Slate’s Fred Kaplan wrote a good piece earlier this week about Bush’s latest defense for the war. It seemed right at the time, but as the week has progressed, I’ve grown less sure.
President George W. Bush has suddenly shifted rhetoric on the war in Iraq. Until recently, the administration’s line was basically, “Everything we are saying and doing is right.” It was a line that held him in good stead, especially with his base, which admired his constancy above all else. Now, though, as his policies are failing and even his base has begun to abandon him, a new line is being trotted out: “Yes, we were wrong about some things, but everybody else was wrong, too, so get over it.”
This “I was wrong, but so were you” tack is, to be sure, underpinning most of the new White House talking points. When the Bush gang insists (incorrectly) that Dems saw the same intelligence as the president, the obvious point is that everyone saw the same faulty information together. Ergo, there was one big mutual mistake.
Similarly, the Bush gang has become practically obsessed with collecting Dem quotes from 2002 and 2003, when many party leaders agreed with the president that Iraq was a threat that demanded attention. When these quotes aren’t being wrenched from context, the White House is again implicitly saying that Dems have to be considered as culpable for this debacle as Bush. Bush said Saddam had to go; Dems said Saddam had to go; which bring us back to the one big mutual mistake.
But this entire line of argument is only half-way coherent. If the White House was really arguing that everyone was wrong at the same time about the same things for same reason, then the “I was wrong, but so were you” approach would make sense. But that’s not quite what the argument is. Instead we’re hearing from the Bush gang is, “I was wrong, but so were you … and by the way, I was right all along.”
Consider Dick Cheney’s remarks from Wednesday.
“There was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he had violated U.N. Security Council Resolutions, and that, in a post-9/11 world, we could not afford to take the word of a dictator who had a history of weapons of mass destruction programs, who had excluded weapons inspectors, who had defied the demands of the international community, whose nation had been designated an official state sponsor of terror, and who had committed mass murder.”
These aren’t the arguments of someone who realizes he was wrong but desperately wants to share responsibility with Congress; this is Cheney making the case that the invasion and occupation of Iraq really was absolutely necessary. It’s the quintessential “We were right all along” approach.
And if that’s the White House line — and I sincerely hope that it is — then the rest of their argument against Dems falls apart pretty quickly. (It’s an argument based on lies and deception anyway, but I mean it falls apart as a matter of logic and consistency, too.)
In the broader narrative of this debate, the Dems basically have a line: we saw limited intelligence, reluctantly trusted Bush, and empowered the president to pursue a military option. Since then, we’ve learned about manipulated intelligence and seen Bush’s ineptitude. Now, we’re unhappy.
In response, the White House has a variety of choices, but “Bush was wrong while also being right” isn’t one of them.
What we have here is a Bush gang that wants to have its yellowcake and eat it too. They’ll grudgingly concede Iraq had no WMD, or nuclear program, or ties to 9/11, while simultaneously arguing that the war was essential from the beginning.
With this in mind, it seems Dems should force the argument in this direction. Americans realize that this war was a mistake, and they may be willing to accept an “I was wrong, but so were you” argument from the Bush gang. So let’s remind them that this isn’t the argument at all — that despite all we’ve witnessed, the Bush White House is proud to have invaded Iraq and, for reasons that defy comprehension, believe they made the right call every step of the way. Let’s see how many Americans agree.