{"id":65133,"date":"2002-06-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2002\/06\/16\/la-guerre-du-president\/"},"modified":"2002-06-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-06-16T00:00:00","slug":"la-guerre-du-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2002\/06\/16\/la-guerre-du-president\/","title":{"rendered":"La guerre du pr\u00e9sident<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

La guerre du pr\u00e9sident <\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t16 juin 2002 Mauvaise semaine, a-t-on dit. Il est vrai que les \u00e9v\u00e9nements se sont bouscul\u00e9s, ces sept derniers jours, pour faire \u00e0 la Maison-Blanche et au statut de GW un sort peu enviable. Tous les commentateurs, les malveillants et ceux qui pr\u00e9tendent voir les choses du monde avec de la distance, ont \u00e9t\u00e9 prompts \u00e0 mettre en \u00e9vidence les \u00e9v\u00e9nements des sept jours pass\u00e9s. \u00ab Something has gone awry in George Bush’s White House…<\/em> \u00bb, \u00e9crit sur un ton acide Julian Borger, dans le Guardian de Londres, en date du 15 juin.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSuit une description apocalyptique de la fa\u00e7on dont les membres les plus en vue du Cabinet se contredisent, font gaffe sur gaffe, prennent des initiatives douteuses, interviennent publiquement de telle fa\u00e7on que la Maison-Blanche doit rectifier. Ce n’est m\u00eame plus la guerre interne entre les factions qui est en cause, ni le d\u00e9fil\u00e9 ininterrompu des scandales ou soup\u00e7ons de scandales et de manipulations de la Guerre contre la terreur, des actes sans fin d’incomp\u00e9tences dans le traitement des informations sur le terrorisme et ses menaces, d\u00e9sormais c’est la confusion, le d\u00e9sordre, la perte de contr\u00f4le du gouvernement. Lisons Borger :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab Something has gone awry in George Bush’s White House. The administration’s once impermeable self-confidence is beginning to show cracks. A string of blunders has revealed that it is increasingly unsure of itself.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, who has epitomized the administration’s sense of infallibility, embarrassed himself on a visit to South Asia with speculation about al-Qaida’s role in Kashmir which he was quickly forced to retract. Back home the White House acidly disowned the views of two senior cabinet members – the attorney general, John Ashcroft and the secretary of state, Colin Powell.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The issues at stake could not have been more serious. Mr Rumsfeld was speaking from the hip at the flashpoint of a potential nuclear confrontation. For his part, Mr Ashcroft claimed to have foiled a plot to detonate a \u00a0\u00bbdirty bomb\u00a0\u00bb, possibly in central Washington. As Americans contemplated the prospect of a radioactive cloud drifting over their capital and sent off for anti-radiation pills, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, insisted that the country’s top law-enforcement official had over-reached and \u00a0\u00bblurched to the worst-case scenario\u00a0\u00bb.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t(…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Then on Wednesday it was the secretary of state’s turn to be slapped down. Colin Powell had told the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat that the president would back the rapid establishment of a provisional Palestinian state. Mr Bush had said almost as much himself, and White House officials confirmed yesterday that a declaration along those lines was expected next week. But Mr Fleischer went out of his way to belittle Mr Powell’s observations, pointing out drily that the secretary of state had the \u00a0\u00bbprerogative\u00a0\u00bb to say what he liked.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe spectacle est particuli\u00e8rement \u00e9difiant, et particuli\u00e8rement consternant. Il s’agit bien, en effet, des trois principaux ministres de GW, la nouveaut\u00e9 \u00e9tant que Rumsfeld, jusqu’ici \u00a0\u00bbhomme de fer\u00a0\u00bb sans peur et sans reproche, se fait prendre comme un coll\u00e9gien dans le feu crois\u00e9 des tentatives (r\u00e9ussies, semble-t-il) de d\u00e9sinformation indiennes et pakistanaises, au cours de ses discussions pour d\u00e9samorcer la crise. (Paul McGeough, du Sidney Morning Herald, nous donne le 15 juin un excellent rapport des m\u00e9saventures de Rumsfeld.