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Rhetorical and Historical Slights of Hand

Dana Millbank and Mike Allen report in The Washington Post a a rhetorical shift from the BushAdmin regarding its objectives in Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction are proving too hard to find (but, geez, something is bound to shake loose), those 16 words continue to haunt (move along, move along), and al Qaeda is still nowhere to be found among the Iraqi wreckage—even as new recruits for the Iraqi resistance continue to pop up among the populus or stream in across the borders. When you're stuck arguing about the stupid, false, falsified and exaggerated things you've said in the recent past (and continue to say in the present), the best you can do is turn to the future, about which there may be plenty of argument but no certainty, while invoking the mythologized past, about which all argument can be squashed:

The official drew an extended analogy, comparing the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to Pearl Harbor, and the difficulties in Iraq to the occupation of West Germany between 1945 and 1947. "That was a generational commitment to Europe, because the only way the United States believed that we could actually make certain that Americans were not going to fight in European wars again was to make certain that Europe was democratized and prospered," the adviser said. "In a sense, what 9/11 did was to give the United States the same kind of impulse toward the Middle East. . . . You really have to have a transformation of that region if we're not to have terrorists stalking the American people for generations to come."

Drawing historical analogies can get a little tricky. One doesn't want to get bogged down in arguing about certain historical quagmires:

In a crucial departure from the analogy, the official did not envision a decades-long military presence in Iraq such as the half-century presence in Germany necessitated by the Cold War.

So we're reliving post-war Germany, not undeclared war Vietnam—even if we seem to experience the hysteria-then-betrayal of the Gulf of Tonkin again and again with "Groundhog Day" frequency (and disorientation).

If rhetorical shifts and historical revisionisms don't do it for you, how about economic success? The tastelessly glib happytalk in yesterday's media coverage of "the boost" the U.S. economy got from defense spending for the recent war was sickening. Yet not nearly as maddening as watching these words stumble from The President's lips:

I remember on our TV screens — I'm not suggesting which network did this, but it said "March to war" every day from last summer until the spring. "March to war, march to war, march." That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear "march to war" all the time.

So, then...maybe we should... y'know...not have, I dunno, marched to war? Just a thought. Anyhoo...

Posted by kevinmoore at August 1, 2003 09:35 AM | TrackBack