SERVING AT THE PLEASURE OF THE PRESIDENT

it is one of the perks that the president of the united states gets while in office. that is, he gets to appoint cabinet members, advisors and supreme court justices among others and those people serve at, what is reffered to as, the pleasure of the president. lately it seems that the list of those who have this prestigious designation has grown to include leaders of sovereign nations.

what i mean is the following. when the president was not getting any pleasure from his treasury secretary paul o'neill, he was out. larry lindsey faced the same fate. harvey pitt and william webster hardly got the chance to give any pleasure before they were summarily dismissed. now glenn hubbard may step aside for his lack of pleasure creation. even trent lott allowed the president to push him back down to a regular spot in the fish bowl when he caused displeasure.

now to the leaders that the president is still getting pleasure from. they include, but are not limited to, cuba's fidel castro, libya's momar khadafi, pakistan's pervez musharraf, the PLO's yasser arafat, saudi arabia's prince abdullah, iran's mohammed khatami, venezuela's hugo chavez, and last but certainly not least, nuclear korea's kim jong il. all of which are tyrannical leaders that supress and dictate over their people but do not create displeasure for the president of the united states. on the other side of the pleasure scale would be iraq's saddam hussein who has been encouraged and asked very nicely, and not so nicely to step down, as he is giving no pleasure to the president.

why does the president get to pick and choose which of these terrible leaders is allowed to remain in power? if saddam is causing displeasure then he should go. but so should each of the leaders i listed above. our current march towards war with this regime that the president is displeased with makes some including me wonder how the rest of the world will react if the united states behaves like an imperialist power that tries to dominate world order. we have never done that before, at least not like we are now, and it could cause issues that we will have to deal with well into the future. this isn't to say that saddam should stay in power. but how he leaves power should be handled in the same way that we have handled these situations in the past, diplomatically not militarily. the united states doesn't overthrow governments. at least we didn't used to.

so we head towards war so that the president can appoint a new leader in iraq. hopefully it will work out as nicely as his domestic changes. yet as we are all aware of, tyrannical dictators do not leave office without a fight.

have a grateful day!

larry TGB