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<H2>Leonard Pitts Jr.: The limits of loyalty</H2>
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<H4>By Leonard Pitts Jr. - <BR><I>Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, March 19,
2007</I></H4>
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<P>First, let me tell you what I'm not here to talk about.</P>
<P>I'm not here to talk about the role politics played in the sacking of eight
U.S. attorneys. Or the fact that newly released e-mail exchanges and other
documents indicate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his deputies misled
Congress when they said the White House had nothing to do with the decision to
fire those attorneys. Or the fact that Gonzales is facing bipartisan calls for
his head from angry lawmakers.</P>
<P>All this I will leave to others. I want to talk about a word that jumped out
at me in news reports about this latest Washington scandal.</P>
<P>The word: loyalty.</P>
<P>We learn that, in deciding which attorneys to retain and which to release,
one factor that weighed prominently in Justice Department deliberations was
whether they "exhibited loyalty" to President Bush. The quote is from an e-mail
sent by D. Kyle Sampson, then one of Gonzales' top aides.</P>
<P>Sampson was also author of another note in which he suggested that the "vast
majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job,
are loyal Bushies, etc., etc." It is this notion that being a "loyal Bushie" is
a qualification for getting or keeping a job that rankles. And if any of this
sounds like deja vu all over again, that's only because you've been paying
attention.</P>
<P>Indeed, the revelations spilling out of Gonzales' office are distressingly
familiar.</P>
<P>Take Brownie -- please. You remember Michael Brown. Guy had zero experience
in disaster management. So naturally, he wound up as head of FEMA, the federal
disaster management agency. He was, after all, a "loyal Bushie" - a friend of a
Bush friend. Not that that helped him when a hurricane named Katrina came
knocking.</P>
<P>And don't even get me started on Iraq. To read "Imperial Life in the Emerald
City," Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book on the American occupation, is to sit
gape-mouthed at the degree to which the requirement that job seekers pledge
allegiance to George W. Bush shaped (read: misshaped) what happened there.
People who applied to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority -- the agency
governing Iraq -- told Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for the
Washington Post, that they were asked in job interviews about their political
party, their opinion of Roe v. Wade, their religious affiliation and whether or
not they voted for Bush in 2000.</P>
<P>Talent and experience were secondary concerns, if that. It was more important
that one be loyal than that one be qualified.</P>
<P>And we wonder why Iraq turned out the way it did? What we're seeing in these
e-mails, then, is just standard operating procedure for the Bush gang.</P>
<P>Not that that makes it any easier to swallow.</P>
<P>Loyalty is a lovely virtue. But it is not the only virtue. And, in deciding
what is best for a nation -- whether Iraq or the United States -- one would hope
it wouldn't be the defining one.</P>
<P>The funny thing is, when George W. Bush came into office a hundred years ago,
I remember thinking that though I disagreed with his politics, it would be good
at the very least to have grown-ups -- disciplined, sober, pragmatic -- back in
charge of the nation's affairs after the perceived juvenility and shenanigans of
the Clinton team. I was wrong.</P>
<P>This is not the way grown-ups behave. It is the ways cultists behave. The
willingness to bypass critical thought, the tendency to make one's faith in a
man a litmus test, the emphasis on belief, sounds more appropriate to followers
of Jim Jones or David Koresh than to high officials of the U.S.</P>
<P>government.</P>
<P>Every president has the right to seek subordinates who support his policies.
But not at the expense of competence. Nor integrity. Nor loss of life and
destruction of property.</P>
<P>Loyalty to Bush is all well and good. But ultimately, these people work for
me and you.</P>
<P>Is it asking too much that they show a little loyalty to
us?</P></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>