Staggering incompetence

Not the most orignal start to a blog. But, on par with my other blogs, I don't think anyone will read it.

So here it is. I've been reading Bob Woodward's "State of Denial." And it is a most absorbing read. Disclaimer: I have not read "Plan of Attack" or any other Bob Woodward book. He's a charismatic writer, but not what I would call a practical writer. The book gives a sense of events as they happen, but new names and new events are introduced with every page, and it's hard to get a sense of who is doing what, when and why. I need timelines and spreadsheets, man!

Regardless of how much I understand or absorb. The sheer monumental incompetence of the prosecution of the War in Iraq and it's aftermath is breathtaking. My girlfriend wrote in her own blog once, "Confrontiveness? Adversarialness? Is that why this subfield is considered useful? The ability of its practitioners to create new, vague, distorted jargon that is better suited to corporate middle manager ladder climbers is just barely outstripped by their constant babbling about how useful their work is." She was taking about gradschool, but the feeling is the same. The middle manager "conslutant" way of doing things in this country has taken over the reigns of the federal government.

Woodward's work drives this home again and again. Rumsfeld, "the perfect consultant," comes to the post of SecDef like he's Jesus. It's his job to Fix the Entire Military Apparatus. Why? Because he didn't like how it ran when he was SecDef last time. In otherwords, they were smart enough to let his megalomania take over. But the Bush cult of personality thing says, "I like this guy, Dad likes this guy, I'm gonna let him do his thing, and trust him." I have no problem with that persay, we'd all like to think we could trust our underlings to work efficiently. But sometimes they need a swat upside the head. Look at me, I should be working right now. Plus, blind faith in our friends can't be the guiding factor in selecting competent people for jobs--we all know this already--but why should Bush understand this? Afterall, he is the perennial, bad seed who gets the job because of his connections, but can't actually hack the job, because he is afterall, a drop out, an unqualified loser.

I think it underscores the advanced state of cronyism in the workforce today. I just hope I get to use it myself before the whole damn thing crumbles.