What does the supposed Qatari air base in Idaho show? Incompetence | Opinion
Incompetence is a word we use regularly to describe someone’s inability to accomplish a task successfully. It may be a business venture gone wrong because the owner simply didn’t understand the market forces at work with the product.
Or perhaps it’s a medical or legal mistake with huge life-or-death consequences. Sometimes incompetence is shown by talented people who overestimate their ability in a situation in which they do not have sufficient expertise, or people with limited skills or knowledge overestimate their competence in a particular field or endeavor.
We also throw the word around loosely to describe any boneheaded move by someone we think should know better.
It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after the social psychologists who wrote a paper in 1999 describing “How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” that causes people to act incompetently.
President Donald Trump is the perfect case. The latest example of his failure to understand his limited knowledge as he makes decisions on the run, reading little and relying on TV for his information is his “on again, off again” tariffs on China. How many times has he announced a tariff only to climb down later when their impact has damaged another sector of the American economy?
These tariffs are wreaking havoc with the farm economy, as Chinese purchases of American-grown soybeans have zeroed out since last May.
The Dunning-Kruger effect doesn’t stop in the Oval Office. Trump has appointed key Cabinet officials who demonstrate regularly just how incompetent they are managing their agencies. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pulled a boneheaded move last week that could have had Idaho’s sleepy congressional delegation in a tizzy if it wasn’t for their adulation of all things Trump.
Hegseth, sitting next to Qatar’s Minister of Defense, Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, announced that he was “proud that today we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri air force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho.” Yes, that’s the nation of Qatar that Trump accused in 2017 of funding terrorism.
In addition to a bewildered reaction from mainstream media, it ignited a firestorm of right-wing criticism from folks like Laura Loomer, one of Trump’s loyal patsies, for straying from Trump’s America First pledge and, in her words, allowing a Muslim nation governed by Sharia law to build its own air force base in Idaho.
Pentagon Pete would correct the record hours later, assuring his critics Qatar would not have its own air force base but just use the existing Mountain Home base to train pilots for the Qatari F-15QA jet fighters. But if anyone conversant with the English language reads the original statement, there can be little doubt that “build a Qatari Emiri air force base facility” means one owned by Qatar. Conservative critics like Loomer may seldom get the facts straight, but in this case, she nailed it.
The Idaho Capital Sun reported recently that a group of ultra-conservative Idaho Republican legislators also weighed in on the subject and sent a letter expressing concern over the Qatar plan, even if it is only some kind of training mission short of Qatar building its own base in Idaho. And Todd Achilles, who is running as an Independent to unseat Sen. Jim Risch, asked the simple question of Risch: “Were you in on it?”
According to the Capital Sun, Sen. Risch and Rep. Russ Fulcher have not commented on the Qatar plan, but Trump-fanatic Rep. Mike Simpson is all in. Sen. Mike Crapo released a vague statement expressing support for Mountain Home Air Force Base, so typical of Idaho “congressional speak” when members of the delegation are trying to avoid accountability to constituents.
What really happened, and will we ever know? Either someone whose incompetence played out at the highest levels of government wrote a sloppy press release for Hegseth to read and it just was not clear that Qatar would not build or own an air base in Idaho, or the intent was just as Hegseth’s extremist friends like Loomer had charged — he originally intended to build a Qatar air base on American soil, right here in Idaho.
Is it possible that Hegseth thought he could get by with giving Qatar permission to build its own air base on Idaho land? Now there’s a level of incompetence that pulls rank on the incompetence of writing a sloppy press release.
Critics who took the original announcement at face value assumed this was just the other end of Trump and Qatar’s dealmaking, pointing out the $400 million Boeing 737 that Qatar gifted to Trump just a few months ago. It will be outfitted for presidential use at a multimillion-dollar cost to taxpayers, and Trump will walk away with it for his foundation to own at the conclusion of his presidency.
Take your bets on what really happened behind closed Pentagon doors, but this smells like one of Trump’s shady deals that goes like this: You give me something in July, and I’ll give you something in October.
Just a bit unusual, to say the least, that the American president gets to keep this $400 million gift for his personal use when he is out of office. No previous American president has left office with such a deal. It’s just the latest example of how Trump has infected federal agencies at their highest levels with incompetent appointees subservient to Trump’s venal “art of the deal” even when it crosses the line of probity.
National media outlets gave a whiff of concern about this serious misstep of Hegseth’s, but seemed to move on quickly after Hegseth’s suspicious clarification. But when ultra-conservative state legislators and candidates challenging Risch are singing from the same hymnal, there’s serious cause for concern both here in Idaho and in Washington about yet another of Trump’s corrupted deals.
Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio, a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman and a contributing columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.