Bush Speech: Now We Know Posted by Heather Hurlburt

This morning's speech is not the smoothest-running piece of prose ever produced by the Bush White House -- it loops around how evil and nasty (but officially not "insane" -- that's progress, I suppose, if we understand that our enemies are also rational actors) Islamic radicals are before getting to what I think is meant to be the point -- a five-part anti-terrorism agenda.  (Aspiring speechwriters note:  there's no signpost or "nut graf" at the top of this thing, so I am really flummoxed if I only listen to the first 5 minutes before nodding off, or need to tell you what it's about without reading all of it.)  I don't have anything to add to my earlier commentary on the level of rhetoric, so I'll move to the agenda.  Its five items cover much of the rhetorical ground of fighting extremism, but we get almost nothing on how the government is pursuing items 1-3, and no mention at all of anything that requires diplomacy, coalitions, negotiations or compromise.  Hmmm.

1.  prevent attacks before they occur.  Here we get some numbers of attacks and surveillance operations prevented, no details, which I gather are supposed to be new.  coming after several pages of fulminating about how evil our enemies are, I certainly didn't find the numbers reassuring.  But then, I guess I'm not supposed to be reassured.

2.  deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and their terrorist allies.  Best they can do here is claim credit for A.Q. Khan again, in a paragraph so rote that it was probably lifted straight out of some office-level talking points.

3. deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw states.  sure sounds like a good idea to me.  so when will we be sealing the iraq-syria border, or the afghanistan-pakistan border?  And, umm, there's that little matter of radical groups that find support and shelter in allied states.  You'd never know from this speech that attacks had been planned and carried out from European cells and bases, yet those have been the most successful and bloody ones of late.

4.  deny the militants control of any nation.  Here we have, at long last, a rationale for Iraq:  "the terrorists want to overthrow a rising democracy, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror..."  What's odd about this Iraq segment (which circles around to this exact point twice, as if maybe we didn't get it the first time) is that it inflates the "elected leaders of Iraq" to great rhetorical heights -- "strong and steadfast" -- and assures us that "democracy, when it grows, is no fragile flower; it is a healthy, sturdy tree." (Ummm, Mr. President, see Nicaragua.)  Yet his argument seems to assume that if we withdrew, Zarqawi would be in control in Baghdad tomorrow.

5.  deny the militants future by replacing hatred and resentment with hope and opportunity across the broader Middle East.  here we learn that "America is making this stand in practical ways.  We're encouraging our friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to take the path of reform..."  a perfectly reasonable paragraph that could have been written at any time in at least the last 15 years, maybe longer.

So what I see as new here is yet another explicit rationale for Iraq:  we have to stay the course because "would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people and its resources?"  (The next time your lefty friends tell you it's all about oil, they'll have heard it from the President here first.)

So when I said up top that there was no signposts graf (remember that high school composition advice:  tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em) I was exaggerating slightly.  There is this:

"In this new century, freedom is once again assaulted by enemies determined to roll back generations of democratic progress.  Once again, we're responding to a global cam paign of fear with a global campaign of freedom.  and once again, we will see freedom's victory."

OK, it's about freedom.  I didn't watch this one live, but I find it hard to believe that the President got up the cadence to deliver these three freedoms  well.  I'm having trouble thinking of a living orator not trained in the church who could.  Aspiring speechwriters, write for the abilities of the speaker you have, not the one you might with you had.  Now you can head for the bar.

And would somebody please tell the President that "the peace that freedom brings" is not looking so great in Latin America?

Comments

[rob]

bravo! quite a dissection. Ah well, in the end, it's as prosaic as oil, isn't it? If they had just come straight out and said it -- hell, who knows; we might have voted him in after all. As it is, it is a nation of hypocrites with idealism as a balm.

[Dan Kervick]

4. deny the militants control of any nation. Here we have, at long last, a rationale for Iraq: "the terrorists want to overthrow a rising democracy, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror..."

Without explicitly saying so, this portion of the speech seems to include a tacit admission of miscalculation and failure. There was clearly no impending threat before the war of Islamist militants seizing control of Iraq. So, if denying militants control of a country is now a reason for staying in Iraq, that is because the Islamist threat in Iraq is a problem primarilly of our own making.

But I say point four only includes a "tacit admission" of failure, because it will only be recognized as such an admission by those who have some knowledge of conditions in Iraq before the war. True to form, Bush has phrased his points in such a way as to continue to pull the wool over the eyes of the rubes he was able to deceive before the war. If someone was, in 2002, talked into believing that Iraq was a hotbed of ter'ism and militant Islamist radicalism, they will just go on thinking so. It would be nice if Bush could find it within himself someday to say "Sorry, I f...ed up". Maybe it will come on Larry King in 2026.

The remaining four points of the agenda are war on terrorism staples - nothing new, and they have little to do with Iraq. Bush is trying to change the subject, as usual.

[John Penta]

Heather: To be fair to the Admin, in the case of Nicaragua they've been pretty clear (as embassies go) that it's just not cool to coup in Latin America (to pull a phrase...).

[J Thomas]

OK for nicaragua. But here's venezuela right in our own back yard and we can't even invade them because we're too busy in iraq.

[muhtar]

Thank you for your sharing.! seslichat seslisohbet

[cheap coach handbags]

Thank you for your sharing! I like i very much!

[chat]

thanks for sharing Sohbet many people are pay more attention to one's wearing than before, especially a watch. Chat .
Perhaps when you went to some place far away Chat you must borrow it from friends Sohbet you can get everything you want in this game
Chat money to invest in other industry which will return you good profit. Sohbet when you look at the surface of the watches
Egitim from the city you live in and thought you knew nobody there exsohbet

[rokettube]

en güzel rokettube videoları,
en muhteşem sex izleme sitesi
en kral youjizz yeri
kaliteli pornoların bulunduğu tek mekan
yabancı sitelerden özenle seçilmiş muhteşem ötesi porn sitesi...