TOO INCOMPETENT TO COOPERATE
(Tuesday) Barnabas has it right:  
 
I had it mostly right two years ago, except for my assumption that the United States government is competent to engage in espionage and war. Since I am already a senior citizen, I doubt that I will ever be able to assume it again in this life. When a country has messed things up to the degree we have in the last few years, it takes a long time to get back in working order. Honor and bravery do not substitute for competence and cooperation.

This week we learned that the incompetence extends even to the investigation of incompetence. We expected great things from the 9/11 commission; but instead they give us the classic bureaucratic solution to all government screw-ups: start another agency and give it even more authority. We do not need a new agency. We have more than enough of those. What we need are people in them who work with each other, who know what they are doing, and then do it. If the FBI and CIA cannot be made to work, given their resources, what makes us believe that we can get an even bigger, more powerful, more secretive, agency work? Nothing makes me believe it.

The only thing I would add to Barnabas is that this was the reason the Soviet Union unraveled. It had little to do with the principled Americans standing up to the evil empire. It was more of a collapse under the weight of their own incompetence and bureaucracy. In many ways we're not so different -- big, unwieldy, over-confident, territorial, myopic.