President Bush gave a press conference on the 25th that tried to strike the right tone of candor, acknowledgement of "difficulties" in Iraq, and promise of success there anyway. With the press corps becoming increasingly skeptical, he must pretend to engage the reality of the situation and, as we have seen this week, step away from the concept of "stay the course" as much as possible, now that it's unpopular.
Even so, his press conference was still rife with the half-messages and misdirections that characterize his approach to politics. It's not policy tempered by spin; it's only spin. Let's look at some of what he said.
"Our security at home depends on ensuring that Iraq is an ally in the war on terror and does not become a terrorist haven like Afghanistan under the Taliban."
I might have believed this at one point, but I can't say I do now. Until we purge every possible terrorist "hiding place"*, there will always be somewhere for their training camps and ideological indoctrination grounds -- and remember that the most important part of the 9/11 hijackers' training was carried out right here in the United States. Even bombing the entire mideast into paste wouldn't have helped stop an American flight school.
(*Good luck.)
But Bush is on top of things. He knows we've met some surprises in Iraq.
"We learned some key lessons from that early phase in the war. We saw how quickly al Qaeda and other extremist groups would come to Iraq to fight and try to drive us out. We overestimated the capability of the civil service in Iraq to continue to provide essential services to the Iraqi people. We did not expect the Iraqi army, including the Republican Guard, to melt away in the way that it did in the phase of advancing coalition forces."
Let's rephrase this. "We did not expect the Iraqi army to melt away in the way it did after we disbanded it following the invasion." Of course, that version makes less sense, and makes it more our fault that the security situation in Iraq completely fell apart post-invasion.
Moving on...
"And I know it's incumbent upon our government and others who enjoy the blessings of liberty to help those moderates succeed because, otherwise, we're looking at the potential of this kind of world: a world in which radical forms of Islam compete for power; a world in which moderate governments get toppled by people willing to murder the innocent; a world in which oil reserves are controlled by radicals in order to extract blackmail from the West; a world in which Iran has a nuclear weapon. And if that were to occur, people would look back at this day and age and say, what happened to those people in 2006? How come they couldn't see the threat to a future generation of people?"
I thought we were going to reduce our "addiction to oil", making control over foreign oil reserves a non-issue? On the latter note, does our clever plan for preventing acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran involve making sure North Korea gets all of them? Or is it just that there's no spin to counter last month's successful nuclear test on the peninsula, so we'll stick with the other country that, through no real effort of our own, doesn't yet have nukes?
Extremists have now played their hand; the world can clearly see their ambitions. You know, when a Palestinian state began to show progress, extremists attacked Israel to stop the advance of a Palestinian state. They can't stand democracies. Extremists and radicals want to undermine fragile democracy because it's a defeat for their way of life, their ideology. "
Hm. As I recall, when the Palestinians elected a government we didn't like, we cut off all financial aid. And we haven't done much of anything there since, even though the afore-mentioned extremists still have that Israeli soldier and Israel is still pounding the snot out of the territories in retaliation. Sure, extremists made the provocation, but don't we care enough to try and intervene? Maybe lay some money and good will down and undercut them? Instead, we're starving out the Palestinians just because their democratic process elected people we don't like. I don't like them either, but we're not helping them, us, Israel or anyone in the area right now.
But that's okay, because he believes.
"He [Rumsfeld] is a smart, tough, capable administrator. As importantly, he understands that the best way to fight this war, whether it be in Iraq or anywhere else around the world, is to make sure our troops are ready, that morale is high, that we transform the nature of our military to meet the threats, and that we give our commanders on the ground the flexibility necessary to make the tactical changes to achieve victory.
This is a tough war in Iraq. I mean, it's a hard fight, no question about it. All you've got to do is turn on your TV. But I believe that the military strategy we have is going to work. That's what I believe, Peter. And so we've made changes throughout the war, we'll continue to make changes throughout the war. But the important thing is whether or not we have the right strategy and the tactics necessary to achieve that goal. And I believe we do. "
Why do you believe our strategy is going to work, Mr. President? We aren't meeting our benchmarks. We're losing soldiers every day -- October was a terrible month for us. The civil war in Iraq means that each one soldier we lose is matched by the deaths of tens or perhaps hundreds of Iraqis. If that's not failure, then what's the metric? The last place I want pure faith and guesswork is in military action -- especially if it's as critical to our national defense as you suggest.
But never mind that. What's the key message?
THE PRESIDENT: I think the coming election is a referendum on these two things: which party has got the plan that will enable our economy continue -- to continue to grow, and which party has a plan to protect the American people. And Iraq is part of the security of the United States. If we succeed -- and when we succeed in Iraq, our country will be more secure. If we don't succeed in Iraq, the country is less secure.
The security of this country -- and look, I understand here in Washington, some people say we're not at war. I know that. They're just wrong in my opinion.
The enemy still wants to strike us. The enemy still wants to achieve safe haven from which to plot and plan. The enemy would like to have weapons of mass destruction in order to attack us. These are lethal, cold-blooded killers. And we must do everything we can to protect the American people, including questioning detainees, or listening to their phone calls from outside the country to inside the country. And there was -- as you know, there was some recent votes on that issue. And the Democrats voted against giving our professionals the skill -- the tools necessary to protect the American people.
I will repeat, like I've said to you often, I do not question their patriotism; I question whether or not they understand how dangerous this world is. And this is a big issue in the campaign. Security of the country is an issue, just like taxes are an issue. If you raise taxes, it will hurt the economy. If you don't extend the tax cuts, if you don't make them -- in other words, if you let the tax cuts expire, it will be a tax increase on the American people.
Take the child tax credit; if it is not made permanent, in other words, if it expires, and you got a family of four sitting around the breakfast table, the taxpayers can be sure that their taxes will go up by $2,000 -- $500 for that child, $500 for the one right there, $500 for this one, and $500 for that one. That is a tax increase. And taking $2,000 out of the pockets of the working people will make it harder to sustain economic growth.
So the two issues I see in the campaign can be boiled down to who best to protect this country, and who best to keep taxes low. That's what the referendum is about. "
Really? Security and low taxes? I appreciate that you modified the inheritance tax exemption so that instead of applying to most Americans ($675,000) it now applies to almost all Americans ($3.5 million!), and soon we'll just revoke it altogether. I'm glad the economy will be spurred by a tax cut that swooshes right past most Americans without even a glancing blow to their income. I'm also glad that the focus on tax cuts means that we can have a $500 per child tax credit, such that every three kids means one less armored vest for our troops. I think it's entirely coincidental that we raised taxes in every war we ever won. Let's just go ahead and drop taxes, especially for wealthy people and rich corporate entities.
Maybe we can give them all some more no-bid contracts in Iraq while we're at it.
Anything to help.