Potemkin convention Day 4: Bush shares the Divine Will with his people

Bush presented himself Thursday evening as a compassionate conservative" who's also a tough-talkin' Texan who's gonna git them terraists.

As a performance, it wasn't bad.  As John Dean has observed, Bush "when he concentrates can deliver his written speeches with eloquence."  (Worse Than Watergate [2004])

Atrios helpfully posted the prepared text at his blog prior to Bush's delivery.  It was interesting to follow the prepared text as he spoke.  Bush stuck to it with only the most minor variations.  No significant ad libs at all that I caught.

The Big Pundits and the pollsters will be looking hard at how his speech will play politcally.  Some of it will even be worth hearing.  But even keeping in mind the very partisan context, it's worth looking at the content of Bush's speech.

The Iraq War

In the early 1970s, when John Kerry was protesting against the war policies of Richard Nixon in Vietnam, supporters of the war often said, "We never should have been there in the first place.  But now that we are there, we ought to go ahead and win it."  Explanations of what "winning it" meant to them were rare.

But you know something is strange when the supporters of a war are saying, "We never should have been there in the first place!"  Not exactly up there with "Remember the Maine!" as a war slogan.

Something like that is already starting to happen with Iraq.  Bush said:

In Saddam Hussein, we saw a threat. Members of both political parties, including my opponent and his running mate, saw the threat, and voted to authorize the use of force.

It looks like the prowar slogan for the Iraq War is becoming, "But the other side voted for it, too!"

You can be sure that if the war were popular, if most of the public believed it was "mission accomplished," Bush and his handlers wouldn't be trying to drag his opponent into sharing credit for the war, too.

Bush's world looks a lot like that depicted by Fox News.  In Iraq, "the army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom." Saddam was a madman who had something to do with weapons of mass destruction and the 9/11 attacks.  They have a strong prime minister now and elections are coming up in January.

Sure, there are a few "ongoing acts of violence."  The guerrillas in Iraq are terrorists who are itching to come to American and kill people here but fortunately we're killing them over there first. You know, the ones here and there how are committing those "ongoing acts of violence."

Maybe Bush's speechwriters have been studying Nixon.  Because Bush was sounding like Tricky Dicky in another way, as well.  In 1968, Nixon ran for president claiming he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War.  It was one secret that was as well-kept as the identity of Deep Throat, the fabled Watergate leaker, because no one knows yet what it was.  Bush has something like that too, it appears:

So our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq is clear: We will help new leaders to train their armies, and move toward elections, and get on the path of stability and democracy as quickly as possible.

In the Foxist fantasy world that Bush describes in talking about those two countries, all that stuff is already happening.  The "the army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom" already.  Mission accomplished again.  So, the troops should be coming home soon, right?

That one sentence on the "mission" may be the most insightful of Bush's speech into the real policy disaster he faces.  He doesn't have a clue how to resolve the counterinsurgency problems in those countries.  He doesn't have the number of troops needed to do it.  The promised elections are likely to be about as meaningful as the "moderation" of Monday and Tuesday evening at this Potemkin convention.  If they happened at all.

In Iraq, that alleged Iraqi army barely exists, and its loyalty and fighting ability is borderline, from the few reports I've encountered.  In Afghanistan, the "national" government controls the capital city of Kabul and a small enclave north of there, both thanks only to the NATO force that keeps them in power.  Both situations are a mess.  And Bush has no clue how to get out of either of them.

Liberating the world - or at least the Middle East

One thing the neoconservative did quite successfully was to coopt the language of human rights and democracy into the service of an aggressively imperialist, radical foreign policy.  So far, the Iraq War is the main application of that approach.  If you like what you see there, you're likely to see a whole lot more of it in a second George W. Bush administration.

In America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (2003), Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay.  They quote a famous speech of John Quincy Adams - one of the main enemies of Andrew Jackson (but I'll save that for another time) - in the House of Representative on Independence Day 1821.  Adams declared the policy of United States to be respect for the independence of other nations and admiration for foreign struggles for freedom.  But, he said, America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.  She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.  She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

At the time, the US didn't really have the power to be spreading the virtues of American democracy into other modern nations by armed force.  But this was also a rejection of the idea of Napoleanic wars of liberation, in which democratic nations would bring freedom to nations ruled by reactionary monarchs by a policy of conquest.  Napolean had actually implemented such a policy in Europe during his reign in France.

