A Few Choice Words

Chickenhawks and Chickenshits

The White House has been saying it forever—that anyone who supports withdrawal from Iraq undercuts our troops. Rumsfeld called such people Nazi appeasers. Worse, many Americans seem to believe the argument. Worse still, Democrats haven’t found a way to counter it.

Now, following the dramatic November vote which swept them into office, one would think they might summon up the courage to confront the charge. Instead we have resolutions with no teeth, debate without substance, waffling and weakness, fear of flip-flopping. Hillary Clinton is the prime example.

Here are three tactics that might be more effective than the fudging and ducking we’ve been hearing.

1. Ad hominem. Attack those who attack you. Point up the service records of our president, vice president and their advisors, their unwillingness to serve in Vietnam, their failure to call for any sacrifice beyond those in the volunteer army. These people have blood on their hands.

2. Ad valorem (“according to valor”). Praise the troops and act substantively to support them. Instead of threatening de-funding, appropriate specific funds for troop support—and troop withdrawal. Turn the argument against those who have provided insufficient armor, insufficient numbers and consistently flawed tactics in pursuing the war.

3. Ad nauseam. Draft, finally, a consistent message and make it the party message. Get behind Joe Biden’s resolution for a regional federalist partition, which is so far the only one that seems grounded in reality. Frame, refine and keep repeating that message—to the media, to the White House and to the public—on every occasion. Advertising works this way and so does politics.

States of the Union: Style Maketh the Man

Tuesday last was an evening of interesting contrasts. The president’s State of the Union speech and Senator Jim Webb’s response offered textbook cases in presentation styles and gave us insights into what may drive political events in the next months.

You can hear Bush and Webb confronting each other in separate audio tracks on pluggd. Search on an issue you're interested in, hear their words and see how they rank. Great stuff!

Mr. Bush spent many hours practicing his delivery and reading from the teleprompter. Newsweek reported 23 drafts. The result was a workmanlike effort, sober, even somber, but finally stultifying. His detached delivery and lack of warmth reduced the audience to waiting for the next point to jump up and applaud. The president’s voice falls into a kind of rhythmic drone with little variation in pitch, dropping at the end of sentences with few punctuating pauses. He speaks in cadences, having been coached to wait for applause, and the result is a choppy, repetitive pattern.

On the plus side, he was well-rehearsed, confident, looked more comfortable than usual and gave a nice (if overdrawn) nod to the new speaker of the House. Recognition of “heroes” in the gallery at the end was typical State of the Union protocol but well done.

The Iraq part of his speech was the more forceful because Mr. Bush clearly believes in his course and made the best case he could for the “surge.” (Speculation about that term, incidentally, seems not to recognize that it’s common military parlance; it just didn’t translate well to the political arena.) In contrast, the domestic proposals were presented in a colorless, almost hurried manner.

Senator Webb’s response was one-sixth the length of the president’s, so he could benefit by being concise and to the point. He looked relaxed, sitting in what appeared to be a study, legs crossed. Yet Webb’s military bearing and carefully chosen language reflected focus and control (maybe to counter his hothead image). He’s a very good speaker, able to project passion without raising his voice, varying his delivery to suit the content.

His accusation that the president took us into war “recklessly” was done without rancor. When he referred to Teddy Roosevelt’s observations on the class struggle, we saw the hint of a smile. Using the prop photo of his father was a conscious reference to the stagy recognitions in the State of the Union. This was an outstanding political speech, impeccably delivered, and I say that as someone who has coached many political speakers.

Instead of blathering about bipartisanship, Webb put it like this:

These Presidents [T. Roosevelt and Eisenhower] took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

If you’re throwing down the gauntlet, that’s not a bad way to do it.

Hemp for the Henchmen

Iraq’s turbulent effort to reckon with the violence of its past took another macabre turn on Monday when the execution of Saddam Hussein’s half brother ended with the hangman’s noose decapitating him after he dropped through the gallows trapdoor.

. . . The officials said that their goal was to prevent a recurrence of those scenes [at Saddam’s execution], which were sectarian in nature and set off a storm of protest around the world, and that they had consulted with Western “humanitarian organizations” to get the procedures [my link] right.

. . . Iraqi officials who attended the hanging said the calculation in the case of Mr. Ibrahim, a 55-year-old of medium height and build, had allowed for a “drop” of eight feet — too much, according to at least one United States Army manual — and about that amount of thick yellow rope could be seen coiled at Mr. Ibrahim’s feet before the hanging.

The video showed his head being snapped off as the rope went taut, and ending up, still inside the hood, lying in the pit of the gallows about five feet from his headless body.

Mr. Bandar could be seen dangling from the rope above Mr. Ibrahim, whose body was lying on its chest on the floor of the dark, dank pit, blood pooling beside his severed neck.

