INDCJournal: The Case to Fight the War on Terror is the Case for Bush-Cheney <b><i>(UPDATED with Essential Video)</i></b>

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October 31, 2004

The Case to Fight the War on Terror is the Case for Bush-Cheney (UPDATED with Essential Video)

Posted by Bill

Walter Russell Mead has a profile and interview with Dick Cheney in this month's Esquire Magazine. This is a must-read for everyone that plans to vote this election. It's extremely long, but it's perhaps the best explanation of this administration's real mistakes and ultimate rationale and strategy in the war on terror that I've seen in recent memory.

The author has good credentials and certainly isn't a shill for the administration:

I think and write about U. S. foreign policy for a living at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Before getting this far�my first contact with the vice-president�I'd gone through months of screening. My latest book had circulated among the vice-president's staff to determine whether my political attitudes passed muster. Call me unaligned; there are days when I can't decide whether to worry more about the Bush administration or its critics.

And it's not flattering:

But I had come to the White House on a mission. This man, and this administration, were wrecking my life. I wanted to know why.
I hate the decision I'm being forced to make this November. I hate the choices that the war on terrorism is imposing on us. The gravest threats of an unimaginably difficult and challenging future are coming together with some of the unhappiest unresolved conflicts in our national life, creating a perfect political shit storm. I don't like the storm and I don't like the choice. But the war is real, our divisions are real, and the choice isn't going away.
...
That's not quite my beef with Dick Cheney. Rather, for virtually his entire adult life, he's been engaged in the systematic destruction of what I was raised to believe was progressive, decent, and forward-looking in the United States of America.

But I endorse much of his less personal criticism; maligning the communication efforts of this Administration is largely just and accurate:

And what did Cheney's silence on these topics mean? Had the administration not really thought about these problems or learned anything from its experience in the terror war? In that case, would another four-year mandate mean more of the same? ... In Battle Creek, Michigan, and again in Dayton, Ohio, I watched with diminishing hope as Cheney continued to utter slogans�often slogans I agree with�but without performing what I remain naive enough to believe is an essential task of a national leader in wartime: giving the public a serious and thoughtful exposition of the country's policies in a time of great danger. ... But as much as Cheney and Bush might like to compare themselves to Churchill, the real problem isn't that they are excessively Churchillian; it's that they aren't Churchillian enough. Churchill believed that the united will of the British people to fight was the secret weapon that would win the war, and preserving and toughening that united will was the course that he took. His wartime speeches acknowledged defeats and setbacks. Unpleasant facts were frankly stated and faced. He earned the trust of a people at war by voicing their doubts even as he stoked their resolve. ... Not everyone in the United States or abroad would have accepted this case or agreed with the president's decision for war if coercive diplomacy failed, but we would clearly be in better shape today if the administration had done more to put the full range of its views on the table.

But the author also possesses a deeper understanding of the danger that partially explains why some of us that don't care much for Cheney's stances on domestic issues still think it's so important to re-elect the incumbent:

For many people, the "cautious and prudent" course would be to leave Iran alone, avoid war, and try to work out some way of living with its bomb. Russia has the bomb, China has the bomb; Israel, India, England, and Pakistan have the bomb; we've even learned to live in a world where France has the bomb. Why not do the "cautious and prudent" thing�and learn to live with a nuclear Iran?
A few days later, I spoke to former secretary of state George Shultz about this principle, and he immediately understood and agreed. Tie goes to the runner in those cases, Shultz says. That is, when you are facing unknown, possibly grave dangers, and you really don't and perhaps can't know exactly what to do, it is safer to act than to wait. It's a positively radical idea, at the heart of George Bush's doctrine of preventative war. It is precisely this kind of thinking that got the United States into Iraq. And never before in our history, perhaps never before in the history of war and peace, have prudent and cautious added up to invade .

There's the rub. And Cheney is still quietly and calmly explaining that it's the right thing to do. Worse still, I think I believe him.

So do I. And this point is crucial:

Yet there's a more substantive point as well. Cheney is a military-history buff and is very well read on the U. S. Civil War. Lincoln made a lot of mistakes in that war. There were times when things looked very bleak for the United States. International public opinion was on the side of the South. Enormous scandals rocked the government, analysts and pundits blasted Lincoln's administration, and even his allies sometimes despaired.
But Lincoln knew that he had to hold on, to fight the war through thick and thin, to engage the enemy and grind him down with the North's superior numbers and wealth. In Grant he found the general who could fight this kind of warfare: ugly, costly, and at times ruinously unpopular.