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCette situation est \u00e9videmment rendue possible par la position du pr\u00e9sident, par son absence de choix entre les diff\u00e9rentes tendances qui d\u00e9chirent son cabinet, par ses h\u00e9sitations, sa temporisation, par son incapacit\u00e9 \u00e0 discipliner ou \u00e0 contr\u00f4ler ses ministres, — bref, par son absence d’exp\u00e9rience et d’autorit\u00e9 et des qualit\u00e9s qui font g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement un chef de gouvernement, voire un homme d’\u00c9tat acceptable. On ne peut parler d\u00a0\u00bbune surprise. GW appara\u00eet aujourd’hui tel qu’il est, un pr\u00e9sident sans r\u00e9elle importance, mis o\u00f9 il est par la conjonction de forces diverses et de rassemblements d’int\u00e9r\u00eats particuliers ; mais un pr\u00e9sident sans importance d\u00e9sormais plac\u00e9 au coeur d’une situation d’une importance et d’une gravit\u00e9 consid\u00e9rables, au coeur de la Grande Guerre contre la Terreur issue du 11 septembre.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tQue faire ?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tChacun apporte sa r\u00e9ponse et d’autres dirons plut\u00f4t que la question est sans r\u00e9ponse (on voit o\u00f9 va notre pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence). Dans tous les cas, les r\u00e9ponses sugg\u00e9r\u00e9es ici et l\u00e0 ne sont pas encourageantes. Tous ces conseils ressemblent bien \u00e0 des exhortations de fuite en avant ou \u00e0 des solutions du d\u00e9sespoir, pour tenter de transcender la pr\u00e9sidence GW parce que cela para\u00eet \u00eatre la seule possibilit\u00e9 de lui \u00e9viter de sombrer et se perdre dans une spirale d’incidents, de blocages, de querelles internes, et peut-\u00eatre pire encore, de situations d\u00e9stabilisantes qui pourraient mettre en p\u00e9ril la stabilit\u00e9 du r\u00e9gime.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tComme exemple assez acceptable parce que bien dans la mani\u00e8re des temps, voici le conseil de Mark Steyn, du Spectator (de Londres) du 15 juin.<\/a> Il consiste \u00e0 dire : faites la guerre ext\u00e9rieure, monsieur le pr\u00e9sident, sinon vous perdez votre guerre int\u00e9rieure. Ce que Steyn d\u00e9signe comme : A Fight to the finish<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab Readers may recall my insane predictions during the 2000 presidential campaign. Recently, in the Speccie’s North American sister papers, I dusted off my crystal ball and predicted that Bush would invade Iraq some time between the G8 summit in June and the first anniversary of 11 September, and that, if he hadn’t got things underway by early fall, his political prospects would be less and less certain. Even a right-wing madman like me isn’t saying you should invade countries just to improve your party’s showing, but, if he hasn’t been fine-tuning his Iraq-flattening plan these last few months, it’s hard to know quite what it is he has been doing. This is a war presidency or it’s nothing.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Of course, he could take his generals’ advice, give up on Iraq, and hope to get lucky in November. There are very few competitive races, but, typically, Ralph Nader’s Green party has decided to run a candidate against the most liberal Democrat, Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone, and psephologists are predicting that the guy will siphon off enough votes to throw the seat and the Senate to the Republicans just like Nader supposedly did with the presidency in 2000.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThat’s the choice: you can sit around hoping lightning will strike twice or you can take out Saddam. I know what I’d bet on.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La guerre du pr\u00e9sident 16 juin 2002 Mauvaise semaine, a-t-on dit. Il est vrai que les \u00e9v\u00e9nements se sont bouscul\u00e9s, ces sept derniers jours, pour faire \u00e0 la Maison-Blanche et au statut de GW un sort peu enviable. Tous les commentateurs, les malveillants et ceux qui pr\u00e9tendent voir les choses du monde avec de la… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3416,868,3198,1391,569],"class_list":["post-65133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-ashcroft","tag-bush","tag-gw","tag-powell","tag-rumsfeld"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}