In Australia, yesterday, President Bush reflected again on Iraq. He reiterated that the war is an ideological struggle, that Iraq and Afghanistan are two fronts in the war, that the goal is to create new democracies that can be allies of the U.S. in the war, that the U.S. can succeed, and that it will be worth it (he wouldn’t have troops there if he didn’t believe that).
Reflecting on what he had seen on his surprise stop in Iraq Monday on his way to Australia, Pres. Bush said he had seen evidence in Anbar Province that the local leaders there are “reconciling.” (You can read the full version of that, in the president’s own words, here If you go to the link and want to skip to this section, I recommend searching for the word “beef.”) A lot of it doesn’t make much sense, or raises colossal questions that the president didn’t address and seldom or never has addressed.
The “reconciling” stuff, especially, doesn’t make much sense if you know what’s going on in Anbar, where tribal leaders have turned against Al Qaida in Iraq and are cooperating with U.S. forces. But he was apparently using the concept of reconciling to create a transition to this paragraph.
“At the national level there is reconciliation, but not nearly as fast as some would like. By the way, people who don’t believe we should be in Iraq in the first place, there’s no political reconciliation that can take place to justify your opinion. If you don’t think Iraq is important, if you don’t think it matters what the society looks like there, then there’s not enough amount of reconciliation that will cause people to say, great, it’s working. If you believe like I believe, that the security of the United States and the peace of the world depend upon a democracy in the Middle East and Iraq, then you can see progress. And I’m seeing it.”
Hearing this on the radio this morning, I thought I’d better use it to illustrate that straw man pattern that I wrote about last week. Let’s just unpack that paragraph a little bit.
There are people who “don’t believe we should be in Iraq in the first place.” (True enough. I’ll confess, I’m one.)
What do we learn about these people from President Bush. These people ” don’t think Iraq is important.” (That’s not me, is it you?) They “don’t think it matters what the society looks like there.” (Not me. You?)They therefore are either unimpressed or uninterested in the “amount of reconciliation” that’s taking place there. (Me, I’m quite interested, but not yet as impressed as Pres. Bush thinks I should be, even though, at the national level, the reconciliation is not going as fast as “some” would like, and I take this to be one of those rare cases where he, himself, is one of the “some.”)
But Pres. Bush understands why “some” are not impressed; it’s because we don’t believe, as he does, that “the security of the United States and the peace of the world depend upon a democracy in the Middle East and Iraq.” There’s a logic problem here, or maybe a scientific one. My ability to “see” the progress should depend on observable facts that demonstrate the progress, preferably things that can be expressed even in numbers and that can stand up in a crazy world where contrary facts are allowed for observation and discussion.
But Pres. Bush says that to see the facts he sees, you first have to believe what he believes. That makes me nervous. But it’s not my main point.
My main point is, to quote Ronald Reagan, “there he goes again.” Pres. Bush has acknowledged the existence of a category of Americans (actually, a majority of Americans, depending on how you word the poll question) “who don’t believe we should be in Iraq in the first place.” But in order to demonstrate to us the error of our belief, he assigns us a number of other thoughts and feelings that most of us don’t share, but if we did share them, it would be really easy to make us look kind of stupid or uncaring or something like that.
I’ve been planning to start a new category called “volunteer speechwriter,” where I occasionally offer my services to the likes of Pres. Bush to suggest alternatives to how they might address us, if they wanted to elevate the level of intellectual honesty in their approach.
I have to go cover an important political event now, which I’ll write about for the morning. But tomorrow, I’ll try my hand at a version of the speech I think Pres. Bush should give, if he wants to make the same arguments he made in Australia, only in a less intellectually bankrupt way.
Feel free to try your hand at it in the meantime. Or, if you think I’m being unkind by subjecting Bush’s words to this level of nitpicking analysis, feel free to say so.
Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.