Daalder and Lindsay discuss the Bush foreign policy in relation to this traditional American belief:

Bush's foreign policy did not propose that the United States keep its powder dry while it waited for dangers to gather.  The Bush philosophy instead turned John Quincy Adams on his head and argued that the United States should aggressively go abroad searching for monsters to destroy.  That was the logic behind the Iraq War, and it animated the administration's efforts to deal with other rogue states. (my emphasis)

One of the consequences of the Bush foreign policy is the belief that:

... the United States should use its unprecedented power to produce regime change in rogue states.  The idea of regime change was not new to American foreignpolicy.  The Eisenhower administration engineered the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh; the CIA trained Cuban exiles in a botched bid to oust Fidel Castro; Ronald Reagan channeled aid to the Nicaraguan contras to overthrow the Sandinistas; and Bill Clinton helped Serb opposition forces get rid of Slobodan Milosevic.  What was different in the Bush presidency was the willingness, even in the absence of a direct attack on the United States, to use U.S. military forces for the express purpose of toppling other governments.  ...  Unlike proponents of rollback [the Cold War version of wars of liberation against countries dominated by the Soviet Union], who never succeeded in overcoming the argument that their policies would produce World War III, Bush based his policy on the belief that nobody could push back. (my emphasis)

If this seems like a long digression in discussing Bush's convention speech, it's because it's only from this perspective, from the actual context of the Bush policy, that we can glimpse some of the real practical implications behind Bush's grandiloquent words about sharing the blessings of democracy with other nations.  What Daalder and Lindsay described above is at the core of neoconservative view of the world; the high-sounding claims for wars of liberation that are the ideological backbone - not the reality, but the ideological face - of the neoconservative policy of aggressive wars.  Daalder and Lindsay suggest that "democratic imperialists" might be a more appropriate name for the neoconservatives.  But that suggestions gives the "democracy" part of their ideology more weight than it deserves.

Reference to terrorism and 9/11 were certainly not lacking in Bush's speech Thursday.  But he seemed to give this notion of wars of liberation greater weight in presenting his foreign policy framework, with particular reference to the Middle East:

We are staying on the offensive striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope, and the peace we all want. And we will prevail. ...

Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and theTaliban are history, more than 50million people have been liberated, and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East. ... [W]e are serving a vital and historic cause that will make our country safer. Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps us keep the peace.

He put into the mouth of a soldier writing home from Iraq, the link between the vision of wars of liberation and the war on terrorism:

One Army Specialist wrote home: "We are transforming a once sick society into a hopeful place The various terrorist enemies we are facing in Iraq," he continued, "are really aiming at you back in the United States. This is a test of will for our country. We soldiers of yours are doing great and scoring victories in confronting the evil terrorists."

This story fits well into the long - and often inglorious - history of using atrocity stories to justify wars whose purposes may be very far from the promotion of human rights:

The people we have freed won't forget either. Not long ago, seven Iraqi men came to see me in the Oval Office. They had "X"s branded into their foreheads, and their right hands had been cut off, by Saddam Hussein's secret police, the sadistic punishment for imaginary crimes. During our emotional visit one of the Iraqi men used his new prosthetic hand to slowly write out, in Arabic, a prayer for God to bless America. I am proud that our country remains the hope of the oppressed, and the greatest force for good on this earth. (my emphasis)

The terrorists know. They know that a vibrant, successful democracy at the heart of the Middle East will discredit their radical ideology of hate. ... The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region. Palestinians will hear the message that democracy and reform are within their reach, and so is peace with our good friend Israel. Young women across the Middle East will hear the message that their day of equality and justice is coming. Young men will hear the message that national progress and dignity are found in liberty, not tyranny and terror. Reformers, and political prisoners, and exiles will hear the message that their dream of freedom cannot be denied forever. And as freedom advances heart by heart, and nation by nation America will be more secure and the world more peaceful. ...

