip through Bob Woodward's account, in his latest respectful palace handout, "Plan of Attack," of the Bush Administration's march toward the attack on Iraq. The prime impression one carries away from Woodward's airless pages is of a White House utterly secluded from reality. On page after earnest page, Woodward has Bush being handed Secret or Top Secret dossiers or being briefed in underground chambers by intelligence officials. It's all rubbish, most aptly resumed in the tremulous pages Woodward allocates to the effort to "decapitate" the regime by killing Saddam, along with his family, just as the war was starting.