Thus John F. Burns of the New York Times. Two things to note here: first, everything’s always the fault of the poor sectarians. Violent by nature, filled with uncontrollable hatred, incapable of human feeling, they revel in the death of their enemies. Now clearly Ibrahim and Bandar were the baddest of the bad guys, and who are we to deny these folks a little last-minute revenge? What’s one more beheading? Westerners are offended because this behavior goes strictly against their mores. Which is symbolic of the entire cultural and political disconnect that has been behind the Iraq disaster.

Second, why didn’t they read the Army manual? Guys, you got to do your homework before you string somebody up. One can view the incident as another deliberate defiance of the U.S.: “Fuck your Army manual, man, don’t tell us how to hang people!” Or maybe it’s just another demonstration of Iraqi incompetence, so perfectly personified in the Prime Minister, Mr. Maliki.

As the 21,000 troops deploy to bring peace to this troubled land, let’s hope they are instructed to distribute Army manuals to those in charge of the next revenge killing. Let’s also hope the killers will read them and follow instructions so Western sensibilities can be spared.

Alternative George W. Bush Speech on Iraq

My fellow Americans: “We’re pulling out.”

Those are the words you want to hear, right? Well, guess what? I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war. We all want our brave troops to come home. But before that can happen, we need to escalate the war in Cambodia—excuse me, sacrifice a few more troops to clean up Baghdad, throw a few more dollars into the fire and kick the can down the road so I can leave office vindicated.

Some have accused my administration of mistakes in the conduct of this war. Let me say in my best passive voice that where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me. Being president means never having to say you’re sorry. Besides, my father made the mistake of not finishing off Saddam, so I guess I’m entitled to a few.

In making my decision to double-down on the war, I benefited greatly from the work of my Dad’s old secretary of state Jim Baker and his oddly assorted colleagues in the Iraq Study Group. They pointed the way forward to what not to do. No offense, but leadership sometimes means ignoring the collective wisdom.

Now a few more troops, some might say, will hardly make the difference. Well, they don’t have the information I have about sectarian violence. Our intelligence has discovered that the sectarians are developing a nucular capability and are being supplied with yellowcake from Iran. Terrorists from Syrian territory are terrifying the sectarian counterterrorists who are trying to bring security to the country. This is a truly terrible situation, and I’m sending Secretary Rice on Friday to continue her outstanding work in bringing peace to the region.

In these dangerous times, it is important that the country unite behind its leadership, as Senator Joe Lieberman has done. Let us put aside petty political interests in the name of freedom. Let us give peace a chance. Let us go forward defying the pessimists and the penny-ante naysayers.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether the Iraq nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. It may be that liberty for Iraq means testing whether our nation has the endurance to deal with me for two more years . . . but I will be vindicated. May God continue to bless my presidency and the United States of America.

Thank you and goodnight.

Perceptions 2007

I don’t want to write about politics. It’s too depressing and it does no good.

I do want to write about point of view—how shifting perspectives make our perceptions of current events change. Mostly, there are simply too many points of view. Too much ever-present video, too much babbling 24-hour media, too many partis pris. And always the commentariat, cocksure and blogging compulsively. All of this, instead of clarifying events, usually shrouds them in ambiguity, sometimes fogging them over forever.

What really happened at Saddam’s hanging? Does anyone think an investigation by the Maliki government will reveal the truth? Will the mocking and taunting, caught on cell phone video, finally turn that event into a martyrdom? Will the phony death decree, unsigned by Talabani, be the smoking gun in this due process farce? Like so much of the Iraq debacle, the event seems to have been staged by Allah for the benefit of a private audience . . . that then leaked the tape.

The Ford funeral, like Reagan’s, goes on forever, with the same ad nauseam comments by Republican leaders whose time has passed, and whom time has passed by. Look at these valiant old soldiers.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

No, look at Henry. In his eulogy he spoke about Ford’s concern for “humane values,” and few at the ceremony could fail to have been struck by the massive irony of these remarks. Mr. Vietnam Foreign Policy has been reportedly consulting regularly with the White House, urging victory in Iraq. Now we learn from an embargoed 2004 interview by Bob Woodward that Ford turns out to have been highly critical of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld over their handling of the Iraq war. Dick and Don both served as chiefs of staff in the Ford administration; Henry was secretary of state and national security adviser. Irony builds upon irony as these multiple perspectives unfold. Who can figure out what it all means?

And what are we to make of the appearance of Bush 41 who broke into sobs before the Florida lawmakers (and thus the nation) while praising his son Jeb for leadership? There’s been a lot of speculation that grief over Son Number One was the real cause of the paternal breakdown, and of course we’ll never really know that, the Bush Brothers being on a mission from God. As we do know, George W. answers to a higher father.

You can read more about the First Son and his Dad in my companion blog called No Consequences. At least it will give you a perspective.