[Dialogue] The Wages of Hubris

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

Perhaps.
 
In a message dated 5/7/2007 2:36:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
grapevin at comcast.net writes:

Cynthia
 
Your list of Hubris and arrogance instances is much to short.  
The style is in every speech, press conference, visit in other countries,  
response to Congress, etc from Bush, Chaney et al.  I believe the number  1 
criteria for the next Pres is someone with a great deal of humility, ability  to 
listen and communicate effectively and surround himself with many of the  same. 
 After reading the Audacity to Hope I'm coming to the conclusion so  far that 
Obama might well be that person.
 
Dave Rebstock

----- Original Message ----- 
From:  _FacilitationFla at aol.com_ (mailto:FacilitationFla at aol.com)  
To: _Dialogue at wedgeblade.net_ (mailto:Dialogue at wedgeblade.net)  
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 11:00  AM
Subject: [Dialogue] The Wages of  Hubris



May 2,  2007, 9:09 am 
NYTimes
_Wolfowitz and the Wages of Hubris_ 
(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/wolfowitz-and-the-wages-of-hubris/) 
Tags: _George  Bush_ (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/george-bush) , 
_Iraq_ (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/iraq) , _Paul  Wolfowitz_ 
(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/paul-wolfowitz) , _World  Bank_ 
(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/world-bank)  
 
Paul Wolfowitz’s failures as a war architect and as a World Bank  president 
flow from the same source, suggests Washington Post columnist  David Ignatius: “
_The lesson of Wolfowitz’s failure_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050101421.html)  is that you can’t change  
things unless you truly understand them. That was true in Iraq, and it was  true at 
the World Bank.”  
Ignatius calls Wolfowitz “an idealist who understood everything, except  his 
own limitations.” He adds, “When Wolfowitz decamped to the World Bank in  
2005, he took with him two abiding characteristics of the neoconservatives —  a 
passion for transformation and a disdain for lesser beings wedded to the  
status quo.” 
The fatal flaws of Wolfowitz and of the Bush administration are one and  the 
same, Ignatius says. He writes: 
Wolfowitz has failed at the World Bank not because his underlings were  out 
to get him (though many probably were) but because he treated the  organization 
itself as an enemy. He saw its professional staff as an  impediment to 
achieving his goals, rather than as a potential ally.  Instead of heeding advice to 
work with the prickly international staff and  win them over, he installed a 
palace guard of Americans who, like him,  exuded the cocky “we know best” 
confidence of the Bush administration. 
This disdain for career staff officers — whether at the Pentagon, the  
C.I.A., the Justice Department or an international agency such as the  World Bank — 
is a defining characteristic of the Bush administration and a  big reason for 
its undoing. Administration officials are arrogant — no  other way to put it. 
They ignore the advice of the professionals, whom  they regard as obstacles to 
their agenda of transformation. In their  impetuous self-confidence, they 
become wreckers. 
This hubris recurs again and again. We saw it in Defense Secretary  Donald 
Rumsfeld’s high-handed management style, in Vice President Cheney’s  continuous 
pressure on C.I.A. analysts to bolster the administration’s  message on Iraq, 
in C.I.A. Director Porter Goss’s purge of agency officers  suspected of 
disloyalty, in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s treatment  of career attorneys 
at  Justice







 
Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
(http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla) 

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