To briefly recap: within the span of a week, three high-ranking members of the Bush Administration – Ari Fleischer (press secretary), Christie Whitman (EPA administrator), and Rosario Marin (US Treasurer) – have announced that they will bow out of their jobs and pursue other activities.
Question: is the timing of all three regisnations just a coincidence? Or is this an early warning sign that something’s about to implode in the Bush White House, and these folks are getting out early? I have no evidence or inclination one way or another, but three prominent departures all in the same week strikes me as rather odd.
Just a WAG, but I think it’s simply a question of this being a good time for anyone who’s feeling burned out, and wants to move on to something else, to pull the rip cord. Departing in the middle of a war would have seemed disloyal, and departing once the 2004 campaign gets rolling (which it will, soon), would also seem disloyal. So, if one wants to bail out without appearing to be abandoning one’s President, this is a propitious moment.
I don’t know about the other two, but Ari just got married, has a new kid and not many people would want his job in that situation. With 24 hr news, he’s a 24 hr spokesman. Brutal.
If you see Powell or Rice go, that might mean something. But I doubt that would happen mid cylce. Actually, you might see Rice go if she decides to try for CA gov.
High-ranking officials resign or are fired all the time. I’ll take Ari on his word, Christie was probably tired of being rebuffed by others in the administration, and I don’t know much about the other guy. The fact that they happened all in a short period of time is probably due to the extraordinary sequences of events since 9/11.
Of course you cannot resign/be fired in a time of war/national emergency. So you hang on (and don’t fire people) until things have calmed down a bit. Hell, Powell would have been out a long time ago if not for circumstances. You’ll probably see a few more in the months ahead, and should Bush be fortunate enough to win in 04, you’ll see the the usual slew of “resignations”.
Well, he does have that trial coming up in the Netherlands, I think. You know, the one where he’s accused of crimes against humanity, so he might want to take some time off to defend himself.
Seriously, though, I think that Franks is getting out because there’s not much left for him to do career-wise. After all, he won the biggest war the US has had in a decade or so in about a month, what else is there for him to do? (I suppose he could invade Syria and North Korea for an encore.)
You forgetting about that little dust up in Afghanistan? Or are you going to try and say that they’re one of the same?
Though, not technically a war, I’d say that the US’s actions in the Balkians certainly count as well. And yeah, the US vs Iraq was a turkey shoot, but it still could have been screwed up enough to last considerably longer.
Don’t believe me? Well, think of Bill Clinton’s first term. A lot of his top advisers and Cabinet officers didn’t make it to the second term. His Defense Secretary (Les Aspin) and his Treasury Secretary both left during Term 1. So did his Agriculture Secretary. Several others stuck out the first term, but departed immediately afterward.
These things happen. People come and they go, usually for reasons of their own. In the case of Aspin and Bentsen, it was poor health and old age, respectively. Fleischer and WHitman have their own reasons. Nothing unsual in that.
It wasn’t an easy war, we just made it seem that way. At the start of the first Iraqi war they were the 3rd largest standing army in the world. And that means something in a ground war.
Afghanistan should have been a wake-up call for Saddam. How many years did the Russians fight the Taliban (to a withdrawal) and how many weeks did the US take to crush them. It’s tough to aim a stinger missle at a machine that is circling you while it fires 1,800 rounds a minute in your direction.
It was an extremely easy war. We had all the bombers and the missiles and the high tech weaponry. The Iraqis didn’t have shit and barely even resisted.
And as numerous threads in GQ (a bitch to search for since “War”'s a 3 letter word and the board software won’t let you search for it), but the US hasn’t declared war since WW II. So despite the bombs falling on people’s heads in places like Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and a host of other places, the US hasn’t been at “war” with anyone since the Nazi’s roamed the Earth. Point being that to say a “military action” against Iraq counts as a “war” and a “military action” against Afghanistan doesn’t count as a war is pretty much BS. Both of them involved lots of people dying, and lots of bombs and bullets doing the killing.
And “easy wars” have been screwed up before. Vietnam was supposed to be an “easy war.” Our involvement in Somalia was supposed to be “easy.” We had all the guns, and hi-tech gizmos and all they had were a bunch of folks armed with AK-47s and RPGs, yet they managed to slaughter a good number of Americans, not to mention turn our stomachs against further involvement there. A good general can make any war look easy, a bad general can turn certain victory into a utter defeat. As an ex-serviceman, I’m surprised you don’t know these things DtC.
