Subject: Newsweek: Totally Unconvincing
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 11:33:27 -0800
From: "Davis, Thomas"
Totally Unconvincing
At his press conference, Bush failed yet again to make his case for war. Here's why
By Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
March 7 — He was steely, determined, resolute—and totally unconvincing to anyone who didn't already agree
with him.
AT HIS PRIME-TIME PRESS conference Thursday night—only his second since assuming the presidency
more than two years ago—President Bush showed why he's in this diplomatic vise. He's got a good case but has
made a hash out of it. His two key mistakes: a failure to build momentum and a failure to drill down to a deeper,
more compelling logic for war.
Building the right momentum required a trait the late columnist Joseph Alsop found in Franklin Roosevelt:
"longheadedness"—an ability to calculate how things will play out. During the past year, Bush didn't do that. For
instance, at one point in the news conference, Bush said: "That happens to be my last choice—the use of force."
Sounds good, but it simply wasn't believable. Everyone knows that war has been the president's first choice—not
his last—since at least the summer of 2002. In trying to play the reluctant sheriff, Bush cast himself in a role that
rang false. He has, for months, been the eager sheriff.
Imagine if instead of cowboyspeak about "regime change" and other name-calling last year, Bush had offered
Saddam Hussein a timetable for disarmament. Then, after the dictator failed several tests, Bush's anger would not
have seemed so "personal," as was suggested in one of last night's questions he didn't answer. That timetable
could have even been independent of the United Nations—a second track alongside inspections to keep the
pressure on. But if it had been offered in the spirit of a genuine desire for disarmament, Saddam's unwillingness to
comply would have been more glaring. Bush's problem was that he started with a war cry and had nothing to
escalate to. His anger has become a kind of monotone, which seriously depletes its effectiveness.
The same lack of long-term thinking applies to the U.N. It's one thing for France or Russia to veto a Security
Council resolution. That has happened before. But Bush seems determined to go ahead even if the U.S. is actually
outvoted on the Council. He wants his opponents there to be on the record opposing the war. Why? To rub their
faces in it after a big victory on the ground? Smart diplomacy is about preventing other countries from
embarrassment, not causing it. Bush's satisfaction in being the principled loser in the Council is outweighing his
long-term interest in repairing relations with our allies.
The second big problem with the Bush sales job is one of simple logic. Bush was lucky that no reporter
asked him about his administration's most recent budget request for rebuilding Afghanistan—a big fat zero.
(Congress added a couple of hundred million). He seems to think we can play 52-card pickup and then simply
leave the room.
The same logical inconsistency applies to North Korea, which he described as a "regional problem." Let's get
this straight: Saddam's potential development of nuclear weapons five or 10 years from now constitutes an
imminent threat to the United States, but North Korea's possession of them five to 10 weeks from now does not? I
personally favor taking out Saddam now so that he's not Kim Jong Il in a few years. But it seems extremely unwise
to ignore the threat of North Korea just because we have our heart set on hitting someone else.
The president's deeper logical problem relates to the way he uses the bully pulpit to make an argument. His
habit—on display again Thursday night—is to simply assert, assert, assert until the message sinks in. It's as if
war supporters believe that if they repeat the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection enough, people will eventually believe
it.
Imagine if instead the president explained that terrorism—by Al Qaeda or anyone else—simply doesn't work
in the long term without state sponsorship. Terrorists can deploy weapons of mass destruction but they can't
make them. That requires a rogue state. Over time, no rogue states—no terrorism of mass destruction. This would
have required Bush to move beyond platitudes to a more nuanced analysis of how Iraq's potential to develop nukes
is at the heart of the rationale for war. The fact that he didn't offer the nuclear argument (in part out of fear of looking
hypocritical on North Korea) explains in part why the larger case has been made so poorly. Instead, we get a
scattershot "If it's Tuesday this must be the 9-11 connection" style of selling the war.
My biggest concern is not that Bush has already decided to go to war (You could tell that from the past tense
he used: "I wish Saddam Hussein had listened"). It's that he made the decision not this week or last but many
months ago, and he never seemed to refine it. Now the consequences of the decision are about to be out of his
control. "Events are in the saddle and tend to ride mankind," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Soon enough, we'll
know which direction.
CC |
