Faced by real dangers, the U.S. defense establishment loses itself in fantasy By William Pfaff

[T]he Defense Department, which has been unable to supply troops with simple body and vehicle armor in adequate quantities, is preoccupied with new nuclear weapons and space wars.

It wants vast new expenditures on projects with no relevance to present realities. The Pentagon and the Energy Department ask for new and “more usable” nuclear weapons, including earth-penetrating “bunker-busters.” The need is highly debatable and the political costs of developing new nuclear weapons enormous.

The Air Force makes it known that it wants a national security directive to “establish and maintain space superiority,” a project on which it seems already to have spent billions, and on which it wants to spend more, up to an estimated trillion dollars (and beyond, as experience of such estimates overwhelmingly suggest).

Quite beyond the project’s feasibility, cost, foreign policy implications, and likelihood to inspire countermeasures by other nations, it is another demand for a military capability irrelevant to the present and realistically foreseeable future security needs of the country.

On May 9, a lost civilian light plane entering Washington airspace produced a disgracefully panicked evacuation of Congress, the White House, and most of the rest of official Washington. We are urged to control outer space, but an errant light plane terrorizes Washington. The one is costly fantasy. The other is reality. …

This occurs at the same time American military forces still are unable to pacify Iraq or Afghanistan, agricultural societies of less than 25 million people each, both largely in ruins. The billions Washington already has spent on reconstruction have yet to produce reliable electric power, clean water or a functioning sewer system in Baghdad itself.

The creation of an official capability for reconstructing 25 countries, at a time when anonymous senior army officers are quoted as saying that the United States could be defeated in Iraq, is the most egregious Washington example of a pathological disconnection from reality.

However, it is a logical bureaucratic response to the announced administration intention to overturn tyrants and spread liberty throughout the world. It serves also as its reductio ad absurdum. …

One is inclined to dismiss all this as product of institutional delusion or bureaucratic make-work. However, it responds to the expressed interests of the president, and as one of his associates said after his re-election, “we make reality.” This was in response to a question about “realism.”

The remark unknowingly echoed one of Hannah Arendt’s acute observations about totalitarianism. One of the most significant aspects of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century was that they “made reality” out of fictions.

Bush’s Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of “political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees. …

The series of setbacks on the domestic front could signal that the president has weakened leverage over his party, a situation that could embolden the opposition, according to analysts and politicians from both sides. …

Through more than four years in the White House, the signature of Bush’s leadership has been that he does not panic in the face of bad poll numbers. Yet many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbyist corridor of K Street worry about a season of drift and complain that the White House has not listened to their concerns. …

“There is a growing sense of frustration with the president and the White House, quite frankly,” said an influential Republican member of Congress. “The term I hear most often is ‘tin ear,’ ” especially when it comes to pushing Social Security so aggressively at a time when the public is worried more about jobs and gasoline prices. “We could not have a worse message at a worse time.” …

In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken last month, 47 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s performance, tying the lowest marks he ever received in that survey, back in mid-2004, when Democrats were airing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of campaign attack ads.

Similarly, just 31 percent approved of his handling of Social Security, an all-time low in the Post-ABC poll, while only 40 percent gave him good marks for his stewardship of the economy and 42 percent for his management of Iraq, both ratings close to the lowest ever recorded in those areas. Other surveys have recorded similar findings, with Bush’s approval rating as low as 43 percent.