Being John McCain and Reading George W. Bush Posted by Heather Hurlburt

The Iraq dam is broken.  John McCain has a proposal.  President Bush has (another) new rationale.  Senate Democrats have a proposal, and... hmm, Senate Republicans have almost exactly the same proposal, except that it doesn't require the Administration to submit a "campaign plan" with non-binding dates for phased redeployment.

Later this week I'll write a bit about what is going on in Washington, but today I play catch-up on reading some of these plans... so you don't have to.  (For previous installments in my series of close readings of Iraq proposals, look here and here.)

We begin with the President's Veteran's Day speech, which my fellow speechwriter David Kusnet says "may be the worst speech of his presidency."  My view is that it started out decently drafted and then the wonks got hold of it -- David is right that it is full of bizarre, wonky little excursions which you'd need an advanced degree in Beltway blameology to follow.  Quick, what's the name of the UN investigation into the political murder in Lebanon?  That kind of thing.

However, it is way up there in contention for being the most dishonest speech the President has given.

Plenty has been written about the dishonesty of saying that "a bipartisan Senate investigation found no pressure to change..." intelligence, and that Congress saw the "same" intelligence the White House did.  I don't have anything to add there.

But what I object to has been passed over -- the continued, anti-factual, conflation of Iraq, Al-Qaeda and the fight against jihadism more broadly.

Like this:

Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions in Iraq -- claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. (Applause.) The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse. The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom -- and, yet, the militants killed more than 150 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan.

This paragraph gets multiple Fs for logic:  if we had invaded Iraq a few days after Bush's inauguration, would September 11 not have happened?  (No, of course not.)  Is there, in fact, evidence that extremism has been "strengthened by the actions in Iraq?"  Yes, from the statements of radical recruiters to the ever-rising flows of extremist fighters into Iraq, as documented by Brookings' Iraq Index.  And if you don't happen to know that the horrific Beslan attack was conducted by fighters from the long-running civil war in Russia's restive province of Chechnya, you might conclude from this paragraph that Al Qaeda had attacked Russian kids because it hates their freedom.  But you'd be utterly wrong.

Then we have a similarly dishonest paragraph conflating the motives of all Islamists who kill photogenic white people.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. We have seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim's grieving mother and said, "I don't feel your pain ... because I believe you're an infidel." And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

Yes, the quote from Theo van Gogh's killer is evocative and horrendous.  Only trouble?  No one has ever alleged that the guy had links with organized extremists of any kind.  So when Bush says "our enemy," he means every violent, disaffected Muslim everywhere? 

Last I checked, we weren't at war in the Netherlands... although there was that Congressional Act to let us invade the Hague should any of our military ever come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

Something else about this speech.  It sets out five priorities for fighting terror.  The Iraq war is only introduced as a subset of point number 4:  deny the militants control of any nation.

The militants would be in no danger of taking over Iraq had we either not invaded it or done the job properly, with enough troops and planning to keep Iraqi institutions functional from the get-go.  But that's looking backward.

More important is to look forward and wonder whether this rhetorical effort to submerge the Iraq mission is laying the groundwork for rhetoric that covers troops withdrawals next year, declares victory -- the militants aren't in control -- and moves on to something else.

If you doubt that the Administration can be this flexible, consider that relegated to priority number 5 is the notion that was the centerpiece of speech-making earlier this year -- bringing democracy to the wider Middle East.

It's instructive to compare this to John McCain's speech at AEI last week.

McCain proposed an addition of 10,000 troops immediately, and perhaps more, to adopt something like the oil-spot proposals of Andrew Krepinevich and others, which involve, as you've read, using enough troops to really stay in the areas we clear and make them secure.

McCain puts forward the proposal one would expect from those who believe that this war, and the building of democracy, were important enough to do in the first place -- be in it to win it.  He says Iraq is, strategically, "more important than Vietnam," which one could take many ways.  But I'll translate it as -- it's worth all the blood and treasure we're spending, and more.

McCain's other proposals are less eye-catching:  stop rotating senior officers out so frequently, pressure Syria more, better integrate our counter-insurgency efforts, create a truly national Iraqi army and "win the homefront."

