For far too many on the right, Iraq can’t be Bush’s fault because, well, it just can’t. To hold him responsible for the calamity would be to label his presidency a tragedy. This is not to say the “blame game” should be avoided, only that fingers should be pointed away from the commander in chief.
Last week, the right picked up on blaming Americans. From Roll Call’s Mort Kondracke:
All over the world, scoundrels are ascendant, rising on a tide of American weakness. It makes for a perilous future.
President Bush bet his presidency — and America’s world leadership — on the war in Iraq. Tragically, it looks as though he bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.
Au contraire, said other conservatives, who preferred to blame Iraqis.
We’re thinking about what we’re going to tell ourselves in the future about this fiasco, to borrow the title of Thomas Ricks’ disturbing book about the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. We’re thinking about who or what to blame. No troop withdrawal can occur until this narrative has been assembled.
That work has now begun. In a Nov. 29 Washington Post article, Ricks and Robin Wright report that a governmental consensus is emerging that nation-building failed in Iraq because the Iraqis just weren’t up to it.
Wrong again, said still other conservatives. The real culprit is, of course, the media. Consider the Weekly Standard’s Michael Novak.
What we have discovered in Iraq is the weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas. That link is the U.S. media. They are Islamists’ best friends.
Experience shows that the mainstream press of the United States is alienated from the U.S. military. In addition, the American press is extremely vulnerable to anti-U.S. propaganda. Thus, the American public will be fed nearly everything that foreign adversaries — our band of brothers — wish to feed it about the war.
To be sure, this isn’t entirely new, but desperate times call for desperate spinning. Earlier this year, the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks said, “Blaming the media is like blaming the rain.” It’s still true.
As for Novak’s specific assessment, I think Josh Marshall has the appropriate response.
It’s a fascinating narrative they’re developing. President Bush can handle and generally kick the ass of the Taliban, al Qaida, Saddam, the Iranians mullahs and everybody else around the globe single-handedly without any help from anyone.
Just as long as someone can protect him from the base of the Democratic Party and MSM news editors.
Honestly, I can’t quite figure out what the right would have the media do differently. Reporters failed to ask the tough questions before the war, were cheerleaders after the war had begun, and slowly started reporting the nightmare, after the facts on the ground became undeniable. Indeed, at this point, by some estimations, Iraq is actually worse than the media is telling us.
And yet, we should blame the press for the fiasco? The mind reels.