Democratic blunder on Iraq.

There's been lots of cheering, applause and praise for Senator Webb's speech for the Democrats last night, responding to Bush's State of the Union speech, but I was dumbfounded at the sheer stupidity of the ending. The final mental image that lingers in viewers' minds is key to the success of any important speech and Webb sent exactly the wrong message. I'll lay out the dots and then connect them as I saw it.

It's become politically fashionable of late to use the words and actions of the other side's heroes to make big points, a trend that seems to grow more prevalent as the national discourse has become further partisan and polarized. Republicans cite FDR and Democrats cite Reagan, which they imagine makes them sound more reasonable. So, some genius speechwriter decided that Webb should refer to Teddy Roosevelt and Ike Eisenhower. He ended his speech by reminding us that Ike quickly ended the Korean War because it had become a "bloody stalemate."

The main justification Bush gave in 2002 and 2003 for the invasion of Iraq was that some crazy dictator in a country with a culture Americans don't understand was about to get nuclear weapons and use them against the U.S. As Condi Rice said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Of course, the nuclear weapons and WMD claims weren't true. Now, most people believe that the Bush administration cooked the intelligence information to get public support for the war, but the WMD fear is still there. We've heard a lot in the past two years about the nuclear ambitions of Iran, Iraq's neighbor and likely participant in the Iraq civil war meltdown that could follow if the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq.

So what do people think of when they think of the legacy of the Korean War? Most likely, it is North Korea, a nation with a culture Americans don't understand, ruled by a crazy dictator who has nuclear weapons and missiles that he may use against the U.S. If Jim Webb and the Democrats want to convince the American public that we should get out of Iraq, I can't think of a worse example to use than the Korean War.

If any of the New York Times reading, latte drinking, sushi eating liberals that Webb surely consulted for his speech had bothered to see Team America: World Police, they would have realized what a blunder it would be to end a pullout-from-Iraq speech with a reference to Korea. If the Democrats want to lead us out of Iraq, they'll have to be a lot smarter in making their case.

Bush spins himself as a stunned onlooker of events in Iraq.

Today President Bush added his own voice to the chorus seeking to increase public perception of the administration’s distance from the policies of Iraq government. (See earlier posts 1 & 2) His verbal imagery took me back to a scene from my own past. I crashed a hang glider I was piloting into a parking lot full of cars. By the time onlookers could get over to the me, I had already unhooked myself from the craft and was standing up– although very dazed. As curious people arrived, I simply blended into the crowd–too numb to accept the role of either perpetrator or victim.

That’s what Bush seems to be doing with Iraq. He’s now pretending to be just one of the crowd of stunned on lookers at a crash scene. On the PBS News Hour, he said, "If you were to take it and put me in an opinion poll and said ‘Do I approve of Iraq’ I’d be one of those that said, ‘No, I don’t approve of what’s taking place in Iraq."’ Bush also criticized the Iraq government’s execution of the Saddam–the man the U.S. handed over to Iraq to be hung and that Bush has called the man who "tried to kill my father." (See earlier posts 3 & 4) Ironically, given his personal issues with Saddam, Bush said the hanging "looked like it was kind of a revenge killing."

Eventually, someone will remind Bush that he’s been piloting the ship of state.

Children of Men

Children of Men, currently in theaters, uses many cliches of the action/adventure drama about the reluctant hero and his eventual passionate engagement in the mission forced upon him, but the social commentary and powerful imagery will leave you pondering scenes in this film long after you leave the theater.

The film is set in Britain in 2027. Heavily armed Homeland Security forces are perpetually rounding up illegal immigrants and putting them in camps. Their processing is portrayed as cross between post 9/11 airport security and entry into a Nazi concentration camp. A large chunk of the film takes place in lawless urban wasteland that has a number of parallels to present-day Iraqi cities outside the Green Zone, and harkens back to British occupation of Northern Ireland. The British forces try to keep order amongst an intimidated non-British population living in squalor, whilst also battling terrorists and heavily-armed sectarian groups. I worry that the portrayal of security forces here is much like the vision present day Iraqis have of occupying coalition armies. One U.S government poll found that 90 percent of young Iraqis view the U.S. "as an occupying force." If so, our enterprise there is doomed.

