"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
The coverage I've seen on Bush's Monday speech about the Iraq War (President Discusses War on Terror and Upcoming Iraqi Elections 12/12/05) seems to focus mostly on Bush's response to one of the few questions he accepted from the audience, in which he mentioned that something like 30,000 Iraqis had been killed during the war so far. Actually, the fact that he even answered questions was news. And that proves that we're seeing progress. Not so long ago it was news when professional reporters actually started to ask Bush probing questions.
Reading the text of the speech, I can see why the news coverage would be muted. He didn't really break any new ground in that speech, although he put a special focus on the Iraqi elections coming this Thursday.
It strikes me that Iraqi elections are both good and bad for Bush in trying to generate public and Congressional support for his policies. It's good in that holding elections sounds a lot like democracy to most Americans. And that's obviously partially the case; these are competitive elections.
The downside for Bush's PR efforts, though, is that the details of the election, beyond the bare fact that it is occurring, is essentially unknown territory for most of us. And I include myself in that, even though I'm paying attention to the Iraq news daily. The US media are not reporting very much or very prominently on how the elections work, who the parties are, what their programs are about, what to lookfor in the results, etc.
And the administration is now caught in the web of promises and optimistic predictions it has been making since months before the war began. If our goal is now bringing democracy to Iraq - having achieved the official goals of getting rid of Iraqi WMDs and ending any connections between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda before the first shot in the war was fired - then haven't we achieved that goal if there is a successful election? If a brilliantly successful election comes off (and that's how the administration and the Republicans will spin it, regardless of the outcome), doesn't that mean that The Terrorists, or the "terrorists and Saddamists" to use Bush's new pet phrase, are too weak to affect the outcome of political life in Iraq? So when are the troops coming home?
That's a big part of the administration's dilemma right now. Having overpromised for so long, and not able to resist constant proclamations of victory and tipping points reached and last throes approaching and so on, it's credibility on the war is pretty much shot, except for hardcore Republicans. And even some of them are getting wobbly on the issue.
And before we get too carried away about the blossoming of democracy in Iraq, these pieces remind us that this week's election takes place in something less than fully democratic conditions:
Iraq's perilous, pricey campaign by Ilene Prusher Christian Science Monitor 12/13/05
Street Battles, Bombings in Baghdad ... by Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog 12/13/05
Bush's Shiite Gang in Iraq by Robert Dreyfuss, Dreyfuss Report blog 12/13/05
This paragraph from one of Bush's answers to a question from the audience stands out for it's basic ugliness:
The enemy has got one weapon. See, they can't defeat us militarily. What they can do is they can -- and will -- kill innocent people in the hopes of trying to get the UnitedStates of America to leave the battlefield early. The only way we can lose is if we lose our nerve. And they know that. And they've stated that publicly.
That part deserves a lot of focus, even thoughit's not new. This is a setup for a stab-in-the-back theory for Republicans to use when the direct American participation in the Iraq War is over and the war becomes a sentimental Lost Cause for the Party. It's a poisonous attitude. E.J. Dionne, Jr., comments on that idea in his latest column: Beyond The War Spin Washington Post 12/13/05. He specifically looks at the sometimes timid way that Democrats respond to this kind of bullying.
There is no magic solution to this problem, and Republicans will continue to exploit it. But if they do nothing else, Democrats have to stop being defensive in the face of Republican attacks. To suggest that the United States might be stronger if it found a way out from under an open-ended commitment in Iraq is neither weak nor unpatriotic. For a party to have differences over how to solve the seemingly intractable problems the Bush policy has created in Iraq is neither surprising nor feckless.
And to question this administration's optimistic claims is simply good sense in light of what has happened in Iraq up to now. After all, it's the administration's wildly optimistic assumptions that led us to fight a war with too few troops, too little planning, and Rodney King-like expectations that the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds would all just get along. In any event, why shouldn't Democrats be divided on the war? So is the rest of the country. And so are Republicans.
Dionne discusses how Democratic worries over their appeal to "swing voters" lead them to be hesitant to say anything that their opponents could spin as "soft on defense". And he's right as far as it goes about the swing voter consideration.
But now that the Duke Cunningham scandal is opening up a window into a serious problem of corruption in military and intelligence contracting, we should remember that another consideration, perhaps more urgent than swing voters for many people in Congress, is sending the desired message to lobbyists for concerns doing business with the military. Talking tough on defense matters signals support for ever-higher defense budgets, which translates into more contracts on more favorable terms in the ambitions of military-business lobbyists. (Laura Rosen has been digging into this aspect of the Cunningham scandal. See her War and Piece blog and her article Black Contracts American Prospect Online 12/10/05.)
Even though the punditocracy hasn't adopted the habit of commenting on this very important side of military issues and how Congress deals with them, that doesn't mean the rest of us can't. And if we get to the point that even Big Pundits dare to use a phrase like "war profiteering", we'll know that public concern over the issue has become strong enough that even the "public opinion leaders" have to pay attention to it.
As an historical note, "war profiteering" was a commonly used phrase during the Second World War. And the government had specific regulations and administrative resources devoted to controlling the profit margin that companies could earn on war contracts. This is the sort of approach that we can confidently predict will never be initiated by Dick Cheney and the Hallilburton Republicans.
"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05
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