Up for the Downing Stroke
The pessimist sites are all saddled up and riding hard on the "Downing Street memo," which supposedly proves -- whatever it was they now claim they said all along about Bush and the Iraq war. And they're livid that this revelation isn't being presented in the media as the hottest prez-killer since the Watergate tapes.
The memo is interesting reading. The Sunday Times has kindly put the whole thing online. It's very short, and worth the trouble. Pay them a visit. Then come back, and ask, Where's the bombshell?
I never liked the way the Bush administration led up to this war. It was clear the White House was pushing too hard on a connection between Saddam and Islamist terror that was not well supported by facts. It was the potential that was devastating, but it's hard to lead a nation to war based on potential, and Bush et al mostly never tried.
The attempt to go through the U.N. on the way to the battlefield seemed to me to be Powell's fixation, not really supported by much of the administration, which gave it a half-assed quality. That legalistic effort, however, led to an overemphasis on assertions about WMD. Most people accepted that Saddam had them, but the administration seemed peculiarly incapable of presenting real solid evidence. The U.S. was a prosecuting attorney who couldn't sell his case to the jury. That's not "lying," that's "failing." The jury was hopelessly tainted anyhow.
As for the post-war mess -- the weakness of the U.S. Plan A, and the total absence of Plan B -- that was evident within about 15 minutes of the liberation of Baghdad. Kudos to Brit intelligence for foreseeing all this.
I'm not a big player. Nobody really cares about my geopolitical evolution, but if you want to hold my feet to the fire, I've already lit it for you. I posted in permanent form what I thought about the war before it began.
The best cases for this war to people like me -- Saddam's lethal record at home and the need to prevent him making another attempt abroad, were curiously underplayed by the administration, I thought at the time.
Some Bush critics construe the lack of a mention of "democracy" in the brief Downing Street memo to mean democratization wasn't an administration concern. But it never was the chief item for much of the administration. Nothing is a universal in the Bush White House; haven't we figured this out? The president thrives on choosing among competing interests and opinions of his advisors. Spreading freedom and democracy was the pet idea of the neo-cons.
Yet here the pessimists hit a wall. The neo-cons, in the pessimists' grand conspiracy version of history, were the ones who steered the U.S. into the Iraq war. So which of their triumphs will they sacrifice, now that the two are incompatible?
I think the fury of the pessimists over this memo -- and over its failure to really evoke more than a shrug outside their circle -- is based on their confusion of "everything in the universe" with "George W. Bush." I supported the overthrow of Saddam without really trusting the administration, having voted against it and being fully aware of its mix of motivations. That's an attitude the pessimists seem unable to comprehend.
States' rights slaveholding men from Kentucky and Missouri who firmly blamed the Civil War on Lincoln and the "Black Republicans" nonetheless served in the Northern armies to save the union. Blue-blood Republicans who hated FDR's guts in 1940 fought and died in World War II, still hating FDR's guts.
One memo out of London, telling me British secret service agents suspected what I already suspected, isn't going to bring my weltanschauung down in flames. For me, in this war, it wasn't about Bush. It was about Saddam. And 24 million Iraqis. And the future of freedom in the Middle East. And the complicated business of stopping the next 9/11 long before the planes took off.
The memo is interesting reading. The Sunday Times has kindly put the whole thing online. It's very short, and worth the trouble. Pay them a visit. Then come back, and ask, Where's the bombshell?
I never liked the way the Bush administration led up to this war. It was clear the White House was pushing too hard on a connection between Saddam and Islamist terror that was not well supported by facts. It was the potential that was devastating, but it's hard to lead a nation to war based on potential, and Bush et al mostly never tried.
The attempt to go through the U.N. on the way to the battlefield seemed to me to be Powell's fixation, not really supported by much of the administration, which gave it a half-assed quality. That legalistic effort, however, led to an overemphasis on assertions about WMD. Most people accepted that Saddam had them, but the administration seemed peculiarly incapable of presenting real solid evidence. The U.S. was a prosecuting attorney who couldn't sell his case to the jury. That's not "lying," that's "failing." The jury was hopelessly tainted anyhow.
As for the post-war mess -- the weakness of the U.S. Plan A, and the total absence of Plan B -- that was evident within about 15 minutes of the liberation of Baghdad. Kudos to Brit intelligence for foreseeing all this.
I'm not a big player. Nobody really cares about my geopolitical evolution, but if you want to hold my feet to the fire, I've already lit it for you. I posted in permanent form what I thought about the war before it began.
We should, however, take this job on behalf of civilization and of human rights. And that will take a lot of change. We need to take a closer interest in being part of the world, and to willingly share the wealth we've hoarded. We also need to exercise a muscular commitment to the values we talk about. One small step toward that would be for the administration to admit that American leaders, including some still in power, backed the bad guy in Iraq for too long.
The best cases for this war to people like me -- Saddam's lethal record at home and the need to prevent him making another attempt abroad, were curiously underplayed by the administration, I thought at the time.
Some Bush critics construe the lack of a mention of "democracy" in the brief Downing Street memo to mean democratization wasn't an administration concern. But it never was the chief item for much of the administration. Nothing is a universal in the Bush White House; haven't we figured this out? The president thrives on choosing among competing interests and opinions of his advisors. Spreading freedom and democracy was the pet idea of the neo-cons.
Yet here the pessimists hit a wall. The neo-cons, in the pessimists' grand conspiracy version of history, were the ones who steered the U.S. into the Iraq war. So which of their triumphs will they sacrifice, now that the two are incompatible?
I think the fury of the pessimists over this memo -- and over its failure to really evoke more than a shrug outside their circle -- is based on their confusion of "everything in the universe" with "George W. Bush." I supported the overthrow of Saddam without really trusting the administration, having voted against it and being fully aware of its mix of motivations. That's an attitude the pessimists seem unable to comprehend.
States' rights slaveholding men from Kentucky and Missouri who firmly blamed the Civil War on Lincoln and the "Black Republicans" nonetheless served in the Northern armies to save the union. Blue-blood Republicans who hated FDR's guts in 1940 fought and died in World War II, still hating FDR's guts.
One memo out of London, telling me British secret service agents suspected what I already suspected, isn't going to bring my weltanschauung down in flames. For me, in this war, it wasn't about Bush. It was about Saddam. And 24 million Iraqis. And the future of freedom in the Middle East. And the complicated business of stopping the next 9/11 long before the planes took off.
