Bush On War: What Me Worry?

Will Saletan of Slate offers a mordant take on Bush’s Monday night speech on Iraq. Bush fails to see his own error-filled role in shaping recent history, Saletan says. And blind to the past, he says, Bush can hardly see the way forward:

Bush's ignorance of his part in the tragedy infects everything he says. "The swift removal of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring had an unintended effect," he observed tonight. "Instead of being killed or captured on the battlefield, some of Saddam's elite guards shed their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. [They] have reorganized, rearmed and adopted sophisticated terrorist tactics." Note the passive construction. The mistake isn't that Bush failed to prepare for guerrilla tactics commonly adopted against occupiers. It isn't even a mistake; it's an "unintended effect." The cause of that effect is Saddam's "swift removal," not Bush or anyone in his administration who engineered the removal.

Is Bush embarrassed that a year of occupation has failed to substantiate his claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to global terrorism? No. He hasn't even noticed. "I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security," he repeated tonight, adding, "Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror … This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world." Never mind the emerging evidence that North Korea, not Iraq, was engaged in the kind of WMD proliferation that Bush attributed to Saddam. In his speech, Bush simply repeated that Iraq was the headquarters of terrorists who "seek weapons of mass destruction."

For a still more airbrushed version of history, consider Bush's account of his relationship with the United Nations. "At every stage, the United States has gone to the United Nations to confront Saddam Hussein, to promise serious consequences for his actions, and to begin Iraqi reconstruction," the president asserted. Forget the part where Bush reneged on his pledge to call a Security Council vote on the use of force. Forget the part where he invaded Iraq against the wishes of a majority of the council.

Saletan is not alone in his cold reaction to the Bush speech. Much of this morning’s press spin turns against Bush. And snap polls are showing something like a 2 to 1 majority of Americans who saw the speech say they saw no real plan being offered.

What intrigues me is how Bush is going to have to deliver five more of these rhetorical suckers in the next five weeks. He ought to be careful. He could talk himself right out of his re-election.

Comments

[Marc]

"Is Bush embarrassed that a year of occupation has failed to substantiate his claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to global terrorism? No. He hasn't even noticed."

Are you surprised? It was pretty obvious long before the war that our president is a one-dimensional figure. Notice the difference between the speeches he reads and when he's forced to answer questions. It's like he's been trained that when in doubt take the following words, "terrorism, 911, resolve, war, Iraqi people, terrorism, security, self-governing, finish the job, will not be deterred, freedom, strong, terrorism and God" and make a sentence using them.

The really scary part is that so many Americans actually buy into this and support him. It freaks me out. I'm no fan of Kerry but boring is better than insanity.

[steve]

When Bush said this:
"Instead of being killed or captured on the battlefield, some of Saddam's elite guards shed their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. [They] have reorganized, rearmed and adopted sophisticated terrorist tactics."

I thought to myself this is a tacit admission that one year later the war has not only not ended, but has met with significant failure. That the 'enemy' [that includes anyone from an angry shopkeeper who's seen his kid carted off to prison months ago with no explanation to the phantom zarqawi, thus the quotes] remains this strong only indicates military failure. On top of that, the failure to rebuild the country only magnifies that failure. I was really amazed to read that quote from Bush's speech.

I couldn't watch the speech, since there really is no point, it's a PR mechanism with little substance. But listening to Bush slaughter the pronunciation of Abu Grhaib on the NPR clip this morning made me wonder if there weren't other prize selections worth catching?

[Bellman]

There was no other major gaffe, sadly. The only other thing that was interesting to me about the speech was the setting. A small room, a square within a square within a square. Very blue, very symmetrical. I mean, I know it was at the War College, but it looked like Starship Troopers--a fictional idea of a future fascist dictator.

[lefty redux]

bellman: some of Bush's sharpest critics reside at the WarCollege. Google on Dr. Jeffrey Record, "Bounding the Global War on Terror."

[Mork]

Yikes! I agree with Steve again. Some of the early passages of the speech seemed to me to be the closest Bush has come to an acknowledgement of miscalculations.

[Michael Turner]

... some of Bush's sharpest critics reside at the WarCollege. Google on Dr. Jeffrey Record, "Bounding the Global War on Terror."

An oasis of calm reason. Thanks. I can't believe I read the whole thing. ;-)

Dr. Record will, of course, be persona non grata with a certain contingent of the hawks, and primarily on the basis of his assertion that terror (under at least some of its many definitions) is the only asymmetric means within the grasp of some insurgencies. The idea that terror could be within the strategic arsenal of any rational (much less morally supportable) insurgency is heresy to this contingent. Terror puts its perpetrators beyond the pale, in their view. They neglect the fact that none other than David Ben-Gurion promoted its use in the war for an independent Jewish state, and that Ben-Gurion turned on Irgun (and moreover that he turned on Irgun militarily) in part because he felt that Irgun had persisted in terrorism beyond the point of political usefulness, and not because it had perpetrated terror at all. You don't hear any of these "terror=genocide" ideologues suggesting that Menachem Begin's Nobel Peace Prize be posthumously disawarded and reclaimed.

I like the way Dr. Record turns an old metaphor on its head - with the notion of a 'domino theory' of propagating democracy in the Arab world, starting with a democratic Iraq. At this point, it's hard to see that direction working out. As a basis for policy, 'democratic domino' seems at least as benighted as the metaphor's application to Communism in Southeast Asia in the 50s and 60s.

At best, Iraq might get the Arab equivalent of Poland's General Jaruzelski. Ideally, three Jaruzelskis: one for each major region (Shi'ite South, Sunni Belt, and Virtual Kurdistan), and with each strongman having an understanding with the others that precludes civil war and admits of some cooperation on quelling unrest. Which is to say, a leadership committed to a transition to democracy over the long term, a generation or longer, but with no illusions that a unified Iraq (and for that matter, the Arab world) is ready for democracy now. The 'democratic domino'
theory, at least as it has been applied by the Bush administration so far, has been its own worst enemy. Democracy overnight in the Arab world would just give us Arab electorates composed of passionate America-haters. So would democracy overnight in any year previous to 2003, of course. But it's much worse now.