Sunday, September 16, 2007
Bush and the big lie
Dan Radmacher
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- America should listen to this Cassandra
From the RoundTable blog
As public disillusionment with the war in Iraq grows, President Bush appears to be trying more frantically -- and less successfully -- to link this unwise and catastrophic war of choice to the 9/11 terror attacks.
The decision to have Gen. David Petraeus testify before Congress on Sept. 10 and 11 was a clear attempt at conflating the conflict in Iraq with the battle against the enemy that struck us six years ago.
Far less subtle is a $15 million campaign waged by a group of Bush supporters calling themselves "Freedom's Watch." The first commercial from the group features a wounded Iraqi vet urging Congress to keep the troops in Iraq. "They attacked us," he says as images of 9/11 fill the screen.
No, they didn't.
Iraq, as has long been proven, had nothing to do with 9/11. Nor did any of the groups fighting there now, including the one that calls itself al-Qaida in Iraq.
But that's the best justification the Bush administration can come up with -- because they think you are stupid.
As a senior administration official told The Washington Post, "The average person doesn't understand why the Sunnis and Shia don't like each other. They don't know where the Kurds live. ... And al-Qaida is something they know. They're the enemy of the United States."
Ari Fleisher, head of Freedom's Watch and Bush's former press secretary, admitted Iraq didn't attack the U.S. on 9/11, but, despite appearances, he said that's not the point of the ad.
"The point is not that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. They're not," he said. "But 9/11 should be a vivid reminder to everyone about how vulnerable our country is and that's why we need to win in Iraq."
Except that "winning in Iraq" -- whatever that even means at this point -- won't make this nation any less vulnerable to a 9/11-type attack.
As Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said during Petraeus' testimony, "The question we must answer is not whether we are winning or losing in Iraq but whether Iraq is helping or hurting our efforts to defeat al-Qaida. That is the lesson of 9/11, and it's a lesson we must remember today."
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Petraeus directly whether the war in Iraq is making the United States safer.
"I don't know, actually," was the tepid response.
But, in fact, it is very clear that the war in Iraq has not made the nation safer or less vulnerable to terror attack.
In a document released Tuesday, the White House repeated the worn argument that "we are fighting violent extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the world so that we do not have to fight them on American soil."
That idea -- that we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here -- is foolishly naïve and demonstrably absurd. Successful attacks in London and Spain and foiled attempts elsewhere prove that al-Qaida remains focused on striking when and where it can.
Don't tell that to White House officials, who are committed to an "Osama bin Who?" mindset. Frances Townsend, Bush's homeland security adviser, dismissed Osama bin Laden as "virtually impotent."
Yet intelligence analysts say that al-Qaida is as operationally capable as it was on Sept. 10, 2001.
Bush must hope in the power of repeating the big lie that the invasion of Iraq was a legitimate response to the attacks on 9/11.
It was not. And though the American people bought the lie for a time -- long enough to re-elect Bush, alas -- polls show they are largely seeing through the charade now.
While once more than 50 percent of American people believed Saddam Hussein had a personal connection to 9/11, fewer than a third do now.
Nearly half of Americans think the phrase "war on terror" is just a political slogan. And they're right. It's part of the effort to inextricably link the invasion of Iraq to the broader effort against terrorism.
The inescapable fact is that Iraq has hindered that broader effort, diverting attention and resources from Afghanistan -- where the Taliban and al-Qaida are trying hard to reassert themselves -- and embroiling the nation in a time-consuming debate when our unified attention should be directed against the very real enemy we face.
It will take more than $15 million in insipid commercials to change that reality.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