Iraq is Bush's pet goat

Iraq is now like the exotic pet a kid begs for that he doesn't have the maturity and commitment to care for. Seemed like a great idea at the time, but he has neither the patience to learn how to take care of it, nor the discipline to provide all the cleaning, feeding and exercise that the pet requires. Eventually, the kid may blame the pet rather than face his own responsibilities. So, the pet dies, wanders off, or his parents find it a new home.

Except that this pet is not a goat, but rather a country of twenty-six million people. Its fledgling government has now become Bush's scapegoat for his failed endeavor. (See my earlier post.)

The misunderestimation of Gerald Ford.

Who could have predicted, in 1977 or 1981, that in the waning days of some Republican administration in the future we'd be reminiscing about how Ford’s skills as a President were misunderestimated? (See word use in a speech.)

U.S. to Iraq: "You just can't change your evil ways..."

As I said in my previous post, the Saddam execution is serving as a focal point for the Bush Administration's efforts to distance itself from the new regime it created in Iraq, so as to smooth the way for an inevitable abandonment. According to a new New York Times article, U.S. officials are saying:

• The hanging reveals "how the 'new Iraq' is starting to resemble, the repressive, vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade."
• "The way it has come out with the hanging, we’ve substituted one dictatorship for another.”

My previous post also scoffed at U.S. claims that it was compelled to bow to Iraqi sovereignty on the timing and manner of Saddam's execution, and the New York Times article contains more U.S. spin on this. However, the article also notes that the American military fort ironically named "Camp Justice" completely encloses the Istikhbarat prison in which Saddam was executed, and where thousands of hangings occurred under Saddam's regime.
(A Carlos Santana song inspired the post title)

The light at the bottom of the gallows.

Against the backdrop of recommendation by a New Jersey legislative commission that the State abolish the death penalty because it does not serve "a legitimate purpose" and "is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency," the U.S. government appears to be spinning the story that it bowed to the wishes of the sovereign nation of Iraq as to the timing of Saddam’s execution. Not turning Saddam over "would have involved riding roughshod over the Iraqi leaders’ insistence on their sovereignty in the execution," says an unnamed source in the New York Times. Balderdash – American taxpayers bought the Iraq government and are still paying for it.

It’s just a coincidence that the execution happened on the Friday evening before New Year’s weekend, 10:10 PM, Washington Time, the beginning of a non-religious holiday, when, for the next three-and-a-half days, the fewest number of people in the U.S. were reporting, reading or viewing the news. And, that the preparations for national mourning over the death of President Ford three days before were dominating what little news bandwidth there was. The White House claims that President Bush went to sleep without knowing whether the execution had been carried out, which would have been just after 9 PM Texas time, because he "knew that it was going to happen." If Iraq really is "sovereign nation," how did he "know" with such certainty?

A more likely explanation for U.S. insistence that Iraq is operating independently is that the Bush administration has now written off the whole affair as a bad investment, and wants to be in a position to wash it hands of it before the President’s term expires. The more opportunities Washington can give the Iraqi government to screw up before then, the easier it will be for Bush to blame the failure on them. Here is how the administration is using the New York Times to weave this theme:

For the past three years, the United States has attempted to lay the foundations in Iraq for a civil society and a nation under law. American officials say privately that the Maliki government, by allowing the Hussein execution to be conducted as it did, signaled more powerfully than ever before that it was unwilling or incapable of surmounting the deep sectarian divisions here.

Expect to hear "We gave them a great shot, and they blew it" repeated many times before the last American flies on the last flight out of Baghdad. Nobody in the current administration fought in Vietnam, but they surely remember the mockery of the "light at the end of the tunnel" promises when that last helicopter lifted away from the American embassy in Saigon, and they want to avoid it this time.