My fellow Americans, let us pretend for a moment that the debacle in leadership currently befalling our country is not one of the greatest administrative blunders since the Watergate scandal a generation ago. Grisly loss of humanity, violated personal freedom of citizens, shady uses of presidential power and billions of dollars in military debt aside, the caricatures from the Bush administration in the pathetically planned war in Iraq play more like the plot of a box office-flopping Hollywood farce on a blundering attempt to govern gone terribly wrong.
Every performer is typecast in V for Victorious: Dubya Part Deux.\ Bush as the affable puppet, Rumsfeld as the conniving mastermind of military conflict, Condi as the token woman-with-lack-of-fashion-sense appointed to power—all play their parts on the flickering silver screen of the political world, placating the public under the façade of fighting for freedom of democracy.
Georgie Dubya's new self-given nickname, ""The Decider,"" only coincides with the list of epithets found in the comedic parody ""My First Presidentiary: a Scrapbook by George W. Bush"" by Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, thus propagating the sinking suspicion that our commander in chief's intellect and grasp on power is no greater than a superhero-obsessed fourth grader.
In Dubya's dubbing himself ""The Decider,"" are we as citizens of this nation supposed to take comfort in his leadership abilities? The only confidence that this instills within me is toward the president's fabulous ability to pick out names for the backs of the White House Intramural Kickball Team shirts, not in his ability to pick the finest and most competent men and women to lead his administration and our nation.
Thus the United States is still stuck with Donald Rumsfeld as the secretary of defense. It is difficult not to compare Rumsfeld to a power-hungry playground bully intent on winning an intense game of king of the mountain—intimidating the generals, his hapless minions, into reluctant compliance.
Perchance I've gone too far with this analogy, but any leaders who make a mockery of democracy rightly deserve to be mocked for their incompetence at upholding the Constitution, as they were sworn to do. All joking aside: The current administration has gotten itself into a very serious situation.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., declares in his powerfully condemning new book, ""America Back on Track,"" that ""perhaps the greatest threat to our constitutional democracy is the Bush administration's extreme view about the source and scope of its war powers and about its unilateral right to ignore laws passed by Congress.""
Kennedy goes on to say, ""Behind closed doors the administration has devised controversial legal justifications for unspeakable torture, ignoring both congressional acts and court precedents."" If this is in fact true, how can the Bush administration claim that the United States is defending the freedoms of democracy worldwide when they are seriously violating the principles of it in our own system?
This most recent group of discontented officers may violate the military's status quo, but they uphold another value of our nation's society: the system of checks and balances. However, this goes against the Bush administration's plan of a fast, unquestioned military expedition in Iraq.
If the historical tradition of military action were to be preserved, the commander in chief and the secretary of defense theoretically would have the final say in military decisions. But if deep within these administrative positions there lurks unjust pretenses that blatantly violate the basic principles of the civilized world, the generals of the United States military have an obligation to humanity to voice their dissent.
There is no threat to the nation in having military leaders oppose plans of attack. There will be no massive coup lead by retired general Tommy Franks. There will only be the demonstration of how corrupt the Bush administration actually is: so corrupt that the generals override precedent to oppose the president.
The tragedy at the end of this unfinished epic drama will not be the death of traditional silence and compliance within our military leadership. The true tragedy would be to let Rumsfeld stay in power, letting the rest of the Bush administration get away with the egregious errors they have committed in intelligence—in every sense of the word—and ruthless military power without general consensus.
Kelly Schlicht is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Her column runs every Monday in The Daily Cardinal. Send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.\
