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Ridge, Homeland Security Head, Steps Down
WeAz writes "According to MSNBC, Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge has decided to call it quits. 'Ridge, the seventh officer to leave Bush's Cabinet so far, oversaw the most significant government reorganization in 50 years.' Ridge joins Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft as the newest cabinet member to resign from their office."
I guess I spent too long in the john: I'm gone 5 minutes and Rummy is history?
Or not....
Can't find anything on news.google.com
Rumsfeld resigned? Where the frig did you read that?
The article mentions, as is conventional wisdom, that he'll stay on for a few years to oversee operations in Iraq and transitions to national elections (assuming they ever happen). Of course, they were saying the same thing about Powell before the election.
http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/secdef_bio.html
Maybe this story is from the future.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
No, not really.
... except for the Presidency, that is.
This kind of thing always goes on between terms. No one wants to get stuck in the same job for 8 years
sigs, as if you care.
That's just about as many people who left Clinton's cabinet in between terms. I'm hoping it means they think their jobs are done and there's nothing major looming on the horizon that any of them feel like they need to be a part of.
The opposite option: they're getting out while they can. I can't really believe that though. They've already worked through one of the most polarizing administrations in quite a long time (i'm no history buff), they're probably just tired. If the Bush administration is planning on anything more "interesting" (May you live in interesting times. --Confucious) than this whole Iraq thing, well, I'd be impressed.
Direct away from face when opening.
What's the count of high-level government offices that have resigned in the past two months? It should be getting pretty high, I'd say. I said before that some voters might have hindsight about the rest of the government's attitude for working under Bush... now I wonder if Bush himself is wondering what the hell is going on?
To play Devil's advocate, though, all of the positions that have resigned have been high-stress positions, and many of them didn't plan to work a second term anyway. Who knows.
- dshaw
He was the funniest guy to watch in the cabinet! Who else is going to cause so much controversy by saying something like "old Europe?"
Anyway, for you conspiracy theorists out there, maybe Ridge left because he wanted to get higher up in the order of succession (you can't get much lower than the last cabinet position created)...
If Donald Rumsfeld resigned, then this is the first I've heard of it, and it's time for me to go singing and dancing in the streets until the police haul me to the drunk tank.
I know Slashdot is as reputable as Fox News, but come on guys, it's not like the submitter included gratuitous Anti-Microsoft or Anti-SCO (same thing?!) stuff...
[o]_O
You are correct. Liberals are quick to pounce on these cabinet level resignations as fool-proof evidence of a failed presidency. Superficially the data does not back this claim up. However, what is often ignored is how much strife has driven the process this time. Nearly half of his cabinet has quit or been "forcibly resigned" amid some rather questionable circumstances. The curious grouping of resignations (the Energy, Education, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Defense, State, and Agriculture secretaries) seem to highlight the more deeply seated problems that Liberals have with the current administration. The "CIA Shakeup", as it has been dubbed, lends even more credibility to the claim that the administration is mishandling its duties.
There is an interesting correlation between presidents and their respective turnover rates that should also be taken into account. Please note that the data below does not account for the particulars of this administration's cabinet resignations, as I explained before.
Second term presidency cabinet member turnover rates:
Harry Truman: 4
Dwight Eisenhower: 3
Lyndon Johnson: 4
Richard Nixon: 9
Ronald Reagan: 7
Bill Clinton: 7
Source: Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Presidency
In shameless defense of Bill Clinton, his politics were rather unorthodox and, in trying to maintain the appearance of being a moderate, some resignations ought to have been expected.
Nixon vs. Turman completes the liberal argument.
RTFA:Donald Rumsfeld likely will stay on for a year or two to continue restructuring the U.S. military.
With the draft reinstated.
curiouser and
I share your opinion on stereotyping and how to avoid it. I do occasionally succumb to partisan pressure, gleefully lashing out at prominent figures with trashy one-liners, but that is not my preferred method of political discourse. The motivation for using the phrase "liberals do X" was, ironically enough, to appeal to the very crowd you accused me of being a member of. Sometimes, one must work from within the system to garner sufficient respect and attention to be able to breed resistance against the status quo.
I take no offense. In fact, I greatly appreciate your comment, o Anonymous Coward, for the content that is so rarely purveyed by Slashdot members. The only flaw is the fact that the subject was not news to me. I had originally prefaced the term "liberal" with a disambiguating comment on the order of "A sizable bloc of partisan progressive voters have, in standard knee-jerk reflex, pounced on these cabinet level resignations as fool-proof evidence of a failed presidency." However, I removed it in an attempt to be less verbose - as well as to appeal to a wider, less politically correct, audience. Although this sentence also stereotypes, I feel that it does so to a lesser extent as it is neither all-encompassing nor targeting a defined subgroup of those who vote Democrat or Green more often than they do Republican or (arguably) Libertarian.
Now, let me say one thing on the topic of avoiding blanket political terms entirely: I cannot fully agree with you. These terms are invented, and often cast off just as quickly, because of their functionality in plebeian conversation. If you were to be stopped on the street randomly, you might be asked your party affiliation or your political leanings. In such circumstances, and I consider Slashdot to be an analogous time-sensitive circumstance, convenience often trumps accuracy. So, instead of saying "I am an ardent supporter of equality in society, including the gender/sex/race/creed blind bestowing of civil liberties upon all of humankind, who also wishes government to make greater monetary and political investments in the normalization of the standards of living in this country, eliminating the disparity between rich and poor, while still maintaining the exquisite freedom and right to individuality granted us by our constitution.", I might simply state "I would consider myself a social liberal. If you need more information, ask me now, otherwise I will tune you out, attending to my doughnut instead."
