Noble sentiment, nasty speech

BUSH'S IRAQ SPEECH: BRIEFLY NOBLE, MOSTLY NASTY.
Double Take
by Ryan Lizza
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 12.19.05
an a president be both Lincolnesque and Nixonian in the same speech? That's the question I had watching Bush last night. One major headline from the address is the rhetorical olive branch Bush supposedly extended to his critics. Towards the end of his 17-minute speech, he said the following:


I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq: I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt. Yet now there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat. And the need for victory is larger than any president or political party because the security of our people is in the balance. I don't expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair and do not give up on this fight for freedom.
That was the Lincoln in the speech, Bush's uncharacteristically high-minded appeal to put the country before partisanship. The passage has already won the president applause from some surprising corners. Unfortunately, this noble sentiment was undermined by the rest of the speech.

I'm not even talking about the casual dishonesties packed into the section where Bush summed up the history of the war in Iraq. "Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said, subordinating his role in the WMD fiasco to that of a passive dupe rather than active exaggerator. Then there was the passage in which he described those we're fighting in Iraq as falling into just two groups: "Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists." If only that were true. Unfortunately, many Iraqis who do not pine for the return of Saddam have joined the insurgency against the United States.

No big deal. In other statements, campaign appearances, and speeches Bush has shown far less care for detail than he did last night. And certainly there was a thread of modesty woven into this Oval-Office speech that is new for Bush.

Still, Bush and his political strategists can't help themselves. We are on the eve of the third election year since September 11, and the White House knows from the experiences of 2002 and 2004 that there is no point in pursuing a bipartisan foreign policy. So before Bush offered his critics the handshake quoted above, he delivered a familiar rhetorical punch, attributing to opponents a preposterous argument. Addressing what he called the "important" question of whether "we are creating more problems than we're solving" in Iraq, Bush said that "the answer depends on your view of the war on terror." How did the president describe his opponents' views of that war? Well, according to Bush, the debate over how to deal with terrorists is between his steely resolve to crush them everywhere and those who "think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them."

This is an absurd characterization. Nobody argues that leaving Iraq will make "terrorists" more "peaceful." Certainly, it's not Bush's job to present the strongest case for withdrawal, but it's hard to take seriously his call for national unity when he makes such a bad-faith presentation of his opponents' arguments. The speech was as much about ridicule as it was about rebuttal.

In another passage, Bush declared, "Defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts." This is a novel political phenomenon Bush is describing--Democrats gaining an edge through the use of the famously popular American theme of defeatism. Of course, the only partisan use of defeatism is to use the word to describe the ideology of one's opponents.

Politically, Bush's speech is a preview of a new two-front strategy: attacking antiwar critics as weak while simultaneously winning credit for sounding like he's offering them an olive branch. Maybe it will work. But as Bush himself once said, "He can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road."

Ryan Lizza is a senior editor at TNR.

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