Cheney sees this kind of persistence as the essential quality of wartime leadership. I don't think he's wrong. Churchill, too, was a leader who saw the essential logic of the fight against Hitler and was willing to follow it wherever it led�to the alliance with Bolshevik Russia, which he hated with every fiber of his being; to the destruction of the British Empire, which he had dedicated his life to preserving; to the very gates of hell.

Suppose that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder, goes this quiet, unspoken argument. Yes, the news from Iraq is bad. And yes, it is the Bush administration's fault. Well, Lincoln made one blunder after another. Churchill failed in Norway, failed in France, failed in Yugoslavia, failed in Crete, failed in Singapore. And he won the war. You cannot ask a leader to be infallible or ever-victorious in a real war. You can only ask him to persevere.

Lincoln, Churchill, and Grant: I don't think Cheney invokes them just to drop names. These are clues to the kind of world he believes we live in and to the war of survival he believes we must fight. These names are a measure of the stakes he sees, of the risks he will run, the price he will pay, the suffering and damage he is willing to sustain and inflict.

It's a good article with one fatal flaw: the non-conclusion, which rolls up the mass of analysis with the declaration that the Bush Administration has "missed the most important lesson of all," by failing to communicate war's hardship while having had the vision and bravery to undertake its toil. The author's piece plummets by operating in a vacuum that fails to examine and prioritize these mistakes in the context of the previous alternative and the current alternative - a Kerry Administration that might communicate more effectively than the Bush Administration, yet lacks a fundamental strategy to persevere and aggressively engage the global war on terror. By the logic of the author's piece, Kerry offers the far "riskier" option because he would naturally favor inaction and shun "prudent" courses of preemption and Churchillian will.

A return to a reactive, defensive foreign policy that projects weakness, looks for politically convenient "solutions" for Iraq and allows Iran to go nuclear will lead the United States in the wrong, bleak direction, at a moment in history where we face a new paradigm of ubiquitous destructive technology and the catastrophic intentions of dedicated extremists.

It's a concept so abstract that most Americans can barely grasp its practical implications through the hazy memory of September 11th and our subsequent return to the majority's collective failure of imagination. In this sense, the difficulty of the task renders me far more forgiving than the author regarding the Bush Administration's failure to adequately communicate rationale and setbacks during the war; I'd rather have flawed leadership that takes action and unfortunately risks flagging political will than an Administration that does the opposite. But make no mistake - if we return to a never-never-land that embraces diplomatic processes that have been exposed time and time again as failures, through a corrupt multilateral organization that's merits are not adequately adjusted for the self-interest of its member states, we greatly increase the chances of decline and ultimate catastrophe for the United States - perhaps within a generation.

There exist practical reasons to fear a Bush Presidency, but I think that the country can survive any domestic and fiscal disagreements, in a reasonably comparable way to the manner in which we'd handle the alternative. In contrast, I'm absolute in the belief that a foreign policy guided by a man like John Kerry, who has shown 35 years of consistent weakness - from his unethical tactical judgment as an anti-war protestor to his vote against one of history's broadest coalitions assembled for the first Gulf War - will be a quiet disaster.

Consider: a beautiful house that has termites can be a wonderful place to live - until the roof crashes in on the heads of your children.

I'm not blind to his errors or assured of our ultimate success, but George W. Bush has proven that he has the political courage and will to attempt success and weather errors; the essential qualities of a wartime President. I politely ask those of you that are still undecided to consider this argument - and to please consider voting for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

Let them finish the job.

UPDATE: As a requisite complement to my argument, and for an illustration of the alternative of Kerry's leadership, please watch a film titled "Kerry Iraq Documentary." Then make your ultimate decision.

Posted by Bill at October 31, 2004 02:19 PM | TrackBack (4)

Comments

I am more concerned with the postmodern ascendence of wishful perception over reality.

Iraq may achieve democracy even if Kerry is elected. The war on terror may be almost won no matter what.

