Following his speech the other day, President Bush has continued his attack against Democratic critics of his Iraq policy in the only way he knows how… by attacking the messengers. The new message from the WH, as Fred Kaplan of Slate paraphrases it, is “Yes, we were wrong about some things, but everybody else was wrong, too, so get over it.” The Associated Press quotes Bush as leveling the following charge:
“Some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past… They're playing politics with this issue and they are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. That is irresponsible.”
No sir, what is irresponsible is implying, as I have stated before, that questioning the very real discrepancies between what we knew and what the administration told the American people is somehow MORE harmful to our troops than allowing the President of the United States to lie to the American people and the US Congress in order to wage an unprovoked invasion of another country (if, in fact, that turns out to be the case). As John Dean wrote in 2003 (and recently expanded into a book), “manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”
Of course, I am not saying that Bush is actually guilty of those charges (although it is my own personal opinion that he is). I am simply charging that raising the question should not be de-legitimized by the President.
Bush went on to say that “Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people.”
I am a bit confused. If reasonable people can disagree about how the war was conducted, why can they not disagree on why the war was conducted? After all, wouldn’t questioning the conduct of the war (troop levels, disbanding the Iraqi military, failing to prevent chaos and looting taking hold, refusing to deal with powerful local figures in the beginning, etc.) hurt our troops and help the enemy just as much as questing the legitimacy of this conflict, if in fact either really did the harm that Bush says?
In any event, many prominent Republicans would disagree with Bush, though certainly few in today’s ultra-partisan Congress. Stanley Kutler reminds us of Lincoln’s wartime dissent, for example, in the middle of another American war. In 1848, while a Congressman, Lincoln challenged President James Polk's dubious response to alleged Mexican aggression against the United States. He voted to censure the president while the war against Mexico still raged. He contended that the president's justification for war was "from beginning to end the sheerest deception." Polk would have "gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him." Lincoln threw down the gauntlet: "Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. ... Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation.” Were American troops in 1848 less susceptible to low morale? Would the Spanish not be as emboldened as Iraqi insurgents at the questioning of the President’s rationale for war? Clearly, honest Abe had no such concerns.
Another Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt, leveled some of the worst accusations one can imagine against Wilson during WWI, saying in 1918 “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” Perhaps the ex-president was simply “playing politics with this issue.”
Indeed, no less than a member of one of the most famous Republican families in American history (or at least in the state of Ohio), Senator Robert A. Taft, said shortly after Pearl Harbor, "I believe that there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government… Too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think it will give some comfort to the enemy… If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country more good than it will do the enemy, and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.” Today, Taft would be dismissed, like Richard Clark or Paul O'Neil, as a closet liberal, a Bush-hater whose motives are entirely political.
Later in his speech, Bush tried to deflect the issue of pre-war statements by quoting Democrats, hoping that Democratic rank-and-file are as blindly loyal to “their guys” as so many Republicans are to “theirs.”
Here are the quotes he offers:
- “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.”
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. - “The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as (Saddam Hussein) is in power.” - Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
- “Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the president's approaching this in the right fashion.” - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then the Democratic whip.
My response to these is simple: those Democrats were wrong. Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, arguably little to nothing to do with bin Laden and arguably little to nothing to do with acts of terrorism against the United States. In short, Senator Levin, Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror, let alone being a necessary component of it. As for Senator Reid’s statement, it may actually be accurate and true depending on when it was said (I recall applauding Bush’s courage to finally confront Iraq by getting a new and improved inspections process back in the country- it was only when Bush decided to arbitrarily invade that I turned against his policy).
Furthermore, as many others have noted, Congressmen do not receive the same information as the President, and thus like all Americans must rely a great deal on what they are told by him. Bush has been lying about this point for years, saying in 2004, “I went to Congress with the same intelligence Congress saw -- the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at, and they made an informed judgment based upon the information that I had."
Back then, Senator John Edwards corrected him, saying that “I know the president of the United States receives a different set of information than we receive on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he receives more information, which he should.” Today however, it seems that Republican talking points have continued to spread this myth undisturbed.
But let’s pretend that Congressmen did have the same information as the President (which, crucially, they did not). What then? As presidency scholars such as Jeffery Tulis and Samuel Kernell have noted, modern presidents can influence and shape public opinion in ways that no Congressman can ever even hope. I don’t recall Bush sharing the credit with Democrats over the victory in Afghanistan, nor do I recall any honorable mentions in his infamous air-craft carrier landing. And yet as with much else in this administration, when the going gets tough, the buck stops anywhere else by with the president.
In short, Bush may be right on all counts about why we went to war with Iraq, but he is dead wrong to try and conflate legitimate criticism based on rather damning evidence with hurting the troops and helping the enemy. In matters of war-and-peace, it is the president who has all of the relevant information, the president who commands instant credibility and media attention, and the president who ultimately made the case and the decision to invade Iraq. Whether Iraq turns out to be a democratic paradise or a hotbed of instability, when the people responsible for this stand in the shadow of history, George W. Bush will stand first.
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