What's so strange about being John McCain in 2005 is that this is a pretty strong critique from the right of the Administration's attempt not to put in any more troops but rather to start taking them out next year; accept ethnically-based military entities where they can keep the peace; and appease the homefront. 

McCain has his own intellectual dishonesty, though.  Because he's John McCain, running for the Republican nomination, he praises the Administration's "clear, hold, build" strategy while he's in the middle of presenting an alternative to it.

What will the public think of their beloved maverick's stance on this one??

So here we have a critic from the GOP who is praising what t he Administration says while proposing to do something different; and critics from the Democrats who pan what the Administration says while proposing something that looks rather like what many are betting the Administration will actually do.  Who could blame the public for being confused?

More on that tomorrow.

Comments

[doc]

"If you doubt that the Administration can be this flexible,..."

wow....you are extremely polite - i just call it lying...

[Robert M]

McCain's verbal flipflopping has always been a problem as you so correctly point out. It soured me on the man along time ago. His efforts on the torture front are to be applauded.

Bush's problem is of his own making. Everyday the comfort level for America's electorate goes up w/ no attack. As a result the electorate is becoming more comfortable with the idea of examining how we came to invade Iraq and the subsquent problems there.

Militarily(that is if you count the of Jihadist killed we are winning) we are losing. That is because if you follow the dictum that war is an extension of politics by other means, we have not been able to provide the security necessary to return to normal means.
politics under normal means requires that you be able to conduct the business of politics and everyday life without being leery of having your life ended(this goes directly to the issue of the number of troops necessary to hold-secure- the taken fortification-Iraq; how long would we have to secure the position; how much would it cost?; how would the people of Iraq greet us- I think it is safe to say even that the Shia , the biggest beneficiaries have not greeted us with roses).

This is what the electorate sees. The frequency is not an issue for them, it is that there are bombings period. These bombings do not take place with the code of the IRA. Blinds are not closed or opened and phone calls are not made. The electorate here recognizes that the Jihadists are simply walking into places and blowing themselves up. The electorate sees that this has not occured in the USA because of our security regulations under relatively secure circumstances, i.e. a functionaing government apparatus. They ask if we had not invaded Iraq, despite knowing the horrible things(rape rooms, Uday and Qusay thing for young women, the killing of members of national sports teams if they lost) done under Saddam, would the Iraqi people be under the seige of Jihadists? Would those Jihadists, after being denied a base in Afghanistan, having to practise in the dark, unable to train w/ relative levels of impunity be doing this in caves or have an active battlefield in which to practise 4G warfare? Would Syria and Iran be as active against the USA? And lastly how could the information as to the real clincher for invasion, nuclear weapons, be so wrong and no one is held accountable?

For the record I support the invasion of Iraq. What I feared was that Bush would use the war for his domestic purposes(He has). If you follow the money and you had a government and a series of following goverments whom had made efforts in the past to obtain nuclear weapons I believe that it was necessary to remove that threat. What I can not abide is the feckless and irresponsible behavior that has occured since the invasion. This behavior is what has brought Bush to this point in his presidency under the situtation I described above.

As to behavior in the future, I do not think either party is going to attempt a plan for Iraq other than nibbling around the edges. The bases of both parties hold them in thrall as though they were magnets. The base of each party likewise repels the other. The outcome in Iraq will hinge on what the Sunni's do and how they do in the upcoming elections for seats in the Parliament/Congress. If they reach a critical mass whereby they can pull the last of their extremists from the vision of the Jihadists, the Jihadists will be laid out like new sod.(They will sprout like weeds from time to time but never reach their current threat level). Everybody needs to understand as long as anybody are willing to committ suicide to promote their ideas the levels of security we had in the USA prior to Sept 11, 2001 are not coming back. They shouldn't either for a variety of reasons to be discussed at a later date). this will allow a normalization of politics for them, which may include militias clashing
, but not attacks aginst the infrastructure for the greater good-water, electricity, roads, etc. If the elections fail for whatever reasons I do not think we have or can muster w/ help enough troops to calm the situtation.