Q&A: Milt Bearden

Writer and former senior CIA operations officer Milt Bearden on the systemic national security problems that exist when “modern impeachments deal with break-ins and blow jobs.”

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Mother Jones: What will Bush’s legacy be?

Milt Bearden: The Bush legacy, in its most reduced and understandable form, will be that the limits of American democracy, and all its institutions, will have been exposed. We all know now, after eight years of Bush, that there are really no checks and balances built into our system when it comes to national security. If a president, however flawed, driven, or even deranged, decides on a military action, Congress really cannot stop it. Modern impeachments deal with break-ins and blow jobs.

We have finally seen the limits on America’s ability to conduct a thoughtful foreign policy that serves our national interests, with 535 members of Congress in a contest to see who hates Hezbollah and Hamas the most, and who loves Israel the most. Israel, sadly, is the loser in this madness. Just ask the Israelis what they think.

We have seen the limits of military might, of having the most massive destructive capability in human history, but a tiny army detached from its citizenry, and virtually no money. This has been Bush’s recipe for disaster in an era of asymmetrical warfare.

And Bush has shown us that intelligence—a huge, unmanageable, uncoordinated $42 billion disaster—can be expected to continue to fail in the future as it has in the recent past. There is too much information and too little understanding. And our adversaries, large and small, are all capable of manipulating it, turning us into the puppets at the end of the chain.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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