August 10, 2005
Looking for new words, but missing new policy
The Bush administration never has cared whether its words match the facts. "Weapons of mass destruction" -- like the words that sought to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 -- described things that did not exist. The White House substituted new words when President Bush needed new justifications.
Recently, however, the administration's efforts to change the subject by changing the words has not worked. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others suddenly stopped talking about a "global war on terror" and claimed instead to be involved in "a global struggle against violent extremism." Interesting substitution. Would Gen. Sherman have said, "Struggle is hell"? Would movie fans have been eager to see Struggle of the Worlds? Would we consider our parents and grandparents the Greatest Generation if they had won World Struggle II?
Why the sudden exercise in creative phraseology? Any president who talks about a shooting war involving the United States is expected to get on with winning it decisively. It was a war when the U.S. took on the Taliban in Afghanistan just months after 9/11, and it was a war when U.S. troops rolled so easily across Iraq in the spring of 2003. But while Afghanistan clearly was part of a "global war on terror," Iraq wasn't -- although President Bush continued to insist that it was. In a tragic but foreseeable twist, the war in Iraq has become a generator of and magnet for the terrorism the president has promised to defeat. After the fact, the "war on terror" and the war on Iraqi insurgents have become inseparable.
While the terrorists have come to Iraq, however, victory has not. The rallying power of "war on terrorism," which President Bush used to win reelection in 2004, has faded as more Americans -- now about 60 percent -- have lost confidence in his handling of the shooting war in Iraq. There haven't been enough U.S. and "coalition" troops to make the real war go away. There certainly haven't been enough Iraqi troops. So Mr. Rumsfeld and others, including national security adviser Stephen Hadley (Iraq is "more than just a military war on terror") and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers ("If you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution") joined the effort to make the war go away with words.
If there's no war, it doesn't have to be won. The United States can't pull troops out of Iraq next year -- in time for midterm elections -- if there's a war on, especially if it's part of a larger "war." But if it's just a struggle, then Iraqis, even if they're not completely trained, should be able to carry on without us.
Semantics didn't work. Poll numbers kept dropping. So last week, President Bush insisted again that the country faces a "war on terror." Since terror is a tactic, one analyst said, that's like declaring war on flanking maneuvers. Good comparison. Mr. Bush is trying to outflank rising sentiment that invading Iraq did not make Americans safer from terrorism.
Posted by Opinion staff at August 10, 2005 6:22 PMWell, the Post has finally devolved into complaining about semantics. It must have been a slow editorial day. The Post’s days would have been more profitably spent understanding the news from two weeks ago.
The Post is complaining that some people, other than George Bush, are talking about a war against violent extremism rather than a war against terror. Perhaps the Post would be happier with the term “Global War against Terrorists�. Of course, most of the snarky editorial would then go away. So, maybe not.
I see the Post also enlisted the Don Wright to support their editorial. I wonder what came first: the editorial or the cartoon. Or, are we to suppose to believe that it is a happy coincidence. That probably happens more often, but I rarely even glance at Wright’s work. He has little to say.
Both the Post and EJ Dionne pick up on the poll, a full two weeks old by now, claiming that 60% of the respondents think the Iraq war was a mistake. Now, one would expect that both Dionne and the Post would be interested in understanding the poll. But, no. Both seem unaware that the 49% of the respondents claimed to be Democrats while in the population that number is about 34%. So, Gallup over sampled Democrats by 15% and under sampled Republicans by about the same amount. Fifteen percent of the respondents could not be bothered to register to vote. Finally, the under 30 demographic was also over sampled. Therefore, the poll was useless except as grist for editorials. The Post bit. Two weeks was more than enough time for the Post to do some basic fact checking. So, I repeat. What do these people do all day long?
It seems that the Post is still in love with the nuance of John Kerry. They forget that President Bush has little use for nuance. He says what he means in a way that only the most nuanced can fail to understand. The Post seems to believe that the President’s plan is to change the meaning of the war in Iraq and hence the task. That is the foolish nuance of a pretender, not of a performer.
Rick