The progress we and our friends and allies seek in the broader Middle East will not come easily, or all at once. Yet Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of liberty to transform lives and nations. ... that noble story goes on. I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century. I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honorable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world. (my emphasis)

... Having come this far, our tested and confident Nation can achieve anything. (my emphasis)

... This young century will be liberty's century. By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world. By encouraging liberty at home, we will build a more hopeful America. Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom. This is the everlasting dream of America and tonight, in this place, that dream is renewed. Now we go forward grateful for our freedom, faithful to our cause, and confident in the future of the greatest nation on earth. (my emphasis)

In the campaign, John Kerry is unlikely to get into any debates about vague and abstract phrases about Liberty versus Tyranny and Good versus Evil.  But it's important for people to remember that behind these glowing, flowery phrases, what they translate into in reality is the Iraq War, torture in the gulag like we saw at Abu Ghuraib, and the increasing international isolation of the United States.

And it's worth talking about some of these grand abstractions.  Doesn't anybody recognize how bad it sounds for American politicians to be saying that we're "the greatest nation on earth"?  They should all just stop it, really.  It's not patriotism.  It's mindless jingoism and narcissism.  If someone from another country wants to say that, fine.  For our politicians to be saying it is arrogance that we can do without.

And no, our nation cannot "achieve anything."  That is also arrogance.  And to see its practical consequences, you just need to make an effort to follow the news from Iraq for a week or two.

And "a calling from beyond the stars"?  There's a real strain of fanaticism in the Bush administration, and apparently in Bush himself.  It's doing real damage to America and the world.  And to the real cause of democracy, as distinguished from the propaganda version used to justify wars of liberation in fulfillment of our "calling from beyond the stars."

No matter how much it may flatter the narcissism of "the greatest nation on earth" to believe that we've been given a Mission from God - "a calling from beyond the stars" - to conduct wars of liberation to free the heathen and benighted nations of the Middle East, most of the world does not see it that way.  Most of the democratic world does not see it that way.

And there are some practical matters that Americans will have to face to conduct the divine mission Bush laid out Thursday night - military conscription, a new series of wars, more brutal colonial-style occupations like we have in Iraq, eventually but inevitably a major new international arms race.

It all sounded grand to the Republicans in New York.  But this was a convention where people thought it was a big chuckle to wear purple heart band-aids that mocked the Purple Heart medals that US soldiers get when they are wounded.  John Kerry won three in Vietnam, so the Republicans thought it would be cute to mock them.

To implement Bush's vision of America's "a calling from beyond the stars," a lot more Americans will be getting Purple Hearts.

Domestic Issues

Bush talked quite a bit about domestic issues.  But he had surprisingly little to say about his economic triumphs, for the fairly obvious reason that there aren't any.  A lot of it was Chamber of Commerce boilerplate and old-time Republican ideas with a slightly modified covering - keep cutting taxes for the wealthy, cut back environmental laws, further weaken labor laws, cut taxes for the wealthy some more, start hacking up Social Security, reduce legal protection for consumers, block any meaningful health care reform, and keep cutting back taxes for the wealthy.

Bush has become notorious for singling out existing programs for praise and then trying to slash their budgets soon after.  Based on that, we can expect Bush to start trying to make major cuts in school funding, early childhood education, college grants, government health insurance programs, rural health centers, job training and community colleges.

Pop psychology

Near the end, when he talked briefly about families who had lost soldiers, he visibly started choking up at the point he was saying, "And in those military families..."

I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to Bush.  (Duh!)  But he really seemed to be struggling to keep his preppy smirk under control during the whole speech. And at two of the most senstive lines, he had a distinctly smug smile.  One was talking about his tough decisions.  "And the toughest came on Iraq."  The other time was one the line, "American has done this kind of work before [wars of liberation] - and there have always been doubters."

"My fellow Americans, for as long as our country stands, people will look to the resurrection of New York City and they will say: Here buildings fell, and here a nation rose."  I liked the sound of that.  But in the context of our "calling from beyond the stars," which came in the next paragraph, the religious symbolism makes me think once again that Bush has some incredibly grandiose ideas about his relations to the Almighty.