. . . Unshakable Faith
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By Richard Cohen
Columnist
The Washington Post
Thursday, July 17, 2003
Late last month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that George W. Bush had told the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, that he had gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq on instructions from God. The White House promptly and vociferously denied the account, but I'd like to believe it anyway. I have to. The purported instructions from God remain about the only explanation for some of what Bush has done -- not only overseas but at home as well. Repeatedly, the Bush administration has merely asserted something to be true, neglecting either to prove it or even to make much of a case for it. Iraq is a perfect example.
At the moment, the brouhaha is over Bush's assertion in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to import weapons-grade uranium from Africa. That turns out not to be true -- or at least not provable. It is also probably not true that Iraq was importing aluminum tubing for its purported nuclear weapons program. In fact, it may well be that Iraq had no active nuclear weapons program. At least none has been found.
That's not the mystery. By the advent of the war, it was already clear that Iraq was not a nuclear power. It was also clear that it had no verifiable links to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the events of Sept. 11. In the intelligence community, both here and abroad, there was no question, however, that Saddam had both chemical and biological weapons. The rest -- a nuclear program, links to terrorism -- was a different matter. No one much believed it.
But Bush, it is now clear, did. He believed -- virtually without evidence -- that Saddam and bin Laden were in cahoots. Why? It's hard to say, but probably because they were both evil. Evil leaders do evil things and they do them together. The evidence for this is lacking, to be sure, but you have to take it as a matter of faith. Bush did.
Similarly, it was a matter of faith that once the United States invaded Iraq, it would crumble. That was a given. This explains why an insufficient number of troops were on hand when the war started. It explains further why, once the war was won, an insufficient number of troops were available to control the country. The result has been a catastrophe -- the constant loss of American lives and an occupation that is costing about $4 billion a month.
Faith -- or whatever you want to call it -- is about the only explanation, too, for the rush to go to war in the first place. An argument could be made for war with Saddam -- and I and others made it. But since the threat from him was never imminent and was limited in any case to biological and chemical weapons, there was no need to rush. The French, the Germans, the Russians -- indeed, much of the world -- pleaded for more time. Bush, though, was acting as if he had received urgent instructions.
It is the same domestically. The White House this week projected a $455 billion deficit for the current fiscal year. This is a tad off the original mark -- a projected surplus of $334 billion. In the near future, the deficit is expected to grow even more until, suddenly, it will decrease.
Why? Because that's what Bush insists. Somehow, if taxes are cut even further, the economy will do something in some way that will erase the deficit, make the desert bloom and bring happiness to boys and girls everywhere. Economists may scoff, but they -- as you know -- are men and women of little faith. As Bush knows, just because the numbers don't add up doesn't mean they don't, well, add up.
Alas, they don't. The Clinton administration produced four straight years of budget surpluses -- and the economy boomed. Maybe the vigorous economy was unrelated to the surplus and maybe a little deficit spending is in order. But Bush has gone on a bender -- cutting taxes, increasing spending and putting the government deeper and deeper in debt. By 2008, it will be $8.6 trillion in the hole.
The favorite Bush grammatical construction is the tautology: Something is bad because it's bad. A synaptic leap is made in which a certain cause will have a certain effect -- never mind why. Things are stated with certainty, but the proof of them is not apparent. This may explain why Bush seems so sanguine about presenting evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program that later turned out to be not true. It doesn't matter. Because it ought to be, it is.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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