We can only guess of course, but I think there’s multiple factors at work that cause the failures. It’s a common mistake for governments to fight the last war in the current war. We took Iraq in Gulf War I with massive overkill, for example, so Rummy tried to lowball his way through this one, though the generals protested.

That’s not exactly what happened. The issue in the current war is that we knew we could fight the “overthrow Saddam” part trivially easily, and we did have enough force to do that. We destroyed the ability of the entity known as Iraq to make war upon us, and destroyed the government headed by Saddam.

But that type of war making is very different from a military mission to provide security, and that’s what the Bushies fouled up. You can have the military might to level an entire city block, but if you do that, the family and friends of everyone who used to live there will be angry with you, and much more willing to fight you or shelter those who do. You have to be constrained in your use of force, and that’s why you need a lot more boots on the ground… a soldier hauling away a single insurgent is much better than a bombing run.

They didn’t lowball the forces needed for military victory; they lowballed the security needs.

And what matters to them is not the lives of ordinary people, nor is it ordinary political calculation of the kind most media types are addicted to and that Dems can’t seem to lift themselves out of.

I think the tenor of what you’ve been saying here can be distilled to a very basic observation– for these people, government exists as a tool to funnel (sluice, really) money *from* those who can’t avoid paying *to* those with the right connections. And almost nothing more.

They don’t particularly care whether the money that comes from the chumps is tax money or money that the legal regime requires them to pay (those are called “franchises” in business jargon and are remarkably like the East India Company’s special subsidies in 1774). They just want the money. It’s a way to deny self-direction to everybody else.

They’re willing to spout any amount and kind of pious nonsense that most don’t even pretend to believe. They’re sure they control everyone else’s perception of reality– after all, they include some of the heaviest hitters in the PR game and bring those skills to the task.

It’s simply not possible for normal people to be cynical enough about what these people do.

Some of them appear to be actually cynical. Some, and particularly bush, have never thought about any disjunction between what they say and what they do. He, though, seems to be the Chauncey Gardiner of our age.

Messianic idiots make me crazy.

A lot of the rest appears to be delegating away duties, outsourcing and privatizing government. Much of that is patronage with too little oversight.

The things you describe as part of the plan has been pandering to their cultural base.

The only overriding ideology they’ve foisted on anything with a focused intent has been expanding the power of the executive in every way possible so nobody anywhere can tell them ‘no’.

Taken together, it’s a commitment to a management style ahead of measurable results. Government by untested theory and a hands off style has proven as dysfunctional as it gets.

But if their financial patrons are satisfied, they feel they’re succeeding. Until the peasantry starts lighting torches, that is.

They have used the disaster for nefarious purposes, but they could have done the same things while giving the appearance of trying to help. Bush could have showed up days earlier, they could have evacuated the (mostly black) residents to other areas sooner, and lined the pockets of their cronies, etc., while appearing to look competent.

If they were so diabolically clever, they wouldn’t have made themselves look so bad. They would have engineered it so that Democrats looked like they were at fault or they would have set up other patsies to take the blame.

To your comments, I would also add that Glenn Greenwald has accurately nailed Bush’s black and white world view, where Bush believes that lack of endorsement constitutes enemy status (remember if you aren’t with us, you’re against us in the War on Terror,) and Bush never, ever admits that he or any of the decisions he’s made are wrong.

One problem of fact in an otherwise accurate assessment. Their reign of tError is far from over. Chimpy’s addicted to power and won’t accept lame duck status. Expect an attack on Iran to liven things up and further spread their clusterf*ck in the Middle East. And expect the Demos to go along for this part of the game plan

Plus I agree with Authur.