Pick an argument and go with it

Following up on yesterday’s post about the White House lacking consistency in its approach to foreign affairs, an article in today’s Washington Post includes a few graphs highlighting this point on Iraq.

The piece notes that the administration has “come full circle” in what it says is the goal in Iraq. First, the White House demanded “regime change,” which obviously meant replacing Saddam. Then the administration backed off of regime change and demanded “disarmament,” suggesting that if Hussein lacked dangerous weapons, then the
“regime will have effectively changed.” Under this scenario, Hussein could presumably remain in Iraq as a less dangerous leader.

This appeared to be where the president was as early as two weeks ago. At Bush’s prime time press conference on March 6, the president used the word “disarm,” or one of its derivatives (disarming, disarmament, etc.), a total of 48 times in reference to Iraq. He mentioned “regime change” twice. Bush summed up U.S. goals simply. “Our mission is clear in Iraq,” Bush said. “Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament.”

That turned out to be a little less clear than Bush advertised. Since then, as diplomacy at the U.N. has broken down, the White House has abandoned talk of disarmament and has switched back to demanding regime change again. Concluding that even if Hussein was left with no weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. is arguing that he still would need to be removed because he might try and reacquire them sometime again in the future. That’s what we’ll almost certainly hear during tonight’s presidential address. He won’t give Saddam a choice between disarming and war, the choice will be between exile and war.

I know that I’d feel a lot better about the pending invasion if the administration would keep its story straight. The same thing has happened in the way the White House has argued that an invasion is necessary. First, we heard that we need to attack because Iraq was involved with 9/11, then it was because Hussein has nuclear weapons, followed by outrage that Iraq is flouting U.N. resolutions, then a humanitarian argument, followed by the need to “liberate” Iraq so we can bring democracy to the entire Middle East.

This is not the way to instill confidence in the world. Friends and foes alike are inherently skeptical about launching an unprovoked attack in the Middle East. By changing his story throughout the debate, Bush hasn’t made things any easier.