Bush In Wonderland
Bush in Wonderland
Previously, I have described Bush as incurious. In light of more recent events, I’d have to admit I was way too kind.
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group issued its much-anticipated report, based on careful and deliberate consultations with innumerable experts drawn from a variety of disciplines and fields, and yet the Bush Administration can barely stifle its yawns. What gives? Finally, after three full years of war in Iraq, the administration convened an outside analysis of its war policy; but because the Study Group did not return with news agreeable to the administration, the latter dismissed the report out of hand. Worse, in a reprise of America’s post-Iraq invasion temper tantrum against the reluctant French, we’ve even got the conservative Republican spin machine labeling the members of the Iraq Study Group as “surrender monkeys!” That hardly seems fair given the group members’ collective record of public service.
Name-calling and an obstinate refusal to confront what goes against one’s preconceived notions … when will the Bush Administration grow up already?
A fascinating rhetorical trick the conservatives are playing vis-à-vis the Study Group report is to bad-mouth the term “consensus.” Conservatives have long excelled at picking the favorite terminology of their opponents and giving it a negative spin; witness what happened to such tried and true words as “liberal” and “tolerate.” And so now we have to suffer right-wing blabbermouth Rush Limbaugh mockingly comment: “To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies” (Sioux City Journal, “Left vs. Right,” 12/11/06). What, then, would be so preferable to accommodation? The supposed “principle or value” of conflict? Haven’t we already seen enough of that in Iraq!
My favorite emerging rhetorical strategy from conservatives, however, is a new riff on the old “blame the victim” dodge. More and more frequently, conservative apologists for the Bush Administration are claiming that it’s not really the Bush Administration’s policies that are at fault here. No, the apologists note (sadly and grudgingly, I’m sure), it’s really all the fault of the ungrateful Iraqi people who just can’t find it in themselves to deal with their own problems effectively. If only the Iraqis would stand up against the violent insurgents in their midst, the argument goes, then the problems of Iraq would be solved.
Dean Krenz, who, like Bush, could benefit greatly from an introductory course in logic, offered a typical example of the above in his latest column in the Sioux City Journal (12/15/06). Krenz expresses great surprise at reports that Iraqi government officials are “squirreling away billions of dollars of oil money” meant for postwar reconstruction, while the United States “spend[s] billions of dollars to protect them.”
Why does Krenz find it unusual that the Iraqis are following the lead of politically well-connected U.S. mega-firms such as Halliburton, which stand accused of over-billing the U.S. government for billions of dollars in Iraq War-related business contracts?
Moreover, one might wonder who or what Krenz thinks we’re protecting the Iraqi people against. Saddam Hussein? Iran? Syria? Saudi Arabia? Terrorists? The shadowy insurgency? Opinionated know-it-alls like Dean Krenz? There’s a civil war raging in Iraq, and the U.S. hasn’t even picked sides.
Moreover, as a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (a study similarly consigned to the trash-heap without commentary by the Bush Administration) noted recently, nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died since the U.S. began hostilities over and above normal mortality rates for that country. Daily we read about kidnappings, beheadings, suicide bombings, and the like in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraq’s “best and brightest” have fled or are planning to flee their chaotic homeland. How, I’d like to know, does that constitute “protection?”
We rushed into a country uninvited to save their people -- from a tyrant, admittedly. However, we also rushed in without a carefully detailed post-invasion game plan. We then proceeded to dismantle the Iraqi army, which could have served as a stabilizing force in society, and thereby plunged much of Iraq into lawless anarchy. We ignored Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions, and its long history of religious strife. We further ignored Iraq’s complete and utter lack of a democratic tradition, as well as its stunning lack of the sort of civic institutions (an independent judiciary, a free press, etc.) conducive to growing a fledgling democracy. Saddam Hussein may be gone, but the Iraqi people in general are hardly any safer or more secure today.
From the very beginning we erred in treating Iraqis as if they were “just like us,” and yet later found, to our amazement, that Iraq is not the U.S. and Iraqis don’t automatically think or act as Americans would.
Rather than admit to our own mistakes, however, we stayed true to our own historical tradition of blaming others instead … and heaping sarcastic scorn on anyone who would dare suggest otherwise.
Remember this one thing about the anger of the Arab street: they don’t “hate us for our freedoms,” as Bush so fatuously stated right after 9/11; rather, they hate us for the concrete policy mistakes we seem to make time and again out of plain American hubris.
Peace!
Historian
