E-Mail This Article to a Friend Insanity defined The White House continues to pursue its tragically mistaken policies, despite a world of evidence that it’s wrong

A LITTLE MORE than a month after voters narrowly endorsed George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq and the campaign against terrorism, events continue to demonstrate that the administration is tragically off course. From warnings of civil war in Iraq to newly revealed reports of torture at Guantánamo Bay, the evidence clearly indicates that the Bush administration has no idea of what it’s doing, and that it therefore keeps doing the same thing over and over again in the vain hope that the results will somehow change. That comes close to the clinical definition of insanity.

On Tuesday the New York Times reported that the CIA, in two recent cables, warned that the chaotic situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and that the country could slide into civil war unless the Iraqi government is somehow able to assert its authority and start rebuilding the shattered economy. Naturally, the White House responded with its customary petulance. Bush’s ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, filed a written dissent — an unserious response to a serious assessment.

In the long run, the administration has a plan for dealing with honest CIA reports: making sure they don’t get written in the first place. Bush’s new CIA director, Porter Goss, has told his employees that their role is to "support the administration and its policies in our work," a pronouncement that set off a wave of resignations. In time, the White House will no longer have to worry about the possibility that the CIA will produce embarrassingly truthful assessments. For now, though, the administration will simply have to ignore them. That shouldn’t prove to be a problem; it never has.

Half a world away, at the US military detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, an exposé by the Associated Press this week reported that American officials appear more intent on creating a new cadre of terrorists than on winning hearts and minds. According to the AP, FBI agents witnessed abuses such as a female guard inflicting pain on a detainee by squeezing his testicles and bending his thumbs back. Other detainees were reportedly observed curled up in the fetal position, moaning in pain. One was reportedly attacked by a dog; another allegedly had his mouth duct-taped shut to stop him from reciting Koranic verses. These abuses took place in 2002, before the Abu Ghraib incidents; yet there is no sign that anyone ever followed up on this information. Documents obtained by the ACLU under the terms of a federal court order (which came after government agencies refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request) detail still more instances of abuse.

The Guantánamo detainees, most of them rounded up during the war in Afghanistan, are being held in secret, beyond the protection of the Geneva Conventions. Their names have not been released; nor do we know why they are in prison. Here is an awful but perfectly logical thought: the more that we abuse these detainees, the less likely we are ever to release them, lest they tell the world what happened and begin plotting their revenge. And let’s not forget that Bush recently rewarded a principal architect of the Guantánamo policies, Alberto Gonzales, by promoting him from White House counsel to attorney general designate.

This week President Bush said something that revealed the extent of his self-delusion. After terrorists attacked a US consulate in Saudi Arabia, killing five non-American employees, Bush said that Islamist extremists want the United States out of the Middle East because they fear the White House’s plans for democratic elections in the region. Bush said that the terrorists "will do anything they can to stop democracy," and that’s why sticking to the January 30 election date in Iraq is of vital importance.

Now, no one would deny that bringing democracy to Iraq and to the rest of the Middle East would be a positive development if it could be accomplished. But the ongoing violence in Iraq is hardly a good environment for elections, which is why many elements of the country’s leadership have called for a delay. And attempting to transplant Western notions of democratic government to countries with no such tradition smacks of the sort of naive arrogance that got us bogged down in Iraq in the first place.

Consider Afghanistan, where the American-sponsored elected president, Hamid Karzai — a decent, liberal-minded leader — controls little more than the capital city of Kabul, with Taliban extremists and warlords exercising power in most of the rest of that backward country. Or consider the Palestinian territories, where hopes that the death of Yasser Arafat would create new opportunities for peace have instead given way to the reality that a convicted terrorist, Marwan Barghouthi, may be elected from prison as Arafat’s successor on a platform of continued terrorist attacks upon (and — get this — negotiations with) Israel.

The armed forces, the institution that makes Bush’s grand schemes possible, is beginning to rot out beneath him. On Sunday and Monday, the Washington Post reported in extensive detail on the true circumstances behind the death of Pat Tillman, the former NFL star who quit football to join the Army — and who was killed in Afghanistan last spring. Though it has been known for some time that Tillman died in a friendly-fire incident, the Post learned that it was the result of horrendous miscalculations, the full extent of which was covered up. Thus was Tillman’s genuine heroism tarnished by the corruption of the very military that he bravely served. This week marked the 1000th American combat death in Iraq. Not surprisingly, long-retired reservists are beginning to resist orders to be reactivated and shipped to Iraq. And military recruiters are finding it increasingly difficult to meet their quotas.

It’s time — it’s long past time — for the White House to embrace a more realistic vision of what can be accomplished. In Iraq, former US diplomat Peter Galbraith has called for a loose federation of largely autonomous regions for the country’s Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shiite groups. Such a solution may not fit with the administration’s goal of a democratic, united Iraq, but it could very well provide the stability that’s needed to begin pulling out our troops. Needless to say, the continued abuse of detainees, whether at Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib or some unknown prison in an unknown country, is offensive to American ideals, and in the long run will only make us more vulnerable to terrorism.

When he was running for president in 2000, Bush spoke of the need for the US to adopt a "humble" foreign policy. What he has given us is exactly the opposite. Using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext, Bush has pursued policies that are breathtaking in their arrogance, aggression, and disrespect for our allies. Unfortunately, we have to live with this for another four years — and neither Bush nor his minions appear capable of learning from their many serious mistakes.

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