Bryan Keefer is co-author of the New York Times bestseller about
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Process, Not Product
It’s always fun watching the White House try and shift the goalposts on the war in Iraq. The rationale for the war started out, of course, as weapons of mass destruction/ties to terrorism/Saddam was a mean, nasty guy. (Also something about troops being showered with flowers and candy by nubile young women.) Then it was keeping the terrorists out of our streets. Then it was bringing democracy to the Middle East (which is turning out to be a long, hard slog). Then it was staying the course in order to demonstrate that we’ll stay the course.
The whole thing keeps getting more and more self-referential. The new incarnation is: We have to stay there to fight the terrorists blowing people up on the streets who weren’t blowing people up on the streets before we get there. (Yeah, I know Saddam was a bad guy, but I thought that’s why we wanted to get rid of him, not replace him with suicide bombers.)
Here’s Bush last Sunday:
This course is going to be difficult largely because the terrorists have chosen to wage war against a future of freedom. They are waging war against peace in Iraq. As democracy in Iraq takes root, the enemies of freedom, the terrorists, will become more desperate, more despicable, and more vicious.
Just last week, the terrorists called for the death of anyone, including women and the elderly, who supports the democratic process in Iraq. They have deliberately targeted children receiving candy from soldiers. They have targeted election workers registering Iraqis to vote. They have targeted hospital workers who are caring for the wounded. We can expect such atrocities to increase in the coming months because the enemy knows that its greatest defeat lies in the expression of free people, and freely enacted laws, and at the ballot box.
We will stand with the Iraqi people. It’s in our interest to stand with the Iraqi people. It’s in our interest to lay the foundation of peace. We’ll help them confront this barbarism, and we will triumph over the terrorist’s dark ideology of hatred and fear.
The other rationale floated recently is just as self-referential: Because soldiers have died in Iraq, we should stay and fight. Bush today: “In this war, some of our best citizens have made the ultimate sacrifice. We mourn the loss of every life. We pray for their loved ones. And we will honor their sacrifice by completing the mission and laying the foundation for peace.”
Of course, by that rationale, we should never stop doing anything, because we’ve already invested time and/or money doing it. (Can’t end those subsidies to groundhog ranches—think of all those groundhogs, and groundhog farmers, who have spent their lives groundhog farming!)
It’s sort of evil genius, though—if you make the war about the process of the war, rather than the outcome (or the reason you started it in the first place), there’s no logical way to argue against it. Then you can just suggest that everyone who doesn’t like the way it’s going wants to “cut and run,” or hates freedom, or hates puppies and flowers and candy and babies.
- August 30, 2005
filed under: Politics