Now that you're confident that no flame war was incited by your reply, would you mind responding to this post using your Slashdot UID? I'm curious about what else have said or have left to say.
"mode of political discourse"
"..what else you have said or have left to say."
I don't understand your argument at all.
I'm not trying to be glib, but I don't understand:
Maybe I'm dense before coffee? Please help me out.
sigs, as if you care.
Or do all these resignations bear a resemblance to rats leaving a sinking ship?
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
There is a steady supply of teenagers turning 18. More than enough of those will join the army and provide the brute force needed to fufill the imperial ambitions of the White House (and that is keeping in mind that, true to his campaign promise in 2000, GWB is not interested in "nation building", shock and awe is the preffered strategy).
That aside, imagine how different the public's reaction to these agressive wars would be if the army was drafted instead of all volunteer. Remember Vietnam? Do you think there would have been such widespread protests, and national sympathy for the anti-war cause, if we had fought that war with a volunteer army?
And come on, the policymakers in DC don't want their own kids, their people, fighting in the war. Nowadays it would be tougher to sneak in draft exemptions for the rich and powerful.
And the ex-governor. He started with nothing and created a monolithic mess
It's worth mentioning that prior to his postition of 'protecting' us, as governer of PA Ridge was responsible for over 200 execution orders. He was one of those guys who was just a little to eager to execute the bad guys (who just happen to be dispraportionaly black). Kinda like another prominent politician I can think of.
Powell was a voice of reason in the current administration. He knew that the Iraqis would likely reject Westernization, and he did not want to see American boys dying needless for scum like the Iraqis.
Another example of Powell's intellect is his poignant comments about Taiwan. Powell knows that the Taiwanese support almost all the geopolitical objectives of Beijing, including the occupation of Tibet. Powell stated, in a Freudian slip, that Taiwan is not a nation; therefore, it is not something for which American soldiers should die.
With the departure of Powell, I fear the worst in Iraq. We must get our soldiers out of Iraq. I do not want to see them dying for Iraqi pigs or Taiwanese pigs.
All talking about how soon if everyone didn't tow the party line an American city would go up in a mushroom cloud, and how we should "punish France."
On one hand we get the fearmongering, and on the other we get the assinine and ignorant comments. Quite the stateswoman. (It's not even that I like France enough to worry about their punishment, potential or actual, but why in the hell would you ever tell them, even if you were openly hostile? To punish them and deny that you were being punative in any way would almost have to be far more frustrating.)
Meh, I've heard a lot of people saying that they're happy Ridge stepped down and that they disagreed with his politics. Well, I'd be surprised if most liberal-minded persons liked anybody in the post of Homeland Security minister given the mandate given to that department from the President.
That being said, while sometimes cabinet shakedowns are good, I'd argue that Bush is just using this to reinforce his neo-con philsophy even more so than he did before. Witness the replacement of Ashcroft with somebody (in my humble opinion) is even worse than he is.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
The Geneva conventions exist for two reasons. 1) So major powers don't annihilate each others population centers wholesale. And, something we've never been able to use them for, 2) political cover for escalation to annihilating opposing forces wholesale. See, if we strictly adhered to the Geneva conventions, documenting and publishing our adherence in a manner that was unimpeachible, we can then have a vetting of accepted truth, and reasonably conclude that they are a failure as a people and need a little Ghengis Khan in their lives. Well at the end of them at any rate. But if we don't, then we're locked in an endless cycle of bullshit and finger pointing, and it's more expensive to solve the very difficult problem.
The white man ain't got no problem with wholesale slaughter. We love it. We're good at it. And level at which we practiced the craft has nearly passed out of living memory. So it's understandable, education spending being what it is, that you don't understand what the conventions are *really* about. They are the carrot of civility during war. If one side abides and the other utterly fails to, then they can proceed with the sensless extermination of people ala WWI. It's about being able to call the kettle black, and then destroy everyone the kettle knew, and still go home wearing the white hat.
But because the DoD doesn't want to document and publish the raw brutal data. Because the Whitehouse, and elements of the government don't wish to abide by the Geneva conventions, everyone gets a black hat, and an end game is impractical however achievable it might be. The net result is to indefinately maintain strict rules of engagement keeping US forces on the defensive in close contact with their enemy, who as you correctly observe, cheats. The administrations willingness to embrace the death of integrity kills Americans. As an American, I'm violently opposed to this.
As a student of history, I've seen where this kind of prosecution of a war leads. A scenerio in which America goes ten years without a tactical defeat, and still falls short of a strategic victory. Think about that.
Any nations that would strictly adhere to the Geneva Convetions are very unlikely to go to war with each other and in modern terms war is only likely to happen where one or both sides do not voluntarily adhere to the Geneva Convetions.
Popular support has nothing to do with terrorism, terrorism is all about forcing the populace to obey via fear and intimidation, hence terrorism.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From +5 interesting to 0 troll?
Bias in posts != bias in moderation. You are far more powerful in subduing opposing opinions than in bolstering those you support, I'll grant you that. But for crying out loud, use some moral judgement. That wasn't a troll.