But expect the claims that economic recovery was achieved by increasing taxes on the rich and the war on terror was won using diplomacy. Whatever good has been acomplished by realism will be discredited and lost.

Posted by: boris at October 31, 2004 04:11 PM

He's right: if Bush had one TENTH the ability to speak directly TO the nation and PAST the pundits and journalists that Reagan, Churchill, or Lincoln had, this election would already be over. Instead he has allowed the Michael Moores and George Soros' to set the agenda and control the debate, and has limited himself to replies that mostly get lost in the media cheerleading for Kerry. If Bush loses this one, it's all HIS fault.

The truth is useless if no-one hears or believes, and Cassandra got screwed in the end.

Posted by: DaveP. at October 31, 2004 04:22 PM

He's right: if Bush had one TENTH the ability to speak directly TO the nation and PAST the pundits and journalists that Reagan, Churchill, or Lincoln had, this election would already be over.

Yup. Most people think that Bush "misled" them because they weren't well enough informed, and part of the responsibility lies with Bush.

That being said, the results of ineffective communication are expressed at the ballot box, so if he can pull out a victory this failure loses some relevance.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at October 31, 2004 04:27 PM

Excellent piece.

Events, however, may outstrip Mr. Kerry's intention to bribe Iran to keep it non-nuclear.

I fear the only course is regime change in Iran or, at the very least, extraordinarily intensive bombardment lasting weeks of every nuclear site both known and guessed at.

Probably be pretty much alone in that fight too.

Posted by: superhawk at October 31, 2004 04:38 PM

It's difficult, if not impossible to win a media battle against an opponent who cannot be trusted to tell the truth, especially when that opponent is aided by a complicit media pipeline.

I know of many people who feel that the President has not been honest, but cannot specify one instance, other than WMD. We HAVE in fact found WMD's, yet we cannot trust the media to honestly report on these things once found out.

Would this be a different battle were George Bush a better public speaker? Absolutely! That is the result of Republicans doing 4-1/2 years ago what Democrats have done THIS year, that is, nominated the wrong candidate.

I still think this one is and easy choice.

Posted by: Rich at October 31, 2004 04:47 PM

"We HAVE in fact found WMD's, yet we cannot trust the media to honestly report on these things once found out."

?????????

Posted by: moebius at October 31, 2004 05:07 PM

Unfortunately, I'll have to agree with Mead on the Bush Administration's failure to make its case to the American public. Not because "Bush Lied!", but because:

"Those who take a democracy to war must build the kind of support that can see them through the setbacks and disasters that must inevitably come. If it's your war, you must embrace it, good and bad."

Victor Davis Hanson, one of the most lucid Bush supporter, and perhaps one of the architect of the Bush Doctrine, makes the argument in "Carnage and Culture" that Cannae (216 B.C.E) was remarkable, not for the genius of Hannibal's generalship, or the number of Romans killed, but for the fact that it was strategically insignificant, due to Roman resolve.

It's true, as Bill says, that if Bush carries this election, then the issue becomes obsolete, but right now it is a little too close for comfort from where I am sitting.

G.W.

Posted by: G.W. at October 31, 2004 05:13 PM

Buncha WMD links:

Iraqi Nuclear program
Uranium Stockpile
Scientist hands over documents and parts.
Even CNN saw it
Mobile biological labs
...and another at a missle factory
Iraqi missle engines in Jordan? Yup!
Fighter Jets found buried in desert
Both mustard gas and sarin gas found...
Other banned weapons programs...
David Kay's input
Other banned weapons programs...
Other banned weapons programs...
...and another...

I expect you'll do the typical thing and call "insecticides found in a missle plant" a disqualified entry. I still haven't heard of anyone using illegal missles to distribute insecticide for pest control, unless you call a subset of your citizen base "pests."

Posted by: Rich at October 31, 2004 05:28 PM

Thanks for a thoughtful post. In Texas, straight talk is as much a part of the culture as high school football and Mexican food. Bush was the Governer when I lived there. These days, he doesn't sound like himself. The dearth of plain speaking from this administration has been disturbing to me and, I suspect, many others who want to trust his leadership. I suppose Karl Rove has Bush convinced that some things just can't be said during the election season. We end up with Bush compulsively repeating that "it's hard work."

