I guess one does what one knows, and I know responding to drivel. This lovely little number is from the Letters section of Newsweek, in response to an article about Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial.”
You paint a picture of President Bush as a failed politician. As I see it, he’s a good leader who has tried to do what is best for the country. He couldn’t forsee what unfolded in Iraq, but he’s working with the existing situation. Your type of thinking, so influential in shaping the ideas of Americans, undermines our ability to prevail in Iraq. We are at war. As commander in chief, Bush deserves our respect and support. Our soldiers are demoralized by the liberal-media bias and our enemy is emboldened. Do you want us to lose the war? Is that the outcome you seek?
Karen
Gainesville, FL
Now, first of all, Newsweek painted no such picture of President Bush. Certainly some Newsweek columnists, including Jonathan Alter and Fareed Zakaria, have heaped well-deserved criticism on the administration, but Newsweek has not taken to injecting opinion into news pieces. Bob Woodward is the one who painted that particular picture of the President. This follows his last two books on the topic, both praising George W. Bush, proving that Bob Woodward writes whatever he feels will sell the most copies at any particular time. I care very little about Bob Woodward’s latest attempt to cash in on social momentum, and could not possibly care less how he paints the President to do so.
Regardless, Karen does a fantastic job painting a picture of an uninformed, nationalist mouth-breather, too caught up in Bush’s cult of personality even to comprehend where criticism of the administration comes from.
The United States is not involved in a war in Iraq, and the sooner we stop letting people claim otherwise, the sooner we can get to the task of dealing with reality. We are involved in an occupation of Iraq. That makes a big difference when considering Karen’s broader point. It is impossible to win an occupation. There is no final objective, there is no measure of success, and there is no organized enemy to surrender. When will we “win” the occupation? Doubtless Karen would tell us that the occupation is won when the insurgents are gone and Iraq becomes a Western-style democracy. History shows us, however, that occupations breed insurgencies; they do not quell them. Even more importantly, you cannot bomb a nation into democracy. Democracy is a political movement, not a military one. America is independent of Britain because of the American Revolution, but we are a Democratic Republic because of popular consent at the time. There is no evidence that such popular consent exists in Iraq, all cleverly-orchestrated pictures of purple fingers notwithstanding. There is no overwhelming, dedicated democratic movement in Iraq. If there were, there would be no need to occupy; Iraqi democrats, who would fight the insurgents with all the ferocity of colonial minutemen, would outnumber the insurgents.
There is no war to lose Karen, and to what extent there was, it is already lost. The war was lost when George W. Bush sent a fraction of the troops recommended by generals on the ground. It was lost when an invasion was carried out with no solid plan for how to maintain the peace. It was lost when advisors and experts with unpopular ideas regarding the high cost of an Iraq war in dollars, troops, and casualties were ignored or fired. It was lost when George W. Bush was urged by Cheney and Rumsfeld to engage in an unnecessary conflict that his father had refused the same two men long before anyone could engage in a “post-9/11” mindset. It was lost when the first Iraqi citizen was killed for a cause they neither understood nor supported, and that loss was repeated 599,999 times afterwards. No article in Newsweek is going to lose the war, Karen. That job has been accomplished by men much more powerful than Richard M. Smith, chairman and editor-in-chief.
