The Running of the Hamsters

The argument for decent intentions flows, I think, from the fact that so many people in government are working so hard. A lot of people outside government and, indeed, a lot of those inside it can't wrap their minds around the idea that crooked politicians manipulate the bureaucracy just as they manipulate politics, the press, or whatever else they please. That it's all part of the same racket. We're neglecting the classical question, "Cui bono?"

But stop and think about it for a moment: If the Tyrant and his gang announced that they wanted an indefinitely long-term war with Iraq in order to break apart Israel's enemies, to boost oil companies' profits (and secondarily lock in U.S. supplies), and to transform the presidency into a dictatorship, well, nobody would accept it. Not the public, and especially not the professional bureaucrats, including uniformed bureaucrats. So what's a Tyrant to do? The public can be hoodwinked for a considerable time through control of the media, but taming the bureaucrats becomes complicated: it's necessary to keep a large majority busy spinning their wheels while co-opting to varying degrees a few of the smartest at the top. As it turns out even this requires a surprising amount of work — more, perhaps, than the Cheney-Bush gang now has the energy for given the scale of their ambitions, at least not without inviting confrontations with Congress of the sort that we're seeing in the U.S. attorneys scandal.

In foreign policy we've seen this process at work before, to mention a few instances for example, in successive administrations' unwillingness to treat Israel in an even-handed way, in Clinton's desire to punish Yugoslavia for not acceding to internationalist demands, and in Bush's deliberate revival of a Cold War with Russia. Where the overt adoption of narrowly self-interested objectives would fail, co-opting and channeling the processes and institutions that lead to desired outcomes becomes necessary.

It's perfectly summed up by a phrase I learned during the first Gulf War when I was the desk officer for oil security at the State Department: "keep the hamsters busy spinning in their wheels" and out of the way...

To be honest, it's probably too much to expect very many to challenge the administration on the grounds that it is deliberately creating chaos, but the possibility nevertheless should be borne in mind.