Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Iraq

Iraq Reality vs. President Bush

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In an earlier posting to this blog the point was made that as a lameduck president George W. Bush has nothing to lose other than whatever shreds of dignity might cling to him. We now await the Baker-Hamilton report which is widely reported to include recommendations for phased withdrawal of American troops as well as direct negotiations with Iran and Syria. But we are in the Bush universe and President Bush will commit to neither while his pal Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, says he is ready for both and Iraqi President Talabani has just concluded a visit to Iran where he received a commitment of $1billion for reconstruction.

The only point here is that we have a president who simply refuses to recognize reality. Indeed, he is reminiscent of President  Nixon when he went bonkers in the aftermath of Watergate. So the danger is real that as leader of the free world, Bush will stay the course in Iraq, bomb Iran and ignore Syria while Lebanon burns.

Since a strike at North Korea’s nuclear sites would risk the death of hundreds of thousands of South Koreans Bush is unlikely to act there – but he is equally unlikely to open direct one-on-one negotiations without getting some concessions in advance – which is not really negotiating at all.

Some, including most of the press, ignore the fact that leaders have psychologies and that these can drive actions. Stubborn commitment to failed policies, an unwillingness to recognize or address reality, an inability to hear differing points of view, a refusal to admit mistakes – these are all characteristics of a person we would not trust with a business let alone an entire nation.

“Civil War” or “Faith-Based Melee”?

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The Bush administration is wrangling with the press over whether to call whatever is happening in Iraq a “Civil War”. While Jon Stewart has come up with “Faith-Based Melee” as a possible reference, President Bush spends more time trying to define it as something it is not than figuring out how to stop the bleeding. Bleeding which he started; by choice, not necessity. When the discussion moves into these kind of surreal details it is clear that the game is up and that we are watching the death twitches of a miserably failed operation. The next step will be to announce that the operation was a success but – alas – the patient died of his own hand. For a short but sweet discussion of the great Iraq War Terminology Debate go to the American Journalism Review website for Rem Reider’s take on it all, which includes this straight-forward advice to America’s journalists:

“At any rate, the Bush administration isn’t the nation’s copy desk chief, at least the last time I checked. America’s newspapers and TV stations and news Web sites should start calling the Iraq war what it is, not what someone wishes it were.”

The Man is Baffling

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“HANOI, Nov. 17 — In his first day in the capital of a country that was America’s wartime enemy during his youth, President Bush said today that the American experience in Vietnam contained lessons for the war in Iraq. Chief among them, he said, was that ‘we’ll succeed unless we quit.’ ” [link to NYTimes]

So stated our President during a visit to the nation the US fought for over 10 years before retreating bloodied and bowed. The US lost more than 57,000 in Vietnam and the Vietnamese lost more than 2 million. And here comes Bush telling the Vietnamese that we should have fought longer – “stayed the course” as it were. He is the first sitting President to visit Vietnam (I believe) since that dreadful episode in our nation’s history. So what does he offer? Gracious apologies? No. Essentially he says that – and this is said on Vietnamese soil – if we had just stayed longer, whatever it would have taken – 5, 10, 50 years – we could have beaten those commies. And that’s the lesson of Vietnam according this man – if we just stay in Iraq for 5, 10, 50 years, whatever it takes -we’re gonna beat those Iraqis. Whew. Nothing else to say to that.

Lame Duck Or Wounded Elephant?

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“It is only when the elephant has been attacked or wounded, that he becomes a dangerous enemy.” (from, The Bush Boys, by Captain Mayne Reid, [1856])

There is much talk in the press of checks and balances, and of the President’s expressed offer to cooperate with the victors in the election. Kiwi has suggested that one good test of this would be for the congress to pass legislation calling for an increased commitment to stem cell research.  Then see if he vetoes it.

But the most worrisome part of the current situation is foreign policy.  While there is a lot of talk about Baker-Hamilton dragging the president out of his fog of denial in Iraq, this President is a man who has commented that God chose him for the job and who is, by all reports, stubbornly committed to a foreign policy aimed at proving how big and strong we are.  This in spite of significant evidence that however big and strong we are it is not big and strong enough to handle Iraq, let along North Korea and Iran – short of using the very big and strong weapons.  But like that wounded elephant he has not much to lose now and if he chooses to bomb Iran – well, let the next guy (or gal) pick up whatever pieces are left.

We have had six years of the President telling us to be very, very scared.  Well, OK – now I am – well – at least worried.

Spanking Jumbo*

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There is little to add to the words from all quarters about the election.  But a few random thoughts;

Much of the press’s analysts (sic) began almost immediately asking what the new Democrat-controlled party will do about Iraq. Their thinking (sic again) seems to be that since they don’t like what Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld have done it is time to put up or shut up.  The problem with this approach is that the war is the President’s – he bought it and owns it. Journalists should not have to be reminded that in the United States form of government the President manages foreign policy and serves as Commander-in-Chief.  This is simple high school government class stuff and the likes of Chris Matthews et alia need to get out their old textbooks.

My Kiwi friend reminds me that the Congress can have an enormously positive impact in two important domestic policy areas: stem cell research and cost of drugs.  I would add health care costs in general and tax reform for the middle class, and environmental issues.  One problem will be that the GOP Congress created so many messes that just managing the agenda will be a challenge.

