One of Ronald Regan’s favorite jokes that he used to campaign with was the one about a bureaucrat greeting his constituents with the saying “I’m from the government and I am here to help”. While this philosophy was aimed almost exclusively at “Big Government, spend-a-holic Democrats” and the New Deal expansion, I find it fitting that while the Democrats might have expanded a lot, at least they were effective. People now have the conservative view that they voted for George W. to cut down on government spending. But in fact the only thing George W. really cut down on was collecting taxes. Spending has exploded since he took office all the while setting astronomical records (like spending more than all the presidents since George Washington……. Combined!!!) and having the greatest expansion of government since F.D.R. And what do we get with all this expansion? Ineffectiveness. People in Iraq and New Orleans have lost all faith in the effectiveness of the United States Government that it will only be a matter of time before the old joke gets a new make over, something like “I’m from the government, and I am here to make your life a living hell”.

There are no better examples than the Iraq Bungle and the Katrina Fiasco. If you believe that there will be improvements in New Orleans any time soon than all you have to do is look at its predecessor in Iraq and find that recovery will be a long time in the making. Considering we have been in Iraq for three years, spent over $300 billion and lost more than 2,800 soldiers, I am still trying to find what we have to show for it except a few pictures of Iraqis holding up blue thumbs. The month of October is the fourth deadliest month for our soldiers, something that was supposed to happen the fourth month into the invasion, not three years after.

I know that George W. loves to have the whole issue come up again and again on should we or shouldn’t we have invaded, but this is not the correct question. That question is stale and pointless. It should only be answered with the follow up question “What are we doing to win in Iraq?” Forget why we are there, since George W. flipped flopped more times than John Kerry ever did that I personally have no idea (W.M.D. Iraqi Freedom, another election wedge issue, oil, increase Halliburton shareholder wealth, terrorism, a conservative utopian example, evil Saddam, who knows??). We need to find an answer on how we can win and remove troops and I believe that answer has to do with leadership and effectiveness.

A great number of projects undertaken in Iraq are so over budget that they may never be completed. Oversight is lacking to the point of non existence that overhead accounts for almost half of all projects’ costs. Meanwhile, U.S. taxpayers are being billed for services that were not performed, or double billed for those that were. Iraqis have the same number of blackouts now than they did under Saddam, and in some places worse. Iraqis have the same amount of oil revenue now as they did under Saddam, maybe less. The security situation is worse now than under Saddam, with an estimated 600,000 dead civilians and almost one million refugees fleeing to other countries. The Iraqi education system is in shambles. These are all glum statistics that a capable leader would have reversed, but when you hear George W. on television say that we are making progress….. What progress? It seems nothing is going well except for U.S. contractors in the region getting six figure salaries.

I guess the only progress that I discovered toward winning was the now defunct cliché “stay the course” officially eliminated from Bush’s catch phrase list. Sadly a day later a new one was added “get the job done” which means exactly the same thing. It seems fitting that the only progress in the whole Iraq Bungle is the use of dynamic catch phrases along with some flashy marketing tactics. Too bad this is a war and not a commercial.

~Michael Pencille