http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/1...ed_rhetoric.php
Bush's Canned Rhetoric
David Corn
September 12, 2006


David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the co-author along with Michael Isikoff of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War . Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.

Anniversaries are artificial. Was anything truly different on Monday because it was five years to the day murderous jihadists killed 3,000 people in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? George W. Bush showed that the day was not unique, for he delivered a speech that contained nothing new.

To be fair—if we must—Bush has already defined his 9/11 legacy rather firmly with the war in Iraq. There was not much he could say in his primetime address (except perhaps, “I was wrong”) that was going to amount to much or compel notice. So he offered a sticking-to-his-guns speech that repeated faulty arguments his administration has trotted out previously and are wearing thin.

Five years down the road, Bush was not going to wow anyone with new insight on that horror. He served up the usual. (“On 9/11, our nation saw the face of evil.”) He spoke of the great loss suffered that day, the heroic self-sacrifice of many, and the challenge posed to the country by the extremists. And he repeated his preferred and ennobling framework: that the matter at hand is not merely neutralizing al-Qaida and its allies but “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, the calling of our generation.” That is grandiose language, concocted mainly to spiff up the war in Iraq. The battle against jihadism is certainly significant. The century, though, is young, and China may yet have something to say about the defining challenge of this era.

If there was a reason to pay heed to this speech, it was to hear how Bush would link Iraq to 9/11. Bush made the connection this way:

On September the 11, we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores—whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states. I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.

He did not specify how Saddam had been a clear threat. The Iraqi tyrant had no weapons of mass destruction and no capacity to manufacture them. The report submitted by Charles Duelfer—the final head of the Iraq Survey Group, which searched for the WMDs after the invasion—noted that Saddam's WMD capability “was essentially destroyed in 1991” and that Saddam had no “plan for the revival of WMD.”

And Saddam had no significant ties to the evildoers of 9/11, according to the recently released report of the (Republican-controlled) Senate intelligence committee. The committee cited a 2005 CIA assessment that noted, "The data reveal few indications of an established relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's regime." The Senate report concluded that Saddam had wanted nothing to do with al-Qaida.

No weapons. No partnership with the jihadists. And as Tim Russert pointed out when Dick Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, even the vice president after 9/11 had said that Saddam was “bottled up.” So what was the threat? Bush did not explain. He did assert that the world is “safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.” Perhaps. Perhaps not. World safety is one of those standards that's quite difficult to evaluate. If the United States had devoted the time and money spent on the Iraq enterprise to securing and rebuilding Afghanistan and fully funding homeland security, maybe we would all be safer.

There is no telling. But one can safely say that the 3,000 or so Iraqi civilians who are murdered each month in the sectarian violence that has been unleashed in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq would probably have an opinion on this safety question—if they could speak from the grave. In his speech, Bush breezed past the issue of Iraq’s death toll, citing the political advances in Iraq and essentially ignoring the casualties and chaos there. He offered prayers for the families of those Americans lost in battle. For the slain Iraqis, he had not a word.

Once more, he offered canards to defend staying the course. “Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone,” Bush remarked. “They will not leave us alone.” But can the White House produce one example of a serious-minded critic of Bush's Iraq policy who believes that that al-Qaida will hoist a white flag if the United States disengages in Iraq? This is the disingenuous work of too-clever speechwriters and message-makers in the White House. The president and his aides cheapened the debate—even during the remembrance of a national tragedy.

Bush continued: “If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened. They will gain a new safe haven, and they will use Iraq's resources to fuel their extremist movement.” This was another phony but well-used argument. Were the United States to withdraw from Iraq, the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds would not turn over Iraq to al-Qaida. The choice is not, as Bush suggested, an Iraq with or without bin Laden on the throne. This formulation is yet another scare tactic.

Bush ended his speech by claiming that the United States is fighting for freedom in the Middle East—and that the spread of freedom in the Middle East will make the United States safer. Again, this may or may not be true. The new free government of Iraq is cozying up to Iran and has been supportive of Hezbollah. Its leading parties are backing a bill that would allow the Shiites in the south to create a quasi-autonomous region, while leaving the Sunnis in central Iraq with nothing. (Is that not a recipe for more strife and violence?) And the free Shiite-dominated government has been unable—or unwilling—to stop Shiite militias from committing brutal atrocities.

Freedom is not a guarantee of stability or security. After Afghanistan won its freedom from the Soviet Union—thanks to the insurgency led by the mujahedeen, who were supported by both the CIA and bin Laden—Afghan society was wracked by civil conflict and mayhem that led to the rise of the Taliban. And we know how that turned out. Spreading freedom is a worthy objective. But defending a fiasco of a war by proclaiming allegiance to this ideal devalues the goal.

It's a tired cliché that Bush blew his chance after 9/11, that he could have truly attempted to rise above partisan politics and lead a united country. But he resorted to the same-old tactics, such as claiming during the 2002 election that the Democrats were not interested in the national security of the American public because they disagreed with him over the work rules at the new Department of Homeland Security. These days, his lieutenants blast those who question the administration's Iraq endeavor as appeasers and naïve simpletons. Yet Bush said in this speech, “We must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”

Bush has not met that test. After 9/11, he misled the nation into war with Iraq. Since then, he has been slow to acknowledge his administration's blunders but, still, he has not been shy in trying to turn the war to partisan advantage. Reality (in Iraq), though, has intruded upon the rhetoric (of the White House). And the words of Bush's speechwriters matter less now than they did in the days following September 11. His obligatory 9/11 commemoration was a speech that changed nothing.