Gene Lyons isn't exactly overwhelmed by the "moderate" Republican criticism of the Bush administration's failures that we've been hearing lately Mr. Dilbert goes to Washington Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 10/26/05.
Lyons comments on the recent criticisms by Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, and Brent Scowcroft, who is generally assumed to be very close to Old Man Bush's views on foreign policy.
Of Wilkerson's description of a "cabal" in the administration headed by Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, he writes:
It sounds like a comic strip : President Dilbert.
Except it ain’t funny. To Wilkerson, the results have been catastrophic, dragging the U. S. into an ill-conceived war in Iraq, and making policy in so secretive and slapdash a manner that those charged with executing it had no clear idea what they were supposed to do, much less how. In a Los Angeles Times commentary this week, Wilkerson called it the kind of “decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy,” hence a military and political failure.
Lyons evidently has a touch of the same kind of skepticism I've taken toward such pronoucements. It's hard to see these "moderate" and "realist" Republicans as the cavalry riding in on white horses to save the Republic. As he puts it:
So now what ? In part because both men, like many genuine conservatives, chose not to speak plainly in October 2004 when it might have made a difference, we’re stuck with these foolhardy incompetents for the foreseeable future. Except that, as Wilkerson implies, functioning democracies usually find ways to change policies and rid themselves of politicians they no longer trust.
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