So, maybe there is some justification for this. Maybe we can take comfort in the politically expedient decisions that must be made to prevent a Kerry presidency. Still, don't you wish we had a Churchill? Or a Reagan? I'm going to vote for Bush, but I wish I could be fired up by more than the conviction that Bush is way better than Kerry.

Posted by: FormerTexan at October 31, 2004 05:32 PM

So, maybe there is some justification for this

I believe that they are afraid of showing anything that can be interpreted by the world as strategic weakness.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at October 31, 2004 05:49 PM

I do agree that I wish Bush were a more effective communicator: imagine Rudy Giuliani for instance. I certainly hope that no matter what happens in this election, the GOP nominate an amazingly effective communicator in 2008.

However, allow me to be a bit contrarian for the sake of debate:
1) Churchill benefits from the shine of history; in his day, Churchill was not always so revered or loved, in spite of his communication skills...
2) Reagan took alot of abuse too, and as an extemporaneous speaker, had many of the flaws of Bush: he sometimes bumbled over his words, and didn't always have an encyclopedic recall of facts...
3) Reagan did not have the problems dealing with a "hot war"...he only dealth with the Cold War...and anytime we are in a war with actual troops dying, that causes political shocks, regardless of how successful one is in that war...
4) As for Lincoln, Lincoln was absolutely reviled in his day by many; and the brilliance of much of what he spoke and wrote did not become fully appreciated until many years after his death...

So in conclusion, we need to remember that the great communicators we all long for were not always the most popular, still suffered politically from time to time in spite of their communication skills, and benefit from being looked at through the lens of history.

Posted by: Another Thought at October 31, 2004 05:59 PM

"I believe that they are afraid of showing anything that can be interpreted by the world as strategic weakness."

I suppose so. That's what bothers me. How does straight talk become a sign of weakness? Who in "the world" really thinks that? Nobody thinks that way in Texas. I have a hard time believing that Bush really thinks that way. I'm looking forward to what he has to say as a lame duck president.

Posted by: FormerTexan at October 31, 2004 07:09 PM

Who in "the world" really thinks that? Nobody thinks that way in Texas.

Many people in the world think that; the rest of the world doesn't think like Texas.

Admitting certain errors is interpreted as weakness by many cultures, not the least of which is the US press corps.

To some extent the criticism is fair; but a lot of it is bs.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at October 31, 2004 07:13 PM

Bush-Cheney can not communicate their message effectively because they are not being candid with us about their purpose. Go to: www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericanDefenses.pdf. The truth will set you free.

GOSH, HOW IS THE TRUTH SUPPOSED TO SET US FREE WHEN YOUR LINK DOESN'T WORK? -ED

Posted by: EyesWIdeOpen at October 31, 2004 07:19 PM

"Many people in the world think that; the rest of the world doesn't think like Texas."

You're right. Others don't think like Texans, or Americans in general. But they like us. Sometimes it's easy to forget that.

I've been to about 30 different countries, often on business representing my company (I'm a lawyer). You hear the same things everywhere about Americans:

- We're friendly. People all over the globe have stories about how friendly Americans are. They are amazed by the fact that, when they were in America, they got invited into someone's home.

- We're transparent. Everybody gets that we mean what we say and we talk straight. By their standards, we are unsophisticated. But they *like* that about us!

I have always felt readily accepted in foreign countries if I just acted like an American. I was invariably dealing with people who understood my culture much better than I understood theirs. They expect that, and they greatly appreciate it if you show an interest in learning about their culture and history. But the last thing they want in Thailand or Brazil or Israel is to deal with an American who is trying to act like a local. They prefer us the way we are -- friendly and transparent.

P.S. Everyone was nice to me in France, to my great disappointment. I was hoping they would be insufferably rude so that I could continue my lifelong unreasoning prejudice against the French. Unfortunately, my one trip there kind of spoiled things.

Posted by: FormerTexan at October 31, 2004 07:58 PM

FormerTexan -

Once again, you are confusing personal observations and micro modes of conduct with macro modes like foreign policy. Kim Jung Il doesn't like or give a damn how friendly most Americans are, nor do other menacing regimes that have often dissonant interpretations of what constitutes weakness by a politician.

You can't base foreign policy, presidential communication and diplomacy on what plays well with people you've met. It's not the same thing.