Some journalists have referred to the possibility of the new Congress holding hearings on issues related to the war, energy policy, and environmental issues as “vengeance”.  The checks and balances that have served the interests of the American people for over two hundred years require such hearings. For example, shortly before the election the administration eliminated the office of the inspector general for the Iraq War.  This must not stand and the Congress is where it can be revived in spirit if not in fact.

The long overdue firing of Rumsfeld will mean little as long as the president continues to live in his fantasy world. Gates is, by most accounts, a smart guy who will work with James Baker and Lee Hamilton to extricate us from this Dubya disaster but the president really needs to face the reality he created and to work with the new Congress to find an honorable way out of his dishonorable war. At his press conference yesterday the president continued to operate in his state of denial although he talks less and less of “victory” and more and more of the need for the Iraqis to take over. We shall see.

Finally, this political upheaval presents opportunities to rebuild relationships between the U.S. and its long-suffering allies.  There is no need to pile on here – only to recognize that the U.S. has lost prestige, honor and friends during the Bush years and we can hope that this election is the first step on the long road back

* With apologies to Matt Taibbi, author of “Spanking the Donkey” the best book on the press and the politics of the 2004 presidential campaign.

America’s Investigative Cartoonist

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Garry Trudeau is an American original. He draws a comic strip that has, over the past 26 years, taken on the major political issues, pissed off political figures on both sides of the aisle and entertained end instructed millions of readers.
For both faithful and new readers, his recent episodic series on BD’s recovery from serious wounds in Iraq has been a lesson in compassion, adding to our understanding of what it is to be recovering from serious war wounds, and all of this done with wry humor.

The Washington Post Magazine of October 22 carried a lengthy profile of Trudeau, Doonesbury’s War,  that is a moving description of Trudeau’s and BD’s journey.  Well worth a read.

Kaplan: Genocide in Iraq?

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Robert Kaplan describes his worries about the consequences of withdrawing from Iraq in the current Atlantic Monthly Unbound. Kaplan supported the invasion of Iraq but now realizes that it was “a bet not a policy” and that we have for all intents and purposes lost that bet. His concern now is that the U.S.  withdrawal could also be a bet rather than a policy and that it needs to be managed a whole lot better than the post-war period was “managed” (sic).

While President Bush claims to never have been a “stay the course”  kinda guy, Kaplan worries that politics will demand a precipitous withdrawal that will put Iraqi Sunnis at risk of a genocide that will create enormous problems for the U.S. in the region. Kaplan writes: “We simply cannot contemplate withdrawal under these conditions without putting Iraq’s neighbors on the spot, forcing them to share public responsibility for the outcome, that is if they choose to stand aside and not help us.”

Hmmm. So, we ignore all advice that told us not to invade, lie about intelligence information to justify the invasion, totally screw it up leading to a Civil War and a possible genocide and need those people who told us not to do it to bail us out.  How hopeful should we be?

Arlington East

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On October 14, Cape Codders for Peace and Justice paid homage to lives lost in Iraq by erecting 2700 crosses (indicating Muslim and Jewish with corresponding symbols) on the National Park’s Coast Guard Beach. They called it, “Arlington East.”

No Pain, No gain

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Our Kiwi correspondent has sent a link to a piece from the Weekly Standard’s website that presents serious criticism of the Bush administration – but from a conservative writer in a flagship magazine of conservative thought. Irwin Seltzer’s piece, “Guns and Butter: How the Bush administration’s fiscal policy has narrowed its options in the realm of foreign policy” is worth a read, but raises some questions. These led to an email to Kiwi that is in the Comments below….

The Coming Vote To Impeach

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All votes are important. All elections are important. But in the general election fast approaching this November we have a chance to dump enough Republicans from Congress and elect enough [angry] Democrats to produce an impeachment team in the House and a majority vote to convict in the Senate. The target of course is George W. Bush. This man will go down in history as one of our worst Presidents – he is guilty of deception and incompetence on a grand scale. Those two qualities are a tough combination, almost an oxymoron, but Bush has managed both. It is a combination that equates to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the Constitutional requirement for impeachment. We can use other terms, such as abuse of power and gross misconduct, to justify Bush’s impeachment, but deception and incompetence seem to capture the man. His grand deception is Iraq, which is also his greatest failure. But that is not to say that there are no contenders. The failure to deal with Katrina would stand out in any other presidency and forever brand such a president for that failure alone. But Bush has so much more. His domestic spying. His “off-site” prisons. His abandonment of Afghanistan. His ignorance of all things environmental. His perverted tax policies. But it is his deception, which he used to convince too many Americans and far too many Congressman, that we must invade Iraq and his incompetence in dealing with Iraq post-invasion that are the foundation of his impeachment. He followed the neo-cons’ grand strategy of empire. Publicly, he argued the need to separate Hussein from non-existent WMD. He represented to Congress only those facts that supported the invasion. His administration ignored, and even attacked, those who presented contrary facts. This rush to war, this deception has resulted in, according to one very recent estimate, over 600,000 Iraqi dead. Bush’s startling incompetence in the aftermath of the invasion has torn that country apart – the infrastructure is gone, the rule of law [such as it was] is gone, civil and social life is gone. The Iraqi people are dying. US and British soldiers are dying. The world is tired of it all. We, the people are tired of Bush and his deception, his incompetence. We need a new Congress – a Congress that will act to rid us and the world of this man. Vote this November and let the games begin.