The first problem is addressing anything stated or written by Bush is trying to understand if he makes any sense. I conclude he makes no sense at all. I was going to say that perhaps the President means that for those who believe the US should never have gone to Iraq in the first place, there is no room for forgiveness or reconciliation of him and his supporters. But then I reread the paragraph and he says: “there’s no political reconciliation that can take place to justify your opinion.” He’s talking about “political reconciliation” in Iraq and I think he means opponents of the war in Iraq are not allowing room for any measure of political reconciliation in Iraq to be satisfied in changing our opinions. His speech is inartful and obscure at best but I think that is what he means.
A big part of Bush’s problem to communicate is that he has no idea what the opinions of those who opposed his attack on Iraq think nor does he seem to care. His straw man is pure projection of what he assumes others think rather than a position taken by some person representing a number of people’s thoughts. An honest person would address bona fide critics with something besides accusing them of treason or cowardice (”Cut and run” or “Defeatocrats”). An intellectually honest persons would at least try to give reasons why that is not a good policy. The intellectual and indeed the moral bankruptcy of the President is revealed by his own snide remarks or those of his VP or their aids who have nothing but school yard taunts for those who disagree. There is a total refusal to engage in give and take reasoned debate. Their inability to respond by anything other than school yard taunts implies that they know they would lose in an intellectually honest debate.
Another big problem is that the whole idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East was at best an after thought or fig leaf to prop up the venture after the WMD lies became clear. For Bush this is just another slogan or bumper sticker. What this really means is a government which the “Decider” finds acceptable. Maybe the government of Iran is not the model democracy but they have elections which are more honest than the ones we have in this country. But the trouble is that government is not acceptable to the Decider. It comes down to the issue not of democracy but of “security” and what level of insecurity is acceptable for the people of the United States and internationally.
It is odd that people who would never think that it would be realistic or wothwhile to try to eliminate poverty on a global scale have no problem thinking they can eliminate global insecurity by some panacea. Even assuming Bush was being honest is his arguments and his thinking, he seems essentially to be arguing that eliminating insecurity (”terrorism”) is achieved through a panacea: democracy. Setting up a working government in Iraq will not eliminate insecurity or stop terrorism any more than returning Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan will do it. The United States should try where it can to eliminate global insecurity recognizing that it may never be eliminated and that there are no panaceas.
Ok, as one of the President’s supporters and someone who thinks it’s important that US troops stay there for now, let me take a crack at this. I think the reconciliation that he’s talking about is between the tribal chiefs in Anbar and the rest of Iraq. Broadly, he’s speaking about the idea of national reconciliation between the peoples of Iraq.
He continues to suggest that those who want withdrawl won’t be happy with any amount of evidence that suggests success. I agree that that paints with too broad of a brush. Surely there are some that would (and I hope I’m including you, Eric). If he had inserted the word ’some’ in there then I think he saves himself. (Incidentally, I do believe that there are some who would want to leave no matter what.)
“If you believe like I believe, that the security of the United States and the peace of the world depend upon a democracy in the Middle East and Iraq, then you can see progress. And I’m seeing it.” I think that he’s saying that only one side is open minded enough to see the progress that’s happening. I can fully understand why this would infuriate the opposition and it’s a bad thing for him to say. It accuses all of his opponents of arguing in bad faith.
Of course, I can’t help but find it funny that jonerik’s comment is largely making the same argument. Bush couldn’t have been serious about bringing democracy. Funny that the thing was called ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ then, no? Also he brings up the canard about ‘WMD lies’ even though it was widely believed left, right and center that Saddam had them.
This level of intellectual bankruptcy isn’t just an issue with President Bush or even his party. There’s plenty of it from prominent Democrats and full truckloads of it from the anti-war side.
Okay, we’ve decided to arm the tribal chiefs in Anbar because now they’re willing to kill al Qiada in Iraq. And who are they going use the weapons on next? The Shia, who we are also arming. Who armed the Taliban? Unless we’ve given the chiefs weapons like the land mines that go dead after a certain time, all we’ve done is made sure the up-coming civil war will be unusually bloody. The question is do we stick around to referee; I’d say no. Though the point may be moot, since we’re apparently fast running out of deployable troops, and by next April, Bush we be pulling troops out of Iraq because there won’t be any alternative.
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