Even in domestic relations, it's a different game. Two examples - John Kerry and George Bush both made frank comments about how the war on terror isn't winnable in a traditional sense. These comments were prescient and very honest, but the other political side took the remarks out of context and beat them over the head with it, to some success.

Interpersonal honesty is often a bad idea in politics.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at October 31, 2004 08:09 PM

"Kim Jung Il doesn't like or give a damn how friendly most Americans are, nor do other menacing regimes that have often dissonant interpretations of what constitutes weakness by a politician."

Yeah. Too bad.

I guess I'll knock off the "micro modes" and concede the point.

So, for "macro modes," who is more important -- Madonna or the U.S. Marine Corps?

Posted by: FormerTexan at October 31, 2004 08:24 PM

Actually, I think Bill sells the micro modes short. They can be a useful indicator well beyond the macro. A good case in point is this fascinating description of talking with very Westernised Jordanian kids.
I compare this with my own experiences years ago with folks in Eastern Europe who recognised government propaganda when they heard it. The old Warsaw pact is now more pro-American than parts of Western Europe, but Athena's story suggests things will be tougher in the ME.

Posted by: Oscar at October 31, 2004 09:30 PM

OK, I'm in the mood for a rant, so I'll answer my own question. This thread is over anyway, so I guess I can just go off.

The answer is -- Madonna.

Remember a few years ago when male American teenagers were wearing low-slung baggy pants with boxer shorts displayed above the waistline? The style was called "jailin'". It came from American jails, where you are not allowed to have a belt. So your pants hang down, and your boxers show.

It amazed me to walk around Seoul and see Korean kids looking the same way. They were imitating a style that came out of the subculture of American jails. It was not hard to imagine how their parents felt.

The supremacy of America today is not political. It's not about democracy. It is not economic. It's not about capitalism and free markets. It is not military. It's not about the U.S. Marine Corps.

Our supremacy is cultural. It's about Madonna. And that is why we are getting so much resistance. Even hatred.

Only America is capable of transforming a Defense Department project like DARPAnet into the World Wide Web. Only America is capable of transfroming a propellerhead like Bill Gates into a multi-billionaire. Only America is capable of Michael Jackson. Only America is capable of Madonna. Only America rocks (tip of hat to U.K. and Australia).

The rest of the world gets it. They can try to fight off American culture, or they can surrender. Who are the shock troops in this war? Not the Marines. Madonna.

Posted by: FormerTexan at October 31, 2004 09:45 PM

I think it's more than just being afraid of "showing the world a strategic weakness"- though I do agree with that in relation to ME culture.

If we were facing an election with a "politics ends at the water's edge", "loyal opposition" kind of atmosphere, I think it would be different. But we're not.

Our President has had his opponents and their surrogates consistently pound on the idea that he has Betrayed, Mislead, and Lied. In the face of that kind of opposition, there is NO WAY any political advisor is going to suggest that you talk about "mistakes". Yes, it leads to the "can't admit mistakes" line of attack- but that's the lesser of the evils.

Just imagine the kind of speeches and commercials Kerry/MoveOn would be running with if they had Bush on record admitting a failure or mistake.

I do think it will be somewhat different if he wins, but only if the democrat party can move toward being a party that wants to win the War... more than they want to win the election.

Posted by: Jack Grey at October 31, 2004 10:08 PM

Please spread this through emails to qo folks you know and ask them to email everyone!!

Have you seen this?

http://www.nysun.com/article/4040

"A former officer in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve has built a case that Senator Kerry was other than honorably discharged from the Navy by 1975, The New York Sun has learned.

The "honorable discharge" on the Kerry Web site appears to be a Carter administration substitute for an original action expunged from Mr. Kerry's record, according to Mark Sullivan, who retired as a captain in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve in 2003 after 33 years of service as a judge advocate. Mr. Sullivan served in the office of the Secretary of the Navy between 1975 and 1977."

And this:

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41200

"There is overwhelming evidence that the Navy gave
John Kerry either a dishonorable discharge or an
undesirable discharge � which is the equivalent of a
dishonorable discharge without the felony conviction �
and that, as a result of such discharge, he was
stripped of all of his famous but questionable Navy
awards and medals. And the kicker? The evidence is on
his website!"

Posted by: Do Gooder at November 1, 2